Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6)

Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6) Page 111

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. . . .

Suddenly she remembered Theodrin. If it took two days to get ready, Theodrin would want her two sessions, sure as a duck had feathers. And she expected Nynaeve not to sleep tonight. There was no possible way she could know, but. . . .

Sighing heavily, she climbed out of bed. There was not much room to pace, but she used it all, getting angrier by the minute. All she wanted was to get away. She had said she was not very good at surrendering, but maybe she was getting good at running away. It would be so wonderful to channel whenever she wanted. She never even noticed the tears that began leaking down her cheeks.

CHAPTER

14

Dreams and Nightmares

At the sight of Nynaeve and Elayne, Egwene did not step out of the dream; she leaped out. Not back to her sleeping body in Cairhien—the night was too young yet—but to a vast blackness filled with twinkling pinpricks of light, more by far than the number of stars in the clearest sky, each sharp and distinct as far as the eye could see. If she had had eyes here, that was. Formless, she floated in the infinity between Tel’aran’rhiod and the waking world, the narrow gap between dream and reality.

Had she possessed a heart here, it would have been pounding like a mad drum. She did not think they had seen her, but what under the Light were they doing there, in a part of the Tower that held nothing of interest? On these nightly excursions she carefully avoided the Amyrlin’s study, the novices’ quarters, even the Accepted’s quarters. It always seemed that if Nynaeve or Elayne or both were not in one of those places, someone else was. She could have approached Nynaeve or Elayne, of course—they certainly knew how to keep secrets—but something told her not to; she had dreamed of doing it, and it always seemed a nightmare. Not the sort that woke you in a cold sweat, but the kind that made you twist fretfully. Those other women. Did the Aes Sedai in Salidar know strangers wandered the Tower in the World of Dreams? Strange to her, at least. If they did not, she had no way to warn them. No way she could take.