“I sleep well,” Egwene lied, managing a smile. Aviendha and Elayne had their own worries without letting them know about her headaches. “I can’t think of anything more,” she said, rising. “Can you? Then we’re done,” she went on when the other woman shook her head. “Tell Elayne to take care of herself. You take care of her. And her babes.”
“I will,” Aviendha said, now in the blue silk. “But you must take care of yourself. I think you use yourself too hard. Sleep well and wake,” she said gently, the Aiel way of saying good night, and she was gone.
Egwene frowned at the spot where her friend had vanished. She was not using herself too hard. Only as hard as she needed to. She slipped back to her body and discovered that it was sound asleep.
That did not mean thatshe was asleep, or not exactly. Her bodyslumbered, breathing slow and deep, but she let herself slip only far enough under for dreams to come. She could just have waited until she woke and recalled the dreams then as she wrote them into the little leather-bound book that she kept at the bottom of one her clothing chests, tucked under thin linen shifts that would not be taken out till well into spring. But observing the dreams as they came saved time. She thought it might help her decipher what they meant. At least, those that were more than ordinary night fancies.
There were plenty of those, often featuring Gawyn, a tall beau?tiful man who took her in his arms and danced with her and made love with her. Once, even in her dreams, she had shied away from thoughts of making love with him. She had blushed to think about it awake. That seemed so foolish, now, so childish. Shewould bond him as her Warder one day, somehow, and she would marry him, and make love to him until he cried for mercy. Even in her sleep, she giggled at that. Other dreams were not so pleasant. Wading through waist-deep snow with trees thick all around her, knowing she had to reach the edge of the forest. But even when she glimpsed the end of the trees ahead, one blink and it receded into the distance, leaving her to flounder on. Or she was pushing a great millstone up a steep hill, but every time she was almost to the top, she slipped and fell and watched the huge stone roll back to the bottom, so she had to trudge back down and begin again, only every time, the hill was higher than before. She knew enough of dreams to know where those came from even if they had no special meaning. None beyond the fact that she was tired and had a seem?ingly endless task in front of her, anyway. There was no help for it, though. She felt her body jerking at the laborious dreams, and tried to soothe her muscles, make them relax. This sort of half-sleep was little better than none, and less if she spent the whole night thrashing around on her cot. Her efforts worked, a little. At least she only twitched through a dream of being forced to pull a cart jammed full of Aes Sedai down a muddy road.
Other dreams came, betwixt and between.
Mat stood on a village green, playing at bowls. The thatch-roofed houses were vague, in the manner of dreams - sometimes the roofs were slate; sometimes the houses seemed of stone, sometimes wood - but he was sharp and clear, dressed in a fine green coat and that wide-brimmed black hat, just as he had been the day he rode into Salidar. There was not another human being in sight. Rubbing the ball between his hands, he took a short run and casu?ally rolled it across the smooth grass. All nine pins fell, scattered as if they had been kicked. Mat turned and picked up another ball, and the pins were back upright. No, there was a fresh set of pins. The old still lay where they had fallen. He hurled the ball again, a lazy underhanded bowl. And Egwene wanted to scream. The pins were not turned pieces of wood. They were men, standing there watching the ball roll toward them. None moved until the ball sent them flying. Mat turned to pick up another ball, and there were more new pins, new men, standing in orderly formation among the men lying sprawled on the ground as if dead. No, they were dead. Unconcerned, Mat bowled.
It was a true dream; she knew that long before it faded. A glimpse of a future that might come to pass, a warning of what should be watched for. True dreams were always possibilities, not certainties - she often had to remind herself of that; Dreaming was not Foretelling - but this was a dire possibility. Every one of those human pins had represented thousands of men. Of that, shewas certain. And an Illuminator was part of it. Mat had met an Illumi?nator once, but that was long ago. This was something more recent. The Illuminators were scattered, their guildhouses gone. One was even working her craft with a traveling show that Elayne and Nynaeve had traveled with for a time. Mat might find an Illu?minator anywhere. Still, it was only a possible future. Bleak and bloodstained, but only possible. Yet she had dreamed of it at least twice. Not the same dream, exactly, but always the same meaning. Did that make it more likely to come to pass? She would have to ask the Wise Ones to find out, and she was increasingly reluctant to do that. Every question she asked revealed something to them, and their goals were not hers. To save what they could of the Aiel, they would let theWhiteTowerbe ground to dust. She had more than any one people, any one nation, to think of.
More dreams.
She was struggling up a narrow, rocky path along the face of a towering cliff. Clouds surrounded her, hiding the ground belowand the crest above, yet she knew that both were very far away. She had toplace her feet very carefully. The path was a cracked ledge barely wide enough for her to stand on with one shoulder pressed against the cliff, a ledge littered with stones as large as her fist that could turn under a misplaced step and send her hurtling over the edge. It almost seemed this was like the dreams of pushing millstones and pulling carts, yet she knew it was a true dream.
Abruptly, the ledge dropped away from under her with the crack of crumbling stone, and she caught frantically at the cliff, fingers scrabbling to find a hold. Her fingertips slid into a tiny crevice, and her fall stopped with a jolt that wrenched her arms. Feet dangling into the clouds, she listened to the falling stone crash against the cliff until the sound faded to nothing without the stone ever hitting the ground. Dimly, she could see the broken ledge to her left. Ten feet away, it might as well have been a mile off for all the chance she had of reaching it. In the other direction, the mists hid whatever remained of the path, but she thought it had to be farther away still. There was no strength in her arms. She could not pull herself up, only hang there by her fingertips until she fell. The edge of the crevice seemed as sharp as a knife under her fingers.
Suddenly a woman appeared, clambering down the sheer side of the cliff out of the clouds, making her way as deftly as if she were walking down stairs. There was a sword strapped to her back. Her face wavered, never settling clearly, but the sword seemed as solid as the stone. The woman reached Egwene’s level and held out one hand. “We can reach the top together,” she said in a familiar drawl?ing accent.
Egwene pushed the dream away as she would have a viper. She felt her body thrash, heard herself groan in her sleep, but for a moment she could do nothing. She had dreamed of the Seanchan before, of a Seanchan woman somehow tied to her, but this was a Seanchan who wouldsave her. No! They had put a leash on her, made herdamane. She would as soon die as be saved by a Seanchan! A very long time passed before she could address herself to calming her sleeping body. Or maybe it only seemed a long time. Not a Seanchan; never that!
Slowly, the dreams returned.
She was climbing another path along a cliff shrouded in clouds, but this was a broad ledge of smoothly paved white stone, and there were no rocks underfoot. The cliff itself was chalky white and as smooth as if polished. Despite the clouds, the pale stone almost gleamed. She climbed quickly and soon realized that the ledge was spiraling around. The cliff was actually a spire. No sooner did that thought occur than she was standing on the top of it, a flat pol?ished disc walled by mist. Not quite flat, though. A small white plinth stood centered in that circle, supporting an oil-lamp made of clear glass. The flame on that lamp burned bright and steady, without flickering. It was white, too.
Suddenly a pair of birds flashed out of the mist, two ravens black as night. Streaking across the spire-top, they struck the lamp and flew on without so much as a pause. The lamp spun and wob?bled, dancing around atop the plinth, flinging off droplets of oil. Some of those drops caught fire in midair and vanished. Others fell around the short column, each supporting a tiny, flickering white flame. And the lamp continued to wobble on the edge of falling.
Egwene woke in darkness with a jolt. She knew. For the first time, she knew exactly what a dream meant. But why would she dream of a Seanchan woman saving her, and then of the Seanchan attacking theWhiteTower? An attack that would shake the Aes Sedai to their core and threaten the Tower itself. Of course, it was only a possibility. But the events seen in true dreams were more likely than other possibilities.
She thought she was considering calmly, but at a rough rustle of canvas from the entry flaps, she very nearly embraced the True Source. Hastily she ran through novice exercises to compose her?self, water flowing over smooth stones, wind blowing through high grass. Light, shehad been frightened. It took two to achieve any sort of calm. She opened her mouth to ask who was there.
“Asleep?” Halima’s voice muttered softly. She sounded wound up tight, almost excited. “Well, I wouldn’t mind a good night&rs
