The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5)

The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5) Page 36

Already the steam from the water was beginning to fade; she embraced saidar for a moment and channeled Fire to heat it more. Amys or Bair would probably have washed in it cold, though in fact they always took sweat baths. So I'm not as tough as they are. I did not grow up in the Waste. I don't have to freeze to death and wash in cold water if I don't want to. She still felt guilty as she lathered a cloth with a piece of lavenderscented soap bought from Hadnan Kadere. The Wise Ones had never asked her to do differently, but it still felt like cheating.

Letting go of the True Source made her sigh with remorse. Even trembling with cold, she laughed softly at her own foolishness. The wonder of being filled with the Power, the wondrous rush of life and awareness, was its own danger. The more you drew on saidar, the more you wanted to draw, and without selfdiscipline you eventually drew more than you could handle and either died or stilled yourself. And that was nothing to laugh at.

That's one of your biggest faults, she lectured herself firmly. You always want to do more than you're supposed to. You ought to wash in cold water; that would teach you selfdiscipline. Only there was so much to learn, and it sometimes seemed a lifetime would be too short to learn it. Her teachers were always so cautious, whether Wise Ones or Aes Sedai in the Tower; it was hard to hold back when she knew that in so many ways she already outstripped them. I can do more than they realize.

A blast of freezing air hit her, swirling smoke from the fire about the tent, and a woman's voice said, “If it pleases you —”

Egwene jumped, yelping shrilly before managing to get out, “Shut that!” She hugged herself to stop from capering. “Get in or get out, but shut it!” All that effort to be warm, and now she was icy goose bumps from head to toe!

The whiterobed woman shuffled into the tent on her knees and let the tent flap drop. She kept her eyes downcast, her hands folded meekly; she would have done the same if Egwene had hit her instead of just shouting. “If it pleases you,” she said softly, “the Wise One Amys sent me to bring you to the sweat tent.”

Wishing she could stand on top of the fire, Egwene groaned. The Light burn Bair and her stubbornness! If not for the whitehaired old Wise One, they could be in rooms in the city instead of tents on the edge of it. I could have a room with a proper fireplace. And a door. She was willing to bet that Rand did not have to put up with people wandering in on him whenever they wanted. Rand bloody Dragon al'Thor snaps his fingers, and the Maidens jump like serving girls. I'll wager they've found him a real bed, instead of a pallet on the ground. She was sure that he got a hot bath every night. The Maidens probably haul buckets of hot water up to his rooms. I'll bet they even found him a proper copper bathtub.

Amys, and even Melaine, had been amenable to Egwene's suggestion, but Bair had put her foot down, and they acquiesced like gai'shain. Egwene supposed that with Rand bringing so much change, Bair wanted to hold on to as much of the old ways as she could, but she wished the woman could have chosen something else to be intractable over.

There was no thought of refusing. She had promised the Wise Ones to forget that she was Aes Sedai — the easy part, since she was not — and do exactly as she was told. That was the hard part; she had been away from the Tower long enough to become her own mistress again. But Amys had told her flatly that dreamwalking was dangerous even after you knew what you were about and far more so until then. If she would not obey in the waking world, they could not trust her to obey in the dream, and they would not take the responsibility. So she did chores right along with Aviendha, accepted chastisement with as good a grace as she could muster, and hopped whenever Amys or Melaine or Bair said frog. In a manner of speaking. None of them had ever seen a frog. Not that they'll want anything but for me to hand them their tea. No, it would be Aviendha's turn to do that tonight.

For a moment she considered donning stockings, but finally just bent to slip on her shoes. Sturdy shoes, suitable for the Waste; she rather regretted the silk slippers she had worn in Tear. “What is your name?” she asked, trying to be companionable.

“Cowinde” was the docile reply.Egwene sighed. She kept trying to be friends with the gai'shain, but they never responded. Servants were one thing she had not had a chance to get used to, though of course gai'shain were not precisely servants. “You were a Maiden?”A quick, fierce flash of deep blue eyes told her that her guess was correct, but just as quickly they lowered again. “I am gai'shain. Before and after are not now, and only now exists.”

“What is your sept and clan?” Usually there was no need to ask, not even with gai'shain.

“I serve the Wise One Melaine of the Jhirad sept, of the Goshien Aiel.”

Trying to choose between two cloaks, a stout brown woolen and a blue quilted silk she had purchased from Kadere — the merchant had sold everything in his wagons to make room for Moiraine's freight, and at very good prices — Egwene paused to frown at the woman. That was no proper response. She had heard that a form of the bleakness had taken some gai'shain; when their year and a day was done, they simply refused to put off the robe. “When is your time up?” she asked.

Cowinde crouched lower, almost huddling over her knees. “I am gai'shain.”

“But when will you be able to return to your sept, to your own hold?”

“I am gai'shain,” the woman hoarsely told the rugs in front of her face. “If the answer displeases, punish me, but I can give no other.”

“Don't be silly,” Egwene said sharply. “And straighten up. You aren't a toad.”

The whiterobed woman obeyed immediately and, sat there on her heels, submissively awaiting another command. That brief flare of spirit might as well never have been.

Egwene took a deep breath. The woman had made her own accommodation with the bleakness. A foolish one, but nothing she could say would change it. Anyway, she was supposed to be on her way to the sweat tent, not talking with Cowinde.

Remembering that cold draft, she hesitated. The icy gust had made two large white blossoms, resting in a shallow bowl, curl partway closed. They came from a plant called a segade, a fat, leafless, leathery thing that bristled with spines. She had come on Aviendha looking at them in her hands that morning; the Aiel woman had given a start when she saw her, then pushed them into Egwene's hands, saying she had picked them for her. She supposed there was enough of the Maiden left in Aviendha that she did not want to admit liking flowers. Though come to think of it, she had seen the occasional Maiden wearing a blossom i