The Fires of Heaven Read online

  “Will she live?” Elayne asked faintly. There was no visible link between her and Birgitte, no flows, but she could sense the woman’s weakness. A terrible weakness. She would know the moment Birgitte died, even if she was sleeping, or hundreds of miles away.

  “I do not know. She isn’t fading anymore, but I do not know.” Weariness made Nynaeve’s voice soft, and pain touched it strongly, as if she shared Birgitte’s injury. Wincing, she rose and unfolded a red-striped blanket to spread over the woman lying there. “What did you do?”

  Silence held Elayne long enough for Nynaeve to join her, lowering herself awkwardly onto the bed. “Bonding,” Elayne said finally. “I . . . bonded her. As a Warder.” The incredulous stare on the other woman’s face made her rush on. “Healing was doing no good. I had to do something. You know the gifts a Warder gets from being bonded. One is strength, energy. He can keep going when other men would collapse and die, survive wounds that would kill anyone else. It was the only thing I could think of.”

  Nynaeve drew a deep breath. “Well, it is working better than what I did, at least. A woman Warder. I wonder what Lan will think of that? No reason why she shouldn’t be. If any woman can, it would be her.” Wincing, she curled her legs up beneath her; her gaze kept returning to Birgitte. “You will have to keep this secret. If anyone learns that an Accepted has bonded a Warder, whatever the circumstances . . .”

  Elayne shivered. “I know,” she said simply, and quite fervently. It was not quite a stilling offense, but any Aes Sedai would very likely make her wish she had been stilled. “Nynaeve, what happened?”

  For a long moment she thought the other woman was going to start crying again as her chin quivered and her lips worked. When she began speaking, her voice was iron, her face a blend of fury and too many tears ever to be shed. She told the tale starkly, almost sketchily, until she came to Moghedien’s appearance among the wagons. That she rendered in painful detail.

  “I should be welted from the neck down,” she said bitterly at last, touching a smooth, unmarked arm. Unmarked or not, she flinched. “I don’t understand why I am not. I feel it, but I deserve the welts, for stupid, foolish pride. For being too afraid to do what I should. I deserved being hung up like a ham in a smokehouse. If there was any justice, I would still be dangling there, and Birgitte would not be lying on that bed, with us wondering whether she’ll live or not. If only I knew more. If only I could have Moghedien’s knowledge for five minutes, I could Heal her. I am sure of it.”

  “If you were still hanging,” Elayne said practically, “in a very short while you would be waking up and shielding me. I don’t doubt Moghedien would have seen to it that you were angry enough to channel—she knows us all too well, remember—and I do doubt very much that I would have suspected anything until you had done it. I do not fancy being carted off to Moghedien, and I cannot believe you do either.” The other woman did not look at her. “It must have been a link, Nynaeve, like an a’dam. That is how she made you feel pain without marking you.” Nynaeve still sat there in a glowering sulk. “Nynaeve, Birgitte is alive. You did everything you could for her, and the Light willing, she will live. It was Moghedien who did this to her, not you. A soldier who takes blame for comrades who fall in battle is a fool. You and I are soldiers in a battle, but you are not a fool, so stop behaving like one.”

  Nynaeve did look at her then, a scowl that lasted only a moment before she turned her face completely away. “You don’t understand.” Her voice sank almost to a whisper. “She . . . was . . . one of the heroes bound to the Wheel of Time, destined to be born again and again to make legends. She wasn’t born this time, Elayne. She was ripped out of Tel’aran’rhiod as she stood. Is she still bound to the Wheel? Or has she been ripped away from that, too? Ripped away from what her own courage earned her, because I was so proud, so man-stubborn stupid, that I made her hunt for Moghedien?”

  Elayne had hoped that those questions had not occurred to Nynaeve yet, would not until she had had a little time to recover first. “Do you know how badly Moghedien was hurt? Maybe she is dead.”

  “I hope not,” the other woman almost snarled. “I want to make her pay. . . .” She took a deep breath, but instead of invigorating her, it seemed to make her sag. “I would not count on her dying. Birgitte’s shot missed her heart. A wonder she managed to hit the woman at all, staggering as she was. I could not have stood up if I were thrown that far, hard enough to bounce like that. I couldn’t even stand up after what Moghedien did to me. No, she is alive, and we had best believe that she can have her wound Healed and be after us by morning.”

  “She would still need time to rest, Nynaeve. You know that. Can she even know where we are? From what you said, she had no time to do more than see that this is a menagerie.”

  “What if she did see more?” Nynaeve rubbed her temples as if it were difficult to think. “What if she knows exactly where we are? She could send Darkfriends after us. Or send word to Darkfriends in Samara.”

  “Luca is livid because eleven menageries are already around the city, and three more are waiting to cross the bridge. Nynaeve, it will take her days to regain strength after a wound like that, even if she does find some Black sister to Heal her, or one of the other Forsaken. And more days to search through fifteen menageries. That is if there are not more on the road behind us, or coming from Altara. If she does come after us or send Darkfriends, either one, we are forewarned, and we have days to find a boat that can carry us downriver.” She paused a moment, thinking. “Do you have anything to dye your hair in that bag of herbs? I’ll wager anything that you had your hair braided in Tel’aran’rhiod. Mine is always its real color, there. If yours is loose, as it is now, and another color, it will make us that much harder to find.”

  “Whitecloaks everywhere,” Nynaeve sighed. “Galad. The Prophet. No boats. It is as if everything is conspiring to hold us here for Moghedien. I am so tired, Elayne. Tired of being afraid of who might be around the next corner. Tired of being afraid of Moghedien. I cannot seem to think of what to do next. My hair? Nothing that would make it any color I’d have.”

  “You need to sleep,” Elayne said firmly. “Without the ring. Give it to me.” The other woman hesitated, but Elayne merely waited with her hand outstretched until Nynaeve fished the flecked stone ring from the cord around her neck. Stuffing it into her pouch, Elayne went on. “Now you lie down here, and I will watch Birgitte.”

  Nynaeve stared at the woman stretched out on the other bed for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t sleep. I . . . need to be alone. To walk.” Getting to her feet as stiffly as if she really had been beaten, she took her dark cloak from its peg and swung it over her shift. At the door she paused. “If she wants to kill me,” she said bleakly, “I do not know that I could make myself stop her.” She went into the night barefoot and sad-faced.

  Elayne hesitated, unsure which woman needed her more, before settling back where she sat. Nothing she said could make things better for Nynaeve, but she had faith in the woman’s resilience. Time alone to work it all over in her mind, and she would see that blame lay at Moghedien’s door, not hers. She had to.

  CHAPTER

  36

  A New Name

  For a long time Elayne sat there, watching Birgitte sleep. It did seem to be sleep. Once she stirred, muttering in a desperate voice, “Wait for me, Gaidal. Wait. I’m coming, Gaidal. Wait for . . .” Words trailed off into slow breath again. Was it stronger? The woman still looked deathly ill. Better than she had, but pale and drawn.

  After perhaps an hour, Nynaeve returned, her feet dirty. Fresh tears shone on her cheeks. “I could not stay away,” she said, hanging her cloak back on its peg. “You sleep. I will watch her. I have to watch her.”

  Elayne rose slowly, smoothing her skirts. Perhaps watching over Birgitte for a time would help Nynaeve work matters out. “I don’t feel like sleeping yet, either.” She was exhausted, but not sleepy any longer. “I think I will stroll outside myself.” Nynaeve
only nodded as she took Elayne’s place on the bed, her dusty feet dangling over the side, her eyes fastened to Birgitte.

  To Elayne’s surprise, Thom and Juilin were not asleep either. They had built a small fire beside the wagon and sat on either side of it, cross-legged on the ground, smoking their long-stemmed pipes. Thom had tucked his shirt in, and Juilin had donned his coat, though no shirt, and turned the cuffs back. She took a look around before joining them. No one stirred in the camp, dark except for the light of this one fire and the glow of the lamps from their wagon’s windows.

  Neither man said anything while she settled her skirts; then Juilin looked at Thom, who nodded, and the thief-catcher took something from the ground and held it out to her. “I found it where she was lying,” the dark man said. “As if it had dropped from her hand.”

  Elayne took the silver arrow slowly. Even the fletching feathers appeared to be silver.

  “Distinctive,” Thom said conversationally around his pipe. “And added to the braid . . . Every story mentions the braid for some reason. Though I’ve found some I think might be her under other names, without it. And some under other names with.”

  “I do not care about stories,” Juilin put in. He sounded no more agitated than Thom. But then, it took a great deal to agitate either one of them. “Is it her? Bad enough if it isn’t, a woman appearing naked out of nothing like that, but . . . What have you gotten us into, you and N . . . Nana?” He was troubled; Juilin did not make mistakes, and his tongue never slipped. Thom merely bubbled at his pipe, waiting.

  Elayne turned the arrow in her hands, pretending to study it. “She is a friend,” she said finally. Until—unless—Birgitte released her, her promise held. “She is not Aes Sedai, but she has been helping us.” They looked at her, waiting for her to say more. “Why didn’t you give this to Nynaeve?”

  One of those glances passed between them—men seemed to carry on entire conversations through glances, around women at least—saying as clearly as spoken words what they thought of her keeping secrets. Especially when they all but knew for certain already. But she had given her word.

  “She seemed upset,” Juilin said, sucking at his pipe judiciously, and Thom took his from between his teeth and blew out his white mustaches.

  “Upset? The woman came out in her shift, looking lost, and when I asked if I could help her, she didn’t snap my head off. She cried on my shoulder!” He plucked at his linen shirt, muttering something about dampness. “Elayne, she apologized for every cross word she has ever said to me, which is very nearly every other word out of her mouth. Said she ought to be switched, or maybe that she had been; she was incoherent half the time. She said she was a coward, and a stubborn fool. I don’t know what is the matter with her, but she isn’t herself by a mile.”

  “I knew a woman who behaved like this, once,” Juilin said, peering into the fire. “She woke to find a burglar in her bedchamber and stabbed the man through the heart. Only, when she lit a lamp, it was her husband. His boat had come back to the docks early. She walked around like Nynaeve for half a month.” His mouth tightened. “Then she hanged herself.”

  “I hate to lay this burden on you, child,” Thom added gently, “but if she can be helped, you are the only one of us who can do it. I know how to take a man out of his miseries. Give him a swift kick, or else get him drunk and find him a pr—” He harrumphed loudly, trying to make it seem a cough, and knuckled his mustaches. The one bad thing about him seeing her as a daughter was that now sometimes he seemed to think she was perhaps twelve. “Anyway, the point is that I do not know how to do this. And while Juilin might be willing to dandle her on his knee, I doubt she’d thank him for it.”

  “I would sooner dandle a fangfish,” the thief-catcher muttered, but not as roughly as he would have yesterday. He was as concerned as Thom, though less willing to admit it.

  “I will do what I can,” she assured them, turning the arrow again. They were good men, and she did not like lying to them, or hiding things from them. Not unless it was absolutely necessary, anyway. Nynaeve claimed that you had to manage men for their own good, but there was such a thing as taking it too far. It was not right to lead a man into dangers he knew nothing of.

  So she told them. About Tel’aran’rhiod and the Forsaken being loose, about Moghedien. Not quite everything, of course. Some events in Tanchico had been too shaming for her to want to think of them. Her promise held her concerning Birgitte’s identity, and there was certainly no need to go into detail about what Moghedien had done to Nynaeve. It made explaining this night’s happenings a little difficult, yet she managed. She did tell them everything she thought they should know, enough to make them aware for the first time what they were really up against. Not just the Black Ajah—that had certainly made them stare cross-eyed when they learned it—but the Forsaken, and one of them very likely hunting her and Nynaeve. And she made it quite plain that they two would be hunting Moghedien as well, and that anyone close to them was in danger of being caught between hunter and prey either way.

  “Now that you know,” she finished, “the choice to stay or go is yours.” She left it at that, and was careful not to look at Thom. She hoped almost desperately that he would stay, but she would not let him think that she was asking, not by so much as a glance.

  “I haven’t taught you half what you need to know if you’re to be as good a queen as your mother,” he said, trying to sound gruff and spoiling it by brushing a strand of black-dyed hair from her cheek with a gnarled finger. “You’ll not rid yourself of me this easily, child. I mean to see you mistress of Daes Dae’mar if I must drone in your ear until you go deaf. I haven’t even taught you to handle a knife. I tried to teach your mother, but she always said she could tell a man to use a knife if one needed using. Fool way to look at it.”

  She leaned forward and kissed his leathery cheek, and he blinked, bushy eyebrows shooting up, then smiled and stuck his pipe back into his mouth.

  “You can kiss me, too,” Juilin said dryly. “Rand al’Thor will have my guts for fish bait if I don’t hand you back to him in the same health he last saw you.”

  Elayne lifted her chin. “I will not have you stay for Rand al’Thor, Juilin.” Hand her back? Indeed! “You will stay only if you want to. And I do not release you—or you, Thom!”—he had grinned at the thief-catcher’s comment—“from your promise to do as you are told.” Thom’s startled look was quite satisfying. She turned back to Juilin. “You will follow me, and Nynaeve of course, knowing full well the enemies we face, or you may pack your belongings and ride Skulker where you wish. I will give him to you.”

  Juilin sat up straight as a post, his dark face going darker. “I have never abandoned a woman in danger in my life.” He pointed his pipestem at her like a weapon. “You send me away, and I will be on your heels like a soarer on a stern-chase.”

  Not exactly what she wanted, but it would do. “Very well, then.” Rising, she held herself erect, the silver arrow at her side, and kept her slightly frosty manner. She thought they had finally realized who was in charge. “Morning is not far off.” Had Rand actually had the nerve to tell Juilin to “hand her back”? Thom would just have to suffer along with the other man for a time, and it served him right for that grin. “You will put out this fire and go to sleep. Now. No excuses, Thom. You’ll be no good at all tomorrow without sleep.”

  Obediently they began scuffing dirt over the flames with their boots, but when she reached the plain wooden steps of the wagon, she heard Thom say, “Sounds like her mother sometimes.”

  “Then I am glad I have never met the woman,” Juilin grumbled in reply. “Flip for first guard?” Thom murmured an assent.

  She almost went back, but found herself smiling instead. Men! It was a fond thought. Her good mood lasted until she was inside.

  Nynaeve sat on the very edge of the bed, holding herself up with both hands, eyes trying to drift shut as she watched Birgitte. Her feet were still dirty.

  Elayne put Birgitt
e’s arrow into one of the cupboards behind some rough sacks of dried peas. Luckily, the other woman never so much as glanced at her. She did not think the sight of the silver arrow was what Nynaeve needed right at that moment. But what was?

  “Nynaeve, it is past time for you to wash your feet and go to sleep.”

  Nynaeve swayed in her direction, blinking sleepily. “Feet? What? I must watch her.”

  It would have to be one step at a time. “Your feet, Nynaeve. They are dirty. Wash them.”

  Frowning, Nynaeve peered down at her dusty feet, then nodded. She spilled water tipping the big white pitcher over the washbasin, and sloshed more out before she was washed and ready to towel dry, but even then she resumed her seat. “I must watch. In case . . . In case . . . She cried out once. For Gaidal.”

  Elayne pressed her back on the mattress. “You need sleep, Nynaeve. You can’t keep your eyes open.”

  “I can,” Nynaeve muttered sullenly, trying to sit up against Elayne’s pressure on her shoulders. “I must watch her, Elayne. I must.”

  Nynaeve made the two men outside look sensible and biddable. Even if Elayne had had a mind to, there was no way to get her drunk and find her a—a pretty young man, she supposed it would have to be. That left a swift kick. Sympathy and common sense had surely made no impression. “I have had enough of this sulking and self-pity, Nynaeve,” she said firmly. “You are going to sleep now, and in the morning you are not going to say one word about what a miserable wretch you are. If you cannot behave like the clearheaded woman you are, I will ask Cerandin to give you two black eyes for the one I took away. You did not even thank me for that. Now go to sleep!”

  Nynaeve’s eyes widened indignantly—at least she did not look on the point of tears—but Elayne slid them shut with her fingers. They closed easily, and despite softly murmured protests, the deep slow breath of sleep followed quickly.

  Elayne patted Nynaeve’s shoulder before straightening. She hoped it was a peaceful sleep, with dreams of Lan, but any sort of sleep was better for her now than none. Fighting a yawn, she bent to check Birgitte. She could not tell whether the woman’s color or breathing was any better. There was nothing to do but wait and hope.