The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time #8)

The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time #8) Page 164

She did not have long to think. Suddenly Kirstian fell to her knees, clutching at Adeleas’ skirts with one hand. “I submit myself,” she said calmly, her tone a wonder coming from that bloodless face. “I was enrolled in the novice book almost three hundred years ago, and ran away less than a year later. I submit myself, and... and beg mercy.”

It was whitehaired Adeleas’ turn to go wideeyed. Kirstian was claiming to have run away from the White Tower when she herself was an infant, if not before she was born! Most of the sisters still did not really believe the ages claimed by the Kin. Indeed, Kirstian appeared just into her middle years.

Even so, Adeleas recovered herself quickly. However old the other woman was, Adeleas had been Aes Sedai about as long as anyone living. She carried an aura of age, and authority. “If that is so, child,” her voice did falter just a bit at that, “I fear we must put you in white, too. You will still be punished, but surrendering as you have will gain you some mitigation.”

“That is why I did it.” Kirstian’s steady tone was spoiled somewhat by a hard swallow. She was almost as strong as Zarya — none of the Knitting Circle were weak — and she would be held very closely. “I knew you would find me out sooner or later.”

Adeleas nodded as though that were clearly obvious, though how the woman would have been found out, Elayne could not guess. She very much doubted that Kirstian Chalwin was the name the woman had been born with. Most of the Kin believed in Aes Sedai omniscience, though. They had, at least.

“Rubbish!” Sarainya Vostovan’s husky voice cut through the murmured babble of the Kin. Neither strong enough to become Aes Sedai nor nearly old enough to stand very high among the Kin, she still stepped from the pack defiantly. “Why should we give them up to the White Tower? We have helped women run away, and rightly so! It is not part of the rules to give them back!”

“Control yourself!” Reanne said sharply. “Alise, take Sarainya in hand, please. It seems she forgets too many of the rules she claims to know.”

Alise looked at Reanne, her face still unreadable. Alise, who enforced the Kin’s rules with a firm hand. “It is not part of our rules to hand runaways back, Reanne,” she said.

Reanne jerked as though struck. “And how do you suggest keeping them?” she demanded finally. “We have always held runaways apart until we were sure they were no longer hunted, and if they were found before, we let the sisters take them. That is the rule, Alise. What other rule do you propose violating? Do you suggest that we actually set ourselves against Aes Sedai?” Ridicule of such a notion larded her voice, yet Alise stood looking at her, silent.

“Yes!” a voice shouted from the crowd of Kinswomen. “We are many, and they are few!” Adeleas stared at the crowd in disbelief. Elayne embraced saidar, though she knew the voice was right — the Kin were too many. She felt Aviendha embracing the Power, and Birgitte setting herself.

Giving herself a shake as if coming to, Alise did something far more practical, certainly far more effective. “Sarainya,” she said loudly, “you will report to me when we stop tonight, with a switch you cut yourself before we leave this morning. You, too, Asra; I recognize your voice!” And then, just as loudly, she said to Reanne, “I will report myself for your judgment when we stop tonight. I don’t see anyone getting ready!”

The Kinswomen broke up quickly then, heading off to gather their things, yet Elayne saw some of them talking quietly as they went. When they rode over the bridge across the frozen stream that wound down beside the village, with Nynaeve incredulous over what she had missed and glaring about for someone to call down, Sarainya and Asra carried switches — as did Alise — and Zarya and Kirstian wore hastily found white dresses beneath their dark cloaks. The Windfinders pointed at them and laughed uproariously. But many of the Kinswomen still talked in clusters, falling silent whenever a sister or one of the Knitting Circle looked at them. And there was a darkness to their eyes when they looked at Aes Sedai.

Eight more days of floundering through the snow when it was not falling, and grinding her teeth in an inn when it was. Eight more days of brooding by the Kin, of staring bleakly at the sisters, days of strutting by the Windfinders around Kin and Aes Sedai alike. On the morning of the ninth day, Elayne began to wish everyone had simply gone for everyone else’s throat.

She was just wondering whether they could cover the last ten miles to Caemlyn without a murder, when Kirstian rapped at her door and darted in without waiting for an answer. The woman’s plain woolen dress was not the shade of white proper for a novice, and she had regained much of her dignity somehow, as if knowing her future had smoothed her present, but now she made a hasty curtsy, almost tripping over her cloak, and her nearly black eyes were anxious. “Nynaeve Sedai, Elayne Sedai, Lord Lan says you are to come at once,” she said breathlessly. “He told me to speak to no one, and you aren’t to, either.”

Elayne and Nynaeve exchanged looks with Aviendha and Birgitte. Nynaeve growled something under her breath about the man not knowing private from public, but it was clear before she blushed that she did not believe it. Elayne felt Birgitte focus, the drawn arrow hunting a target.

Kirstian did not know what Lan wanted, only where she was to lead them. The small hut outside of Cullen’s Crossing where Adeleas had taken Ispan the night before. Lan stood outside, his eyes as cold as the air, and would not let Kirstian enter. When Elayne went inside, she saw why.

Adeleas lay on her side beside an overturned stool, a cup on the rough wooden floor not far from one outstretched hand. Her eyes stared, and a pool of congealed blood spread out from the deep slash across her throat. Ispan lay on a small cot, staring at the ceiling. Lips drawn back in a rictus bared her teeth, and her bulging eyes seemed full of horror. As well they might have, since a wristthick wooden stake stood out from between her breasts. The hammer that had plainly been used to drive it in lay beside the cot, on the edge of a dark stain that ran back under the cot.

Elayne forced herself to stop thinking about emptying her stomach on the spot. “Light,” she breathed. “Light! Who could do this? How could anyone do this?” Aviendha shook her head wonderingly, and Lan did not even bother with that. He just watched nine directions at once, as though he expected whoever, or whatever, had committed this murder to come through one of the two tiny windows if not through the walls. Birgitte drew her belt knife, and by her face, she dearly wished she had her bow. That drawn arrow was stronger than ev