Winter's Heart (8 page)

Time. She did not know time, yet Ages passed. There was a sound within her, a sound that
was
her.
Thu-thud.
The same sound, the same rhythm as the other.
Thu-thud.
And from another place, nearer.
Thu-thud.
Another.
Thu-thud.
The same sound, the same beat, as her own. Not another. They were the same; they were one.
Thu-thud.

Forever went by to that pulse, all the time that had ever been. She touched the other that was herself. She could feel.
Thu-thud.
She moved, she and the other that was herself, writhing against each other, limbs entangling, rolling away but always coming back to each other.
Thu-thud.
There was light sometimes, in the darkness; dim beyond seeing, but bright to one who had never known anything but darkness.
Thu-thud.
She opened her eyes, stared into the eyes of the other that was herself, and closed hers again, content.
Thu-thud.

Change, sudden, shocking to one who had never known any change. Pressure.
Thu-thud-thu-thud.
That comforting beat was faster. Convulsive pressure. Again. Again. Getting stronger.
Thu-thud-thu-thud! Thu-thud-thu-thud!

Suddenly, the other that was herself—was gone. She was alone. She did not know fear, but she was afraid, and alone.
Thu-thud-thu-thud!
Pressure! Greater than anything before! Squeezing her, crushing her. If she had known how to scream, if she had known what a scream was, she would have shrieked.

And then light, blinding, full of swirling patterns. She had weight; she had never felt weight before. A cutting pain at her middle. Something tickled her foot. Something tickled her back. At first she did not realize
that wailing sound was coming from her. She kicked feebly, waved limbs that did not know how to move. She was lifted, laid on something soft but firmer than anything she had felt before, except for recollections of the other that was herself, the other that was gone.
Thu-thud. Thu-thud.
The sound. The same sound, the same beat. Loneliness reigned, unrecognized, but there was contentment, too.

Memory began to return, slowly. She lifted her head from a breast and looked up into Amys’ face. Yes, Amys. Sweat-slick and weary-eyed, but smiling. And she was Elayne; yes, Elayne Trakand. But there was something more to her, now. Not like the Warder bond, but like it in a way. Fainter, but more magnificent. Slowly, on a neck that wobbled uncertainly, she turned her head to look at the other that was herself, lying on Amys’ other breast. To look at Aviendha, her hair matted, her face and body shining with sweat. Smiling with joy. Laughing, weeping, they clutched each other and hung on as if they never intended to let go.

“This is my daughter Aviendha,” Amys said, “and this is my daughter Elayne, born on the same day, within the same hour. May they always guard one another, support one another, love one another.” She laughed softly, tiredly, fondly. “And now will someone bring us garments before my new daughters and I all freeze to death?”

Elayne did not care at that moment if she did freeze to death. She clung to Aviendha in laughter and tears. She had found her sister. Light, she had found her sister!

Toveine Gazal woke to the sounds of quiet bustle, other women moving about, some talking softly. Lying on her hard narrow cot, she sighed with regret. Her hands around Elaida’s throat had been just a pleasant dream. This tiny canvas-walled room was reality. She had slept poorly, and she felt thinned, drained. She had overslept, too; there would be no time for breakfast. Reluctantly she tossed off her blankets. The building had been a small warehouse of some sort, with thick walls and heavy rafters low overhead, but there was no heat. Her breath misted, and the crisp morning air pricked through her shift before her feet reached the rough floorboards. Even if she could have considered lying abed in this place, she had her orders. Logain’s filthy bond made disobedience impossible, no matter how often she wished it.

She always tried to think of him as simply Ablar, or at worst Master Ablar, but it was always just Logain that came into her mind. The name he
had made infamous. Logain, the false Dragon who had shattered the armies of his native Ghealdan. Logain, who had carved a path through the few Altarans and Murandians with nerve enough to try stopping him until he threatened Lugard itself. Logain, who had been gentled and somehow could channel again, who had dared to fix his cursed weave of
saidin
on Toveine Gazal. A pity for him he had not commanded her to stop thinking! She could
feel
the man, in the back of her head. He was always there.

For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut. Light! Mistress Doweel’s farm had seemed the Pit of Doom, years of exile and penance with no way out except the unthinkable, to become a hunted renegade. Barely half a week since her capture, she knew better.
This
was the Pit of Doom. And there was no escape. Angrily, she shook her head, and scrubbed glistening dampness from her cheeks with her fingers. No! She would escape, somehow, if only for long enough to put her real hands on Elaida’s throat. Somehow.

Aside from the cot, there were only three pieces of furniture, yet they left little space for her to move. She cracked the ice in the yellow-striped pitcher on the washstand with her belt knife, filled the chipped white basin, and channeled to heat the water till tendrils of steam rose. It was
allowed
to channel for that. That and no more. By rote she washed and scrubbed her teeth with salt and soda, then took a fresh shift and stockings from the small wooden chest at the foot of the cot. Her ring she left in the chest, tucked under everything else in a small velvet pouch. Another order. All of her things were here, except for her lapdesk. Luckily, that had been lost when she was taken. Her dresses hung on a cloakstand, the last of the room’s furnishings. Choosing one without really looking, she put it on mechanically and used comb and brush on her hair.

The ivory-backed brush slowed as she really saw herself in the washstand’s cheap, bubbled mirror. Breathing raggedly, she set the brush down beside the matching comb. The dress she had chosen was thick, finely woven wool of an unadorned red so dark it seemed nearly black. Black, like an Asha’man’s coat. Her distorted image stared back at her, lips writhing. Changing would be a sort of surrender. Determinedly she snatched her marten-lined gray cloak from the stand.

When she pushed aside the canvas doorflap, twenty or so sisters already occupied the long central hallway lined with canvas rooms. Here and there a few were speaking in murmurs, but the rest avoided one another’s eyes, even when they belonged to the same Ajah. Fear had its presence, but it was shame that coated most faces. Akoure, a stout Gray, was staring at
the hand where she normally wore her ring. Desandre, a willowy Yellow, was hiding her right hand in her armpit.

The soft conversations trailed off when Toveine appeared. Several women glared at her openly. Including Jenare and Lemai, from her own Ajah! Desandre came to herself enough to turn her back stiffly. In the space of two days, fifty-one Aes Sedai had fallen captive to the black-coated monsters, and fifty of them blamed Toveine Gazal as though Elaida a’Roihan had no hand in the disaster at all. Except for Logain’s intervention, they would have had their revenge their first night here. She did not love him for putting a stop to it and making Carniele Heal the welts left by belts, the bruises left by fists and feet. She would rather they had beaten her to death than she owe him.

Putting her cloak on her shoulders, she walked proudly down the corridor, out into pale morning sunshine that suited her washed-out mood. Behind her, someone shouted acid words before the closing door cut them off. Her hands trembled as she pulled up her hood, nestling the dark fur around her face. No one got away with pushing down Toveine Gazal. Even Mistress Doweel, who had crushed her into a semblance of submission over the years, learned that when her exile ended. She would show them. She would show them all!

The dormitory she shared with the others lay on the very edge of a large village, if a very strange one. A village of Asha’man. Elsewhere, so she had been told, ground was marked off for structures they claimed would dwarf the White Tower, but this was where most of them lived now. Five large, blocky stone barracks, spaced along streets as wide as anything in Tar Valon, could each hold a hundred Asha’man Soldiers. They were not full yet, the Light be thanked, but snow-covered scaffolding awaited the arrival of workmen around the thick walls of two more that were almost ready for roofing in thatch. Nearly a dozen smaller stone structures were made to hold ten Dedicated each, and another of those was under construction, too. Scattered around them stood nearly two hundred houses that might have been seen in any village, where some of the married men lived, and the families of others not far enough along in training.

Men who could channel did not frighten her. Once she had given in to panic for a moment, true, but that was beside the point. Five hundred men who could channel, however, were a scrap of bone wedged between two of her teeth where she could not free it. Five
hundred
! And they could Travel, some of them. A sharp scrap of bone. More, she had tramped the mile or more through the woods to the wall.
That
frightened her, what it signified.

Nowhere was the wall finished, nowhere more than twelve or fifteen feet high, none of the towers or bastions more than begun. In places, she could have clambered over the piles of black stone, except for her orders not to attempt escape. The thing ran for
eight
miles, though, and she believed Logain when he said it was begun less than three months ago. The man held her too tightly to bother with lying. He called the wall a waste of time and effort, and perhaps it was, but it made her teeth chatter. Just three months. Made using the Power. The male half of the Power. When she thought of that black wall, she saw an implacable force that could not be stopped, an avalanche of black stone sliding down to bury the White Tower. Impossible, of course. Impossible, but when she did not dream of strangling Elaida, she dreamed of that.

There had been snowfall in the night, and a heavy blanket of white covered every roof, but she did not have to pick her way along the broad streets. The hard-packed dirt had been cleared, a chore of men in training before the sun came up. They used the Power for everything from filling woodboxes to cleaning their clothes! Black-clad men hurried here and there in the streets, and more were gathering in rows in front of their barracks with others calling roll in loud voices. Women bundled up against the cold walked past them, placidly carrying baskets to the quartermaster’s storehouse or water buckets to the nearest fountain, though how any woman could remain, knowing what her husband was, was beyond Toveine’s comprehension. Even more bizarre, children ran up and down the street, around the squares of men who could channel, shouting and laughing, rolling hoops, tossing painted balls, playing with dolls or dogs. A drop of normality that heightened the evil stench of the rest.

Ahead of her, a mounted party was approaching up the street at a walk. In the short time she had been here—the endless time—she had not seen anyone ride in the village except workmen on carts or wagons. Nor any visitors, which some of these plainly must be. Five men in black were escorting a dozen in the red coats and cloaks of the Queen’s Guards, with two yellow-haired women at the front, one in a red-and-white cloak lined with black fur and the other . . . Toveine’s eyebrows climbed. The other wore green Kandori trousers and a coat made up as if it belonged to the Captain-General of the Guard. Her red cloak even had golden knots of rank on the shoulder! Maybe she was mistaken about the men. That one would find short shift when she encountered real Guardsmen. In any case, it was strangely early for visitors.

Each time the odd party reached one of the formations, the man in
front shouted, “Asha’man, attend front!” and boot heels stamped on the hardened earth as the others stiffened like pillars of stone.

Pulling her hood forward better to hide her face, Toveine moved to the side of the wide street, close beside the corner of one of the smaller stone barracks. A fork-bearded old man coming out, a silver sword pin on his high collar, glanced at her curiously without slowing his stride.

What she had done struck her like a bucket of cold water, and she nearly wept. None of those strangers would spot an Aes Sedai face, now, if they could recognize one. If either of those women could channel, unlikely though that was, she would not pass close enough to tell that Toveine could, too. She fretted and fumed over how to disobey Logain, and then did everything necessary to carry out his instructions without even thinking about it!

As an act of defiance, she stopped where she was, turning to watch the visitors. Automatically, her hands checked her hood before she could snatch them to her sides. It was pitiful, and ridiculous. She knew the Asha’man guiding the party, by sight at least, a bulky man in his middle years with oily black hair, an oily smile and eyes like augurs. None of the others, though. What could she hope to gain by this? How could she entrust a message to any of them? Even if the escort vanished, how could she get close enough to pass a message when she was forbidden to let any outsider discover the presence of Aes Sedai?

The augur-eyed fellow looked bored with his duty this morning, hardly bothering to hide his yawns behind a gloved hand. “. . . when we do finish here,” he was saying as he rode past Toveine, “I will show you the Craft Town. Quite a bit bigger than this. We do have every kind of craftsfolk, from masons and carpenters to metalsmiths and tailors. We can make everything we need, Lady Elayne.”

“Except turnips,” one of the women said in a high voice, and the other laughed.

Toveine’s head jerked. She watched the riders move on down the street accompanied by shouted orders and stamping boots. Lady Elayne? Elayne Trakand? The younger of the pair might match the description she had been given. Elaida did not reveal why she was so desperate to lay her hands on one runaway Accepted, even one who might become a queen, but she never let a sister leave the Tower without orders on what to do if she encountered the girl.
Be very careful, Elayne Trakand,
Toveine thought.
I would not like Elaida to have the satisfaction of laying hands on you.