Seaine let go and adjusted her dress; there seemed nothing else to do.
The appearance of the Rod produced a momentary babble as nearly everyone spoke at once.
“Blood and fire,” Doesine growled. “Are you down here raising new bloody sisters?”
“Oh, leave it with them, Saerin,” Yukiri laughed right on top of her. “Whatever they’re up to, it’s their own business.”
Atop both, Talene barked, “Why else are they sneaking about — together! — if it isn’t to do with the Ajah heads?”
Saerin waved a hand, and after a moment gained quiet. All present were Sitters, but she had the right to speak first in the Hall, and her forty years counted for something, too. “This is the key to the puzzle, I think,” she said, stroking the Rod with her thumb. “Why this, after all?” Abruptly the glow of saidar surrounded her, too, and she channeled Spirit to the Rod. “Under the Light, I will speak no word that is not true. I am not a Darkfriend.”
In the silence that followed, a mouse sneezing would have sounded loud.
“Am I right?” Saerin said
, releasing the Power. She held the Rod out toward Seaine.
For the third time, Seaine retook the Oath against lying, and for the second time repeated that she was not of the Black. Pevara did the same with frozen dignity. And eyes sharp as an eagle’s.
“This is ridiculous,” Talene said. “There is no Black Ajah.”
Yukiri took the Rod from Pevara and channeled. “Under the Light, I will speak no word that is not true. I am not Black Ajah.” The light of saidar around her winked out, and she handed the Rod to Doesine.
Talene frowned in disgust. “Stand aside, Doesine. I for one will not put up with this filthy suggestion.”
“Under the Light, I will speak no word that is not true,” Doesine said almost reverently, the glow around her like a halo. “I am not of the Black Ajah.” When matters were serious, her tongue was as clean as any Mistress of Novices could have wished. She extended the Rod to Talene.
The golden-haired woman started back as from a poisonous snake. “Even to ask this is a slander. Worse than slander!” Something feral moved in her eyes. An irrational thought, perhaps, but that was what Seaine saw. “Now move out of my way,” Talene demanded with all the authority of a Sitter in her voice. “I am leaving!”
“I think not,” Pevara said quietly, and Yukiri nodded slowly in agreement. Saerin did not stroke her knife hilt; she gripped it till her knuckles went white.
Riding through the deep snows of Andor, floundering through them, Toveine Gazal cursed the day she was born. Short and slightly plump, with smooth copper skin and long glossy dark hair, she had seemed pretty to many over the years, but none had ever called her beautiful. Certainly none would now. The dark eyes that had once been direct now bored into whatever she looked at. That was when she was not angry. She was angry today. When Toveine was angry, serpents fled.
Four other Reds rode — floundered — at her back, and behind them twenty of the Tower Guard in dark coats and cloaks. None of the men liked it that their armor was stowed away on the packhorses, and they watched the forest lining both sides of the road as though expecting attack any moment. How they thought to cross three hundred miles of Andor unnoticed, wearing coats and cloaks with the Flame of Tar Valon shining bright on them, Toveine could not imagine. The journey was almost done, though. In another day, perhaps two with roads knee-deep in snow on the horses, she would join with nine other parties exactly like hers. Not all of the sisters in them were Red, unfortunately, but that did not trouble her overmuch. Toveine Gazal, once a Sitter for the Red, would go into the histories as the woman who destroyed this Black Tower.
She was sure Elaida thought her grateful for the chance, called back from exile and disgrace, given the opportunity for redemption. She sneered, and if a wolf had been looking into the deep hood of her cloak, it might have quailed. What had been done twenty years ago was necessary, and the Light burn all those who muttered that the Black Ajah must have been involved. It had been necessary and right, but Toveine Gazal had been driven from her chair in the Hall, and forced to howl for mercy under the birch, with the assembled sisters watching, and even novices and Accepted witnessing that Sitters, too, lay beneath the law, though they were not told what law. And then she had been sent to work these last twenty years on the isolated Black Hills farm of Mistress Jara Doweel, a woman who considered an Aes Sedai serving penance in exile no different from any other hand laboring in sun and snow. Toveine’s hands shifted on her reins; she could feel the calluses. Mistress Doweel — even now, she could not think of the woman without the honorific she had demanded — Mistress Doweel believed in hard work. And discipline as tight as any novice faced! She had no mercy on anyone who tried to shirk the backbreaking labor that she herself shared, and less than none for a woman who sneaked away to comfort herself with a pretty boy. That had been Toveine’s life these past twenty years. And Elaida had slipped through the cracks uncaught, danced her way to the Amyrlin Seat that Toveine had once dreamed of for herself. No, she was not grateful. But she had learned to wait her chance.
Abruptly, a tall man in a black coat, dark hair falling to his shoulders, spurred his horse out of the forest into the road ahead of her, spraying snow. “There’s no point struggling,” he announced firmly, raising a gloved hand. “Surrender peacefully, and no one will be hurt.”
It was neither his appearance nor his words that made Toveine rein up short, letting the other sisters gather beside her. “Take him,” she said calmly. “You had better link. He has me shielded.” It seemed one of these Asha’man had come to her. How convenient of him.
Abruptly she realized that nothing was happening and took her eyes from the fellow to frown at Jenare. The woman’s pale, square face seemed absolutely bloodless. “Toveine,” she said unsteadily, “I also am shielded.”
“I am shielded, too,” Lemai breathed in disbelief, and the others chimed in, increasingly frantic. All shielded.
More men in black coats appeared from among the trees, their horses stepping slowly, all around. Toveine stopped counting at fifteen. The Guards muttered angrily, waiting on a sister’s command. They knew nothing yet except that a band of rogues had waylaided them. Toveine clicked her tongue in irritation. These men could not all channel, of course, but apparently every Asha’man who could do so had come against her. She did not panic. Unlike some of the sisters with her, these were not the first men who channeled that she had confronted. The tall man began riding toward her, smiling, apparently thinking they had obeyed his ridiculous order.
“At my command,” she said quietly, “we will break in every direction. As soon as you are far enough away that the man loses the shield,” men always thought they had to be able to see to hold their weaves, which meant that they did have to, “turn back and help the Guards. Ready yourselves.” She raised her voice to a shout. “Guardsmen, fight them!”
Roaring, the Guardsmen surged forward, waving their swords and no doubt thinking to surround and protect the sisters. Pulling her mare around to the right, Toveine dug in her heels and crouched low over Sparrow’s neck, dodging between startled Guardsmen, then between two very young men in black coats who gaped at her in astonishment. Then she was into the trees, urging more speed, snow spraying wildly, careless of whether the mare broke a leg. She liked the animal, but more than a horse would die today. Behind her, shouts. And one voice, roaring through all the cacophony. The tall man’s voice.
“Take them alive, by order of the Dragon Reborn! Harm an Aes Sedai, and you’ll answer to me!”
By order of the Dragon Reborn. For the first time, Toveine felt fear, an icicle worming into her middle. The Dragon Reborn. She thrashed Sparrow’s neck with the reins. The shield was still on her! Surely there were enough trees between them already to block the cursed men’s sight of her! Oh, Light, the Dragon Reborn!
She grunted as something struck her across the middle, a branch where there was no branch, snatching her out of the saddle. She hung there watching Sparrow plow off at as much of a gallop as the snow allowed. She hung there. In the middle of the air, arms trapped at her sides, feet dangling a pace or more above the ground. She swallowed. Hard. It had to be the male part of the Power holding her up. She had never been touched by saidin before. She could feel the thick band of nothing snug around her middle. She thought she could feel the Dark One’s taint. She quivered, fighting down screams.
The tall man reined his horse to a halt in front of her, and she floated down to sit sideways in front of his saddle. He did not seem particularly interested in the Aes Sedai he had captured, though. “Hardlin!” he shouted. “Norley! Kajima! One of you bloody young louts come here now!”