New Spring (The Wheel of Time, #0)

by Robert Jordan

Men listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm.

In any case, it was best to avoid becoming involved with Aes Sedai more than absolutely necessary. Years later you could find one of them had tied strings to you just in case she might have need. Aes Sedai thought far ahead, and seldom seemed to care who they used in their schemes or how. That was one reason Lan avoided them.

As Lan walked on, he found himself chuckling. He seldom laughed, and it was a fool thing to laugh over, but laughter was better than worrying over what he could not change, such as weary men drowsing on guard. As well worry about death. What could not be changed must be endured.

Lan formed the image of a flame in his mind and fed emotion into it, not anger alone but everything, every scrap, until it seemed that he floated in emptiness. After years of practice, achieving ko’di, the oneness, needed less than a heartbeat. Thought and his own body grew distant, but in this state he became one with the ground beneath his feet, one with the night, with the sword he would not use on this mannerless fool.

It was beyond unwise to enter battle angry. Anger narrowed the vision and made for foolish choices.

Dragonmount would have been a giant in the Spine of the World, but there on the plain, it was monstrous, piercing the clouds and rising taller. Higher above the clouds than most mountains were below, its broken peak always emitted a streamer of smoke. A symbol of hope and despair. A mountain of prophecy. Glancing at it, Bukama made another sign against evil. No one wanted that prophecy fulfilled. But it would be, of course, one day.

Moiraine was just offering Gitara her own cup, but before she could reply, the Keeper jerked to her feet, bumping the table so hard that the ink jar overturned, spreading a pool of black across the tabletop. Trembling, she stood with her arms rigid at her sides and stared over the top of Moiraine’s head, wide-eyed with terror. It was terror, plain and simple. “He is born again!” Gitara cried. “I feel him! The Dragon takes his first breath on the slope of Dragonmount! He is coming! He is coming! Light help us! Light help the world! He lies in the snow and cries like the thunder! He burns like the sun!”

Oh, the mind did play odd tricks when you wanted to avoid thinking about something.

That infant’s birth meant the Dark One would break free again, for the child would be born to face the Dark One in Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle. On him rested the fate of the world. The Prophecies said he was the only chance. They did not say he would win. Maybe worse than the thought of his defeat, though, was the fact that he would channel saidin, the male half of the One Power.

“Oh, yes.” The words jerked everyone to a halt. “When you record the woman’s name, also put down the infant’s name and sex, the day he or she was born, and exactly where. The Tower’s records must be complete in this matter. You may go.” Just as though what she had left till last was not the most important thing. That was how Aes Sedai hid things in plain sight. Some said Aes Sedai had invented the Game of Houses.

A fast mount was good, but a mount with endurance was better.

The only two infants born that day, after Gitara’s Foretelling, were girls and, like every other newborn, birthed within a mile of the camp. Some other Accepted was going to find the boychild without knowing what she had found. She herself likely would not hear of it for years. Light, but it hardly seemed fair. She knew, and it meant nothing.

Many people feared the White Tower, occasionally with reason—the Tower could be stern when it must—but fear was a poor tool, and one that always cut the user eventually.

“When a man believes he may die, he wants to leave something of himself behind. When a woman believes her man may die, she wants that part of him desperately. The result is a great many babies born during wars. It’s illogical, given the hardship that comes if the man does die, or the woman, but the human heart is seldom logical.”

Moiraine found herself gaping, embarrassment forgotten, and not because of Andro’s unblinking gaze. A sister and her bonded Warder could sense each other’s emotions and physical condition, and each knew exactly where the other was, if they were close enough, and at least a direction if they were far apart, but this seemed on the order of reading minds.

“What can they do, Moiraine? Even if they find him, what can they do?” “They can bring him to the Tower,” Moiraine replied, putting more confidence into her voice than she felt. “He can be protected here.” She hoped he could. More than the Reds might want him dead or gentled, whatever the Prophecies said. “And educated.” The Dragon Reborn would have to be educated. He would need to know as much of politics as any queen, as much of war as any general. As much of history as any scholar. Verin Sedai said that most mistakes made by rulers came from not knowing history; they acted in ignorance of the mistakes others had made before them. “He can be guided.” That would be the most important of all, to make sure that he made the right decisions. “The Tower can’t teach him to channel, Moiraine.”

“I’ve spoken with the Amyrlin, Moiraine, and she agrees with me that you must be in shock. The other Accepted will have to make do without you today.”

What a bitch. You have no clue of the family dynamics yet insist she mourn your proper way?

One day, they’ll hang for killing somebody, if they haven’t already. When they do, I won’t shed a tear. Some people just aren’t worth a tear.” Moiraine hugged her back. “You always know the right thing to say. But I will still pray for my uncles.” “I’ll pray for those two scoundrels when they die, too. I just won’t fret myself over them, alive or dead.

“She just told me to use the Power to clean my dress,” she said wonderingly. Siuan’s eyebrows attempted to climb atop her head. “Don’t talk nonsense. I heard her as well as you, and she said nothing of the sort.” “You have to listen to what people mean as well as what they say, Siuan.” Interpreting what others really meant was integral to the Game of Houses, and put together, Tamra’s smile, the cast of her eye, and the phrasing she had used were as good as written permission.

In truth, those thoughts still flashed into her head when least expected, lists or no lists. Thoughts of a babe in the snow and a faceless man. Equally dire, of the Sun Throne. She wanted to beg Tamra to halt that scheme, yet she knew begging would be useless. The Tower was no less implacable in its weaving than the Wheel of Time itself. In both cases, the threads were human lives, and the pattern they made more important than any individual thread.

Light, let her test soon. With the shawl on her shoulders, she would be out of the Tower and searching for the boy like an arrow leaving the bow. Soon, but not before she had all of the names. Oh, it was such a quandary!

Moiraine could think of several ways that the threat of a penance could be used to make Elaida give way, and every one of them would have wrung the sister with humiliation. The only question was, how hard had Merean wrung? Very hard, likely; she did speak of the novices and Accepted as being hers. Oh, this was no small enmity that might fester over time. What was in Elaida’s eyes was full-blown animosity. They had acquired an enemy for life.

Nine days after the thaw, in the dim light before dawn. Merean appeared on the gallery as Siuan and Moiraine were leaving for breakfast. She was wearing her shawl. “Moiraine Damodred,” she said formally, “you are summoned to be tested for the shawl of an Aes Sedai. The Light keep you whole and see you safe.”

Light, where was she? And why was she…unclothed? Why was she holding saidar? She released it uneasily as well as reluctantly. She knew she had completed the first weave of one hundred she must make, out there in that empty courtyard. She knew that much and no more. Except that she must go on.

“Let no one ever speak of what has passed here. It is for us to share in silence with she who experienced it. It is done.” Again she clapped her hands loudly, the blue fringe of her shawl swinging. “Moiraine Damodred, you will spend tonight in prayer and contemplation of the burdens you will take up on the morrow, when you don the shawl of an Aes Sedai. It is done.”

Their teachers had never brought up the matter of precedence—perhaps they had never expected the two of them to march this far in complete lockstep—but Moiraine heard someone’s breath catch behind her, and when Tamra spoke again, it was after a pause so slight that she might have imagined it. “For what reason do you come?” “To swear the Three Oaths and thereby claim the shawl of an Aes Sedai,” they answered together. Breach of the proprieties or not, they intended to do everything together this morning insofar as possible.

Moiraine closed her hands around the Rod. It felt like glass, only somehow smoother. “Under the Light and by my hope of salvation and rebirth, I vow that I will speak no word that is not true.” The Oath settled on her, and suddenly the air seemed to press harder against her skin. Red is white, she thought. Up is down. She could still think a lie, but her tongue would not work to utter it now.

Accepted were taught that every Ajah had secrets, as Rafela had to be aware. More than one sister had told Moiraine that she would have almost as much to learn once she gained the shawl as before.

She and Siuan stepped through the doorway, and stopped in surprise. The Blue was the second smallest Ajah, after the White, but every Blue sister currently in Tar Valon was lining the main corridor, all save Aeldra formally wrapped in their shawls.

“Do we have to obey them?” Siuan asked, finally giving in and standing, and Eadyth sighed heavily. “I thought I was quite clear, Siuan. The higher she stands above you, the greater your deference. I truly dislike talking about this, so please don’t make me repeat myself. It works the other way around as well, of course, but remember that it doesn’t apply if your Ajah or the Tower has set someone above you.

Unskilled hands on the tiller put the boat aground when they did not capsize it.

The sight of Moiraine always made her smile. Cetalia had been wrong in one particular. She was not a pretty little porcelain doll; she was a beautiful little porcelain doll. On the outside, anyway. Inside, where it counted, was another matter. The first time Siuan saw her, she had been sure the Cairhienin girl would crack like a spindle-shell in a matter of days. But Moiraine had turned out to be as tough as she herself if not tougher. No matter how often she was knocked down, she climbed back to her feet straightaway. Moiraine did not know the meaning of “give up.”

The Sun Palace had taught Moiraine that power often grew from others deciding that you already had power, and an appearance of wealth could give that.

Blue and Red opposed each other as a matter of course, at times bringing the Hall to a near standstill. The very idea of enmity between Ajahs startled her, yet there were other oppositions.

Moiraine’s relief that the search was under way at last was tempered by frustration at being kept out of it. Siuan began to grow interested in her job, to the point where her complaints started to seem more for the form of the thing. She headed off to Cetalia’s rooms earlier than need be, and often remained until the second or third sitting of supper. Moiraine had no such buffer. Her nightmares continued, of the babe in the snow and the faceless man and the Sun Throne, although not as frequently, save the last.

Let others know you possessed a secret, and some would work to learn it; that was a fact of nature.

Self-disgust immediately stabbed her heart, and she pushed the bowl of porridge away, all appetite gone. A woman she admired with all her soul had died, and she thought of advantage in it! Daes Dae’mar truly was ingrained in her bones, and maybe all the darkness of the Damodreds.

A new Amyrlin chose her own Keeper, of course, and could choose a new Mistress of Novices if she wished. Sierin had done both. Oddly, Amira, the stocky woman whose long beaded braids flailed as she worked the birch with a will, was a Red, and so was the new Keeper, Duhara.

To Sierin, her own view of the law was the law, and without a shred of mercy to be found in it.

In his cradle he had been given four gifts. The ring in his hands and the locket that hung around his neck, the sword on his hip and an oath sworn in his name. The locket, containing the painted images of the mother and father he could not remember seeing in life, was the most precious, the oath the heaviest.

A nation was memory as much as land.

Chasing after prophecy, Moiraine had decided by the end of the first month, involved very little adventure and a great deal of boredom. Now, three months out of Tar Valon, her grand search consisted mainly of frustration.

Outside under a gray sky, she gathered her cloak tightly. Anyone who went about the streets of Canluum with an open cloak would draw stares. Any outlander, at least, unless clearly Aes Sedai. Besides, not allowing the cold to touch you did not make you entirely unaware of it. How these people could call this “new spring” without a hint of mockery was beyond her.

Cadsuane scowled, a fearsome sight. “No one has come to the Tower in a thousand years who could match me. No one to match Meilyn or Kerene in almost six hundred. A thousand years ago, there would have been fifty sisters or more who stood higher than this child. In another hundred years, though, she’ll stand in the first rank. Oh, someone stronger may be found in that time, but there won’t be fifty, and there may be none. We dwindle.”

“You’ve worn the shawl only four months or so, and you have affairs that cannot wait? Phaaw! You still haven’t learned the first real lesson, that the shawl means you are ready to truly begin learning. The second lesson is caution. I know better than most how hard that is to find when you’re young and have saidar at your fingertips and the world at your feet. As you think.”

“I couldn’t trust this to a pigeon,” she mumbled, “or to any of the eyes-and-ears. I wouldn’t have dared. They’re all dead. Aisha and Kerene, Valera and Ludice and Meilyn. They say Aisha and her Warder were killed by bandits in Murandy. Kerene supposedly fell off a ship in the Alguenya during a storm and drowned. And Meilyn…Meilyn….” Sobs racked her so she could not go on.

Her father used to say that once was happenstance, twice might be coincidence, but thrice or more indicated the actions of your enemies.

He looked even larger, this close, with very wide shoulders and a narrow waist. Far from a pretty man, too. Not handsome, with that hard, angular face. A suitable face for a brigand. Unbuckling his sword belt, he sat down cross-legged facing the pond, laid sword and belt beside him, and put his hands on his knees. He seemed to be staring off across the water, still glittering through the late afternoon shadows, toward the water reeds that rimmed the far bank. He did not move a muscle.

“Unwise to try separating a man from his sword,” he said, and after a glance at the colored slashes on her dress added, “my Lady.” Hardly an apology.

“I claim the right of a woman alone,” she told them formally. “I travel to Chachin, and I ask the shelter of your swords.”