“How did you know the al’Vere girl wasn’t to be tried?” Elaida demanded. “How did you know she’s even alive? Unshield her, Tarna!”
Tarna complied, and Beonin gave her a nod as if in gratitude. A small gratitude. Those large blue-gray eyes might make Beonin appear constantly startled, but she was a very composed woman. Combine composure with a wholehearted dedication to the law and also ambition, which she possessed in as great a measure, and Elaida had known immediately that Beonin was the one to send off after the sisters fleeing the Tower. And the woman had failed utterly! Oh, she had apparently sowed a little dissension, but really, she had achieved nothing of what Elaida had expected from her. Nothing! She would find her rewards commensurate with her failure.
“Egwene, she can enter Tel’aran’rhiod simply by going to sleep, Mother. I myself have been there and seen her, but I must use a ter’angreal. I could not acquire any of those the rebels have to bring with me. In any event, she spoke to Siuan Sanche, in her dreams, it is claimed, though I think more likely in the World of Dreams. Apparently, she said that she is a prisoner, but she would not tell where, and she forbade any rescue attempt. May I pour myself that tea?”
Elaida was so stunned she could not speak. She motioned Beonin to the side table, and the Gray curtsied again before going over to feel the silver pitcher cautiously with the back of her hand. The girl could enter Tel’aran’rhiod? And there were ter’angreal that allowed the same thing? The World of Dreams was almost a legend. And according to those troubling scraps the Ajahs had deigned to share with her, the girl had rediscovered the weave for Traveling and made any number of other discoveries as well. They had been the determining factor in her decision to preserve the girl for the Tower, but this on top of it?
“If Egwene can do this, Mother, perhaps she really is a Dreamer,” Tarna said. “The warning she gave Silviana—“
“Is useless, Tarna. The Seanchan are still deep in Altara and barely touching Illian.” At least the Ajahs were willing to pass on everything they learned of the Seanchan. Or rather, she hoped they passed on everything. The thought roughened her voice. “Unless they learn to Travel, can you think of any precaution I need to take beyond what is already in place?” She could not, of course. The girl had forbidden a rescue. That was good on the face of it, but it indicated she still thought of herself as Amyrlin. Well, Silviana would remove that nonsense from her head soon enough if the sisters teaching her classes failed. “Can she be fed enough of that potion to keep her out of Tel’aran’rhiod?”
Tarna grimaced slightly—no one liked that vile brew, even the Browns who had brought themselves to test it—and shook her head. “We can make her sleep through the night, but she would be useless for anything the next day, and who can say whether it would affect this ability of hers.”
“May I pour for you, Mother?” Beonin said, balancing a thin white teacup on her fingertips. “Tarna? The most important news I have—“
“I don’t care for any tea.” Elaida said harshly. “Did you bring back anything to save your skin from your miserable failure? Do you know the weave for Traveling, or this Skimming, or. . . .” There were so many. Perhaps they were all Talents and skills that had been lost, but apparently most had not been named yet.
The Gray peered at her across the teacup, her face very still. “Yes.” she said at last. “I cannot make cuendillar, but I can make the new Healing weaves work as well as most sisters, and I know them all.” An edge of excitement crept into her voice. “The most marvelous is Traveling.” Without asking permission, she embraced the Source and wove Spirit. A vertical line of silver appeared against one wall and widened into a view of snow-covered oaks. A cold breeze blew into the room. making the flames dance in the fireplace. “That is called a gateway. It can only be used to reach a place you know well, but you learn a place by making a gateway there, and to go somewhere you do not know well, you use Skimming.” She altered the weave, and the opening dwindled into that silvery line once more then widened again. The oaks were replaced by blackness, and a gray-painted barge, railed and gated, that floated on nothing against the opening.
“Release the weave,” Elaida said. She had the feeling that if she walked over to that barge, the darkness would extend as far as she could see in any direction. That she could fall in it forever. It made her queasy. The opening—the gateway—vanished. The memory remained, however.
Resuming her seat behind the table, she opened the largest of the lacquered boxes, decorated with red roses and golden scrollwork. From the top tray, she picked up a small ivory carving, a fork-tailed swallow dark yellow with years, and stroked her thumb along the curved wings. “You will not teach these things to anyone without receiving my permission.”
“But . . . why ever not, Mother?”
“Some of the Ajahs oppose the Mother almost as strongly as those sisters beyond the river,” Tarna said.
Elaida shot a dark look at her Keeper, but that cool visage absorbed it without changing a hair. “I will decide who is . . . reliable enough . . . to be taught, Beonin. I want your promise. No. I want your oath.’
“On my way here, I saw sisters of different Ajahs glaring at one another. Glaring. What has happened in the Tower, Mother?”
“Your oath, Beonin.”
The woman stood peering into her teacup long enough that Elaida was beginning to think she would refuse. But ambition won out. She had tied herself to Elaida’s skirts in the hope of preferment, and she would not abandon that now. “Under the Light and by my hope of salvation and rebirth, I swear that I will teach the weaves I learned among the rebels to no one without the permission of the Amyrlin Seat.” She paused, taking a sip from the cup. “Some sisters in the Tower, they are perhaps less reliable than you think. I tried to stop it, but that ‘ruling council’ sent ten sisters to return to the Tower and spread the tale of the Red Ajah and Logain.” Elaida recognized few of the names she reeled off, until the last. That one made her sit bolt upright.
“Shall I have them arrested, Mother?” Tarna asked, still as chill as ice.
“No. Have them watched. Watch whoever they associate with.” So there was a conduit between the Ajahs inside the Tower and the rebels. How deeply had the rot spread? However dee
