“But who will put them there?” Anaiya asked thoughtfully. “Elaida, the Hall, or Rand al’Thor?”
Silence stretched, the skirts rustled, and the door opened and closed once more.
Nynaeve risked a peek. The room was empty. She made a vexed sound. That they intended to wait was small consolation; the final answer could still be anything. Anaiya’s comment showed they were still as wary of Rand as of Elaida. Maybe more. Elaida was not gathering men who could channel. And who was the “biddable child”? No, that was unimportant. They could have fifty schemes weaving she knew nothing about.
The ward winked out, and Nynaeve jumped. It was past time to be gone from here. Scrambling to her feet, she began dusting her knees vigorously as she stepped away from the wall. One step was all she took. She stopped, bent over with her hands frozen over the dirty spots on her dress, staring at Theodrin.
The apple-cheeked Domani woman met her gaze, not saying a word.
Hastily Nynaeve considered and rejected the fool claim that she had been searching for something she dropped. Instead she straightened and walked slowly by the other woman as if there was nothing to explain. Theodrin fell in beside her silently, hands folded at her waist. Nynaeve considered her options. She could hit Theodrin over the head and run. She could get back on her knees and plead. Both notions had a good deal wrong with them to her way of thinking, but she could not pull up anything in between.
“Have you been keeping calm?” Theodrin asked, looking straight ahead.
Nynaeve gave a start. That had been the other woman’s instruction to her after yesterday’s attempt to break down her block. Keep calm, very calm; think only quiet composed thoughts. “Of course,” she laughed weakly. “What could there be to upset me?”
“That is good,” Theodrin said serenely. “Today I mean to try something a little more . . . direct.”
Nynaeve glanced at her. No questions? No accusations? The way this day had been going she could not believe she was getting off so lightly.
Neither saw the woman watching them from a second-story window.
CHAPTER
13
Under the Dust
Wondering whether to undo her braid, Nynaeve glowered out from under a frayed red-striped towel at her dress and shift, hanging over chairbacks and dripping on the clean-swept floorboards. Another raveled towel, striped green and white and considerably larger, served her as a substitute garment. “Now we know shock doesn’t work,” she growled at Theodrin, and winced. Her jaw hurt, and her cheek still stung. Theodrin had quick reflexes and a strong arm. “I could channel now, but for a moment there, saidar was the furthest thing from my mind.” In that drenched moment of gasping for breath, when thought had fled and instinct had taken over.
“Well, channel your things dry,” Theodrin muttered.
It made Nynaeve’s jaw feel better, watching Theodrin peer into a broken triangle of mirror and finger her eye. The flesh looked a little puffy already, and Nynaeve suspected that left alone the bruise would be spectacular. Her own arm was not so weak. A bruise was the least Theodrin deserved!
Perhaps the Domani thought the same, because she sighed, “I won’t try that again. But one way or another, I will teach you to surrender to saidar without first being angry enough to bite it.”
Frowning at the soaked garments, Nynaeve considered a moment. She had never done anything like this before. The prohibition against doing chores with the Power was strong, and with good reason. Saidar was seductive. The more you channeled, the more you wanted to channel, and the more you wanted to channel, the greater the risk that eventually you would draw too much and still or kill yourself. The sweetness of the True Source filled her easily now. Theodrin’s bucket of water had seen to that, if the rest of the morning had not. A simple weave of Water drew all the moisture from her clothes to fall on the floor in a puddle that quickly spread to join what the bucket had put there.
“I am not very good at surrendering,” she said. Unless there was no point in fighting, anyway. Only a fool went on where there was no chance at all. She could not breathe under water, she could not fly by flapping her arms—and she could not channel except when angry.
Theodrin shifted her frown from the puddle to Nynaeve and planted fists on slim hips. “I am well aware of that,” she said in a too level tone. “By all I’ve been taught, you should not be able to channel at all. I was taught you must be calm to channel, cool and serene inside, open and utterly yielding.” The glow of saidar surrounded her, and flows of Water gathered the puddle into a ball sitting incongruously on the floor. “You must surrender before you can guide. But you, Nynaeve . . . however hard you try to surrender—and I’ve seen you try—you hang on with your fingernails unless you’re furious enough to forget to.” Flows of Air lifted the wobbling ball. For a moment, Nynaeve thought the other woman meant to toss it at her, but the watery sphere floated across the room and out one of the open windows. It made a great splash falling, and a cat screamed in startled fury. Perhaps the prohibition did not apply when you reached Theodrin’s level.
“Why not leave it at that?” Nynaeve tried to sound bright, but she thought she failed. She wanted to channel whenever she pleased. But as the old saying went, “If wishes were wings, pigs would fly.” “No use wasting—”
“Leave that,” Theodrin said as Nynaeve started to use the weave of water on her hair. “Let go of saidar and allow it to dry naturally. And put on your clothes.”
Nynaeve’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have another surprise waiting, do you?”
“No. Now start preparing your mind. You are a flower bud feeling the warmth of the Source, ready to open to that warmth. Saidar is the river, you the bank. The river is more powerful than the bank, yet the bank contains and guides it. Empty your mind except for the bud. There is nothing in your thoughts but the bud. You are the bud. . . .”
Pulling her shift over her head, Nynaeve sighed as Theodrin’s voice droned on hypnotically. Novice exercises. If those worked with her, she would have been channeling whenever she wanted long ago. She should stop this and see to what she really could do, such as convincing Elayne to go to Caemlyn. But she wanted Theodrin to be successful, even if it entailed ten buckets of water. Accepted did not walk out; Accepted did not defy. She hated being told what she could not do even worse than
