The Fires of Heaven (76 page)

Rack her brains as she would, she could not remember the name of the town where the Blue sisters were supposed to be. She swiped savagely at a scatterhead, and it burst in little white feathers that floated to the ground. They probably were not there anymore in any case, if they ever had been. But it was the only clue they had to a safe place short of Tear. If she could only remember it.

The only good thing on the entire journey north was that Elayne had stopped flirting with Thom. There had not been an incident since joining the show. At least, it would have been good if Elayne had not apparently decided to pretend nothing had ever happened. Yesterday Nynaeve had congratulated the girl on coming to her senses, and Elayne had coolly replied,
Are you trying to find out if I will stand in your way with Thom, Nynaeve? He’s rather old for you, and I did think you had planted your affections elsewhere, but you are old enough to make your own decisions. I am fond of Thom, as I think he is of me. I look on him like a second father. If you want to flirt with him, you have my permission. But I really did think you were more constant.

Luca meant to cross the river in the morning, and Samara, the town on the other side, in Ghealdan, was no fit place to be. Luca had spent most of
the day since their arrival over in Samara, securing a place to set up his show. He was only concerned that a number of other menageries had beaten him there, and he was not the only one to have more than animals. That was why he had grown particularly insistent about her letting Thom throw knives at her. She was lucky he did not want it done highwalking with Elayne. The man seemed to think the most important thing in the world was that his show should be bigger and better than any other. For herself, the worrisome thing was that the Prophet was in Samara, his followers crowding the town and spilling out into tents, huts and shanties around it, a city that overwhelmed Samara’s own not inconsiderable size. It had a high stone wall, and most of the buildings were stone as well, many as much as three stories, and there were more roofs of slate or tile than thatch.

This side of the Eldar was no better. They had passed three Whitecloak encampments before reaching their stopping place, hundreds of white tents in neat rows, and there had to be more they had not seen. Whitecloaks on this side of the river, the Prophet and maybe a riot waiting to happen on the other, and she had no idea where to go and no way to get there except in a lumbering wagon that moved no faster than she could walk. She wished she had never let Elayne talk her into abandoning the coach. Not seeing a weed close enough to snap without stepping aside, she broke the dogfennel in half, then again, until the pieces were no longer than her hand, and tossed them to the ground. She wished she could do the same with Luca. And Galad Damodred, for sending them running here. And al’Lan Mandragoran, for not being here. Not that she
needed
him, of course. But his presence would have been . . . a comfort.

The camp was quiet, with evening meals cooking over small fires beside the wagons. Petra was feeding the black-maned lion, thrusting huge pieces of meat through the bars on a stick. The female lions were already hunkered down over theirs companionably, letting out an occasional growl if someone came too close to their cage. Nynaeve stopped near Aludra’s wagon; the Illuminator was working with wooden mortar and pestle on a table let down from the side of her wagon, muttering to herself over whatever she was compounding. Three of the Chavanas smiled at Nynaeve enticingly, motioning her to join them. Not Brugh, who still glowered over his lip, though she had given him a salve to make the swelling go down. Maybe if she hit the rest of them as hard, they would listen to Luca—and more importantly, to her!—and realize that she did not want their smiles. Too bad Master Valan Luca could not follow his own instructions. Latelle turned from the bear cage and gave her a tight smile; more of a smirk, really.
Mainly, though, Nynaeve stared at Cerandin, who was filing the blunt toenails of one of the huge gray
s’redit
with what looked like a tool suitable for metal.

“That one,” Aludra said, “she uses the hands and the feet with remarkable ability, no? Do not glare at me so, Nana,” she added, dusting her hands. “I am not your enemy. Here. You must try these new firesticks.”

Nynaeve took the wooden box from the dark-haired woman gingerly. It was a cube she could have held easily with one hand, but she used both. “I thought you called them strikers.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Firesticks, it says what they are much better than strikers, yes? I have smoothed the little holes that hold the sticks so they can no longer ignite on the wood. A good idea, no? And the heads, they are a new formulation. You will try them and tell me what you think?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you.”

Nynaeve hurried on before the woman could press another box on her. She held the thing as if it might explode, which she was not certain it would not. Aludra had everyone trying out her strikers, or firesticks, or whatever she would decide to call them next. They certainly would light a fire or a lamp. They could also burst into flame if the blue-gray heads rubbed against each other or anything else rough. For herself, she would stick with flint and steel, or a coal kept properly banked in a box of sand. Much safer.

Juilin caught her before she could set foot on the steps of the wagon she shared with Elayne, his gaze going straight to her swollen eye. She glared at him so hard that he stepped back and snatched that ridiculous conical cap from his head. “I’ve been over the river,” he said. “There are a hundred or so Whitecloaks in Samara. Just watching, and being watched as hard themselves by Ghealdanin soldiers. But I recognized one. The young fellow who was sitting across from The Light of Truth in Sienda.”

She smiled at him, and he took another hasty step back, eyeing her warily. Galad in Samara. That was all they needed. “You always bring such wonderful news, Juilin. We should have left you in Tanchico, or better, on the dock in Tear.” That was hardly fair. Better he told her of Galad than that she walked around a corner into the man. “Thank you, Juilin. At least we know to keep an eye out for him, now.” His nod was hardly a proper response to graciously offered thanks, and he hurried away, clapping his hat on, as if he expected her to hit him. Men had no manners.

The interior of the wagon was far cleaner than it had been when Thom and Juilin purchased it. The flaking paint had all been scraped off—the
men had grumbled about doing that—and the cabinets and the tiny table that was fastened to the floor oiled until they shone. The small brick stove with its metal chimney was never used—the nights were warm enough, and if they began cooking in here, Thom and Juilin would never take another turn—but it made a good place to keep their valuables, the purses and the jewelry boxes. The washleather pouch holding the seal—that she had stuffed in as far as it would go and had not touched since.

Elayne, seated on one of the narrow beds, stuffed something under the blankets when Nynaeve climbed inside, but before she could ask what it was, Elayne exclaimed, “Your eye! What happened to you?” They needed to wash her hair in henpepper again; faint hints of gold were showing at the roots of those black tresses. It had to be done every few days.

“Cerandin hit me when I wasn’t looking,” Nynaeve muttered. The remembered taste of boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf made her tongue curl. That was
not
why she had let Elayne go to the last meeting in
Tel’aran’rhiod,
too. She was
not
avoiding Egwene. It was just that she made most of the journeys into the World of Dreams between meetings, and it was only fair to give Elayne her chances to go. That was it.

Carefully she put the box of firesticks into one of the cabinets, next to two more. The one that had actually caught fire was long since discarded.

She did not know why she was hiding the truth. Elayne had obviously not been outside the wagon, or she would know already. She and Juilin were probably the only people in camp who did not know, now that Thom had surely revealed every disgusting detail to Luca.

Taking a deep breath, she sat down on the other bed and made herself meet Elayne’s eyes. Something in the quiet of the other woman said she knew that more was coming.

“I . . . asked Cerandin about
damane
and
sul’dam.
I am certain she knows more than she lets on.” She paused for Elayne to voice doubts that she had asked rather than demanded, to say that the Seanchan woman had already told them all she knew, that she had not had much contact with
damane
or
sul’dam.
But Elayne kept silent, and Nynaeve realized that she was only hoping to postpone the moment with an argument. “She got quite heated about not knowing any more, so I shook her. You’ve really gone too far with her. She waggled her finger under my nose!” Still Elayne only watched her, those cool blue eyes barely blinking. It was all Nynaeve could do not to look away as she went on. “She . . . threw me, somehow, over her shoulder. I got up and slapped her, and she knocked me down
with her fist. That is how I got the eye.” She might as well tell the rest; Elayne would hear soon enough; better it came from her. She would rather have pulled out her tongue. “I wasn’t about to put up with that, certainly. We scuffled a little more.” Not much of a scuffle on her part, for all that she had refused to quit. The bitterest truth was that Cerandin had only stopped flipping her about and tripping her in sneaky ways because it had been like manhandling a child. Nynaeve had had as much chance as that child. If only no one had been watching, so she could have channeled; she had certainly been angry enough. If only no one had been watching, period. She wished Cerandin had pounded her with her fists until she bled. “Then Latelle gave her a stick. You know how that woman wants to get back at me.” There was certainly no need to say that Cerandin had been holding her head down over a wagon tongue at the time. No one had manhandled her like that since she threw a pitcher of water at Neysa Ayellin when she was sixteen. “Anyway, Petra broke it up.” Just in time, too. The huge man had taken the pair of them by the scruff of the neck like kittens. “Cerandin apologized, and that was that.” Petra had made the Seanchan woman apologize, true, but he had made Nynaeve do so as well, refusing to loose that gentle yet iron-hard grip on her neck until she did. She had hit him as hard as she could, right in the stomach, and he had not even blinked. Her hand felt as if it might swell, too. “Nothing much to it, really. I suppose Latelle will try to spread some story of her own making about it. That is the woman I ought to shake. I didn’t hit her half hard enough.”

She felt better for telling the truth, but Elayne had doubt on her face that made her want to change the subject. “What is that you’re hiding?” She reached over and pulled the blanket back, revealing the silvery length of the
a’dam
they had gotten from Cerandin. “Why under the Light do you want to look at that? And if you do, why hide it? It is a filthy thing, and I cannot understand how you can touch it, but if you want to, that is entirely up to you.”

“Don’t sound so prim,” Elayne told her. A slow smile broke across her face, a flush of excitement. “I think I could make one.”

“Make one!” Nynaeve lowered her voice, hoping no one came running to see who was killing whom, but she did not soften it any. “Light, why? Make an open cesspit first. A midden heap. At least there’s some decent use for those.”

“I do not mean to actually make an
a’dam.
” Elayne held herself erect, chin tilted in that cool way of hers. She sounded offended, and icily calm. “But it is a
ter’angreal,
and I have puzzled out how it works. I saw you attend
at least one lecture on linking. The
a’dam
links the two women; that is why the
sul’dam
must be a woman who can channel, too.” She frowned slightly. “It is a strange link, though. Different. Instead of two or more sharing, with one guiding, it is one taking full control, really. I think that is the reason a
damane
cannot do anything the
sul’dam
doesn’t want her to. I don’t really believe there is any need for the leash. The collar and bracelet would work as well without it, and in just the same ways.”

“Work as well,” Nynaeve said dryly. “You’ve studied the matter a great deal for someone who has no intention of making one.” The woman did not even have the grace to blush. “What use would you put it to? I cannot say I would take it amiss if you put one around Elaida’s neck, but that doesn’t make it any less disgus—”

“Don’t you understand?” Elayne broke in, haughtiness all gone in excitement and fervor. She leaned forward to put a hand on Nynaeve’s knee, and her eyes shone, she was so delighted with herself. “It is a
ter’angreal,
Nynaeve. And I think I can make one.” She said each word slowly and deliberately, then laughed and rushed on. “If I can make this one, I can make others. Maybe I can even make
angreal
and
sa’angreal.
No one in the Tower has been able to do that in thousands of years!” Straightening, she shivered, and laid fingers across her mouth. “I never really thought of
making
anything myself before. Not anything
useful.
I remember seeing a craftsman once, a man who had made some chairs for the palace. They were not gilded, or elaborately carved—they were meant for the servants’ hall—but I could see the pride in his eyes. Pride in what he had made, a thing well crafted. I would love to feel that, I think. Oh, if we only knew a fraction of what the Forsaken do. The knowledge of the Age of Legends inside their heads, and they use it to serve the Shadow. Think what we could do with it. Think what we could
make.
” She took a deep breath, dropping her hands in her lap, her enthusiasm barely diminished. “Well, be that as it may, I’ll wager I could puzzle out how Whitebridge was made, too. Buildings like spun glass, but stronger than steel. And
cuendillar,
and—”

“Slow down,” Nynaeve said. “Whitebridge is five or six hundred miles from here at least, and if you think you’re going to go channeling at the seal, you can think again. Who knows what could happen? It stays in its pouch, in the stove, until we find somewhere safe for it.”