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The other, however, was Elaida a’Roihan. Light, what was she doing here? Elaida had become advisor to the Queen of Andor nearly three years ago.
Meilyn’s dappled gelding was tall, and she herself was as tall as most men.
“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.”
“Yes, yes, Andro,” Meilyn said suddenly. “We will go in a moment.” She had not even looked back at her Warder,
There were a number of things that you were not taught until you had attained the shawl, after all. Such as the weave for bonding a Warder.
“When you’ve had a Warder long enough, you will know what he is thinking, and he will know what you are. A matter of interpretation.”
the Red refused to bond Warders. Most Reds seemed to dislike men altogether.
Nothing they did could escape her demands for absolute perfection. “But why did she not?”
“There is no way to make this easy, child. King Laman was killed yesterday, along with both of his brothers. Remember that we are all threads in the Pattern, and the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.”
But then, Merean did not know Laman Damodred, a distant man who burned with ambition, the only warmth in him. Moiraine’s opinion was that he had remained unmarried for the simple reason that even the inducement of becoming Queen of Cairhien was not enough to convince any woman to marry him. Moressin and Aldecain had been worse, each filled with sufficient heat for ten men, which they had expressed in anger and cruelty. And in contempt for her father because he was a scholar, because he had taken another scholar for his second wife rather than marrying to bring lands or connections to House
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Setsuko’s pale eyes were bleak with envy. The Arafellin girl already knew that her stay in the Tower would end in a few months.
Lisandre would be allowed to test for Accepted, but only if her sulkiness could be cured. Likely it would be. When the Tower saw a fault in one of its students, that fault usually was cured, one way or another.
“You know I have six uncles who are fine men,” Siuan said softly, “and one who died proving how fine a man he was. What you don’t know is, I have two others my father wouldn’t let cross his doorstep, one his own brother. My father wouldn’t even say their names. They’re street robbers, shoulderthumpers and drunkards, and when they’ve guzzled enough ale, or brandy if they’ve stolen enough to afford it, they start fights with anyone who looks at them the wrong way. Usually, it’s both of them together setting on the same poor fellow with fists and boots and anything that comes to hand. One day,
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plump woman in a long, spotless white apron, Laras was short of her middle years and more than pretty, yet she could frown a hole through a stone.
This particular child was a girl, with a Tairen father and a Cairhienin mother, yet the note boded ill for locating the boychild.
Salia Pomfrey had given birth to a boy and had left to return to her village in Andor after her husband died on the second day of fighting.
“You know better than that if you want to keep your place, Martan. Come with me.” Smile sliding away in worry and red-faced with embarrassment, Martan followed her from the room.
True, but once more they had been of a baby crying in the snow, and a faceless young man breaking the world anew even while he saved it.
Bili Mandair could have been born on the riverbank and his mother still have been in sight of Dragonmount.
“born in Lord Ellisar’s encampment outside Tar Valon.”
Bili Mandair. A humble name, if he was the one.
Jarna was a Sitter for the Gray. Sitters rarely seemed to notice Accepted, but she motioned to Moiraine. “Walk with me a brief while, child.”
“I fear that affairs of state never wait on grief, Moiraine. Tell me, child, who in House Damodred do you think will ascend to the Sun Throne now that Laman and his brothers are dead?”
Damodred has acquired an ill reputation that Laman only made worse.”
Her father had been alone among his generation in lacking a dark character, men and women alike.
The deeds done by House Damodred had blackened the name. But she did not like hearing anyone say it.
“Your half-brother Taringail is denied by his marriage to the Queen of Andor,” Jarna went on. “A ridiculous law, but he cannot change it unless he is king, and he cannot become king until it is changed. What of your elder sisters? Are they not well th...
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“Anvaere cares for nothing except horses and hawking.”
“And if Innloine gained the throne, everyone knows affairs of state would come a poor second, at best, to playing with her children.”
Innloine was a warm and loving mother, but the truth was, she was not terribly bright, although very stubborn. A dangerous combination in a ruler. “No one will support either for the throne,
No Aes Sedai had been a queen in over a thousand years, and even before that, the few who admitted it openly had fared badly.
Tamra held out a folded paper that Moiraine had not noticed, sealed with a circle of green wax. “Take this to Kerene Nagashi. She should be in her rooms. Give it to no one else.”
Rina Hafden, who somehow made a square face lovely and a stocky build both elegant and graceful, was urging them on with a wide smile, calling, “Well struck, Waylin! Oh, very well struck, Elyas!”
The few tapestries in Kerene’s sitting room were scenes of war or hunting, but most of the wall space was given over to bookshelves carved in the styles of half a dozen countries. Along with a few books, they held a large lion’s skull and an even bigger from a bear, glazed bowls, vases in odd shapes, daggers adorned with gems and gold and daggers with plain wooden hilts, one with just the nub of a broken blade. A blacksmith’s hammer with the head split in two lay next to a cracked wooden bowl that held a single fat firedrop, fine enough to grace a crown. A gilded barrel clock with the hands
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A tall, slim woman, Kerene looked exactly what she was, her ageless face strong and beautiful, her nearly black eyes pools of serenity.
“Another message,” Siuan explained. “To Aisha Raveneos. She kept muttering something about urgent, making it a question. I’ll wager it was the same as you carried to Kerene. What do you suppose Tamra wants with a Gray and a Green together?”
The Gray handled matters of mediation and justice,
“Tamra wants…searchers…to look for the boychild. Oh, this changes everything. I was wrong, Siuan. And you were right.”
Once found, Tamra will send him into hiding. His education will be at the hands of her searchers, the women she trusts most.”
The first went to Meilyn Arganya, the second to Valera Gorovni, a plump little Brown who always wore a smile and seemed to be bustling even while standing still, and the third to Ludice Daneen, a bony Yellow whose long, grim face was framed by brightly beaded Taraboner braids that hung to her waist.
At least, not by them. Aeldra Najaf was raised Keeper of the Chronicles to replace Gitara, and she might have carried them, or more likely sent them by a novice.
White hair was the sole similarity between Aeldra and Gitara, and Aeldra’s was straight and cut as short as Kerene’s.
Meilyn tested her on the ancient writer Willim of Manaches and his influence on the Saldaean philosopher Shivena Kayenzi, and Aisha questioned her closely on the differences in the structure of law in Shienar and Amadicia.
Ellid Abareim had a story from an Aes Sedai, though she insisted it was no rumor.
“In any case, she very nearly earned herself an imposed penance, and I informed her that I’d ask the Amyrlin for Mortification of the Flesh. And I reminded her that what I must deal to sisters is harsher than what I give novices or Accepted. She was convinced.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you, but I will. Her penance would have been for helping you cheat in the test for the shawl. All that saved her was the question of whether it actually was cheating. I trust you will accept her gift in the spirit it was given. After all, she paid a price in humiliation for giving it when I confronted her.”
“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.”
That was a ter’angreal, a device made to use the One Power in the long-ago Age of Legends. Within it, she would be tested. She would not fail. She would not!
The weaving required must begin immediately, and you may not leave that sign until it is completed.”
“One hundred times you will weave, in the order you have been given and in perfect composure.”
