Lord of Chaos (107 page)

Delana was the first to stand, then Kwamesa and Janya, more, until nine Sitters stood before their chairs, signifying acceptance. Romanda was still firmly in her seat. Nine of eighteen. The acceptance had to be unanimous—the Hall always sought consensus; in the end, all votes were unanimous, though it could take a great deal of talking to make it so—but there would be no talking aside from the ceremonial phrases tonight, and this was one short of outright rejection. Sheriam and the others had ridiculed her suggestion that that might happen, and did so so quickly that she might have worried if the whole thing was not so ridiculous, but they had warned her
almost in passing that this could occur. Not a rejection, but a statement that the Sitters who remained in their chairs did not mean to be lapdogs. Only a gesture, a token, according to Sheriam, but looking at Romanda’s stern face, and Lelaine’s, scarcely less so above her bare chest, Egwene was not certain of that at all. They had said it might be as many as three or four, too.

Without a word the standing women retook their places. No one spoke, but Egwene knew what to do. Her numbness had vanished.

Rising, she moved toward the nearest Sitter, a sharp-faced Green named Samalin who had stayed in her chair. As Egwene went to her knees again in front of Samalin, Sheriam knelt beside her, a wide basin of water in her hands. Ripples danced on the surface of the water. Sheriam appeared cool and dry, while Egwene was beginning to glisten with sweat, but Sheriam’s hands were trembling. Morvrin knelt and handed Egwene a cloth, Myrelle waiting at her side with lengths of toweling over her arm. Myrelle looked angry for some reason.

“Please allow me to serve,” Egwene said. Looking straight ahead, Samalin raised her skirts to her knees. Her feet were bare. Egwene washed each foot and patted it dry, then moved to the next Green, a slightly plump woman named Malind. Sheriam and the others had given her all the Sitters’ names. “Please allow me to serve.” Malind had a pretty face with full lips and dark eyes that looked as if they liked to smile, but she was not smiling now. She was one of those who had stood, but her feet were bare too.

Every Sitters’ feet were, all the way around the room. As Egwene washed all those feet, she wondered whether the Sitters had known how many would remain sitting. Plainly they had known some would, that this service would be required. She knew little more of how the Hall of the Tower worked than had been in that novice lecture: For all practical purposes, she knew nothing. All she could do was go on.

She washed and dried the last foot—it belonged to Janya, who was frowning as if thinking of something else entirely; at least she had stood—and dropping the cloth in the washbasin, returned to her place at the foot of the rows and knelt. “Please allow me to serve.” One more chance.

Once again Delana was first to rise, but Samalin was right behind her this time. No one sprang to her feet, yet one by one they stood, until only Lelaine and Romanda remained sitting, looking at each other, not Egwene. Finally, Lelaine gave the ghost of a shrug, pulled up her bodice unhurriedly, and rose. Romanda turned her head and looked at Egwene. She stared so long that Egwene became conscious of the sweat running down
between her breasts and along her ribs. At last, in stately slowness, Romanda reclothed herself and joined the others. Egwene heard a gasp of relief from behind her, where Sheriam and the others were waiting.

It was not over, of course. Romanda and Lelaine came together to lead her up to the brightly painted chair. She stood before it while they pulled up her bodice and draped the stole of the Amyrlin Seat around her shoulders while they and all the Sitters said, “You are raised to the Amyrlin Seat, in the glory of the Light, that the White Tower may endure forever. Egwene al’Vere, the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat.” Lelaine removed Egwene’s Great Serpent ring from her left hand and gave it to Romanda, who slipped it onto Egwene’s right. “May the Light illumine the Amyrlin Seat and the White Tower.”

Egwene laughed. Romanda blinked, Lelaine gave a start, and they were not the only ones. “I just remembered something,” she said, then added, “daughters.” That was what the Amyrlin called Aes Sedai. What she had remembered was what came next. She could not help thinking it was payment for easing her way through
Tel’aran’rhiod.
Egwene al’Vere, the Watcher of the Seals, the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat, managed to sit in that hard wooden chair without letting herself down gingerly, and without wincing. She considered both triumphs of will.

Sheriam and Myrelle and Morvrin glided forward—whoever had gasped, there was no telling now by their serene faces—and the Sitters formed a line behind them stretching toward the door. It was done in order of age, with Romanda at the very end.

Sheriam spread her skirts in a deep curtsy. “Please allow me to serve, Mother.”

“You may serve the Tower, daughter,” Egwene replied as gravely as she could. Sheriam kissed her ring and stepped aside, as Myrelle made her curtsy.

Down the line it went. There were some surprises in the arrangements. None of the Sitters were really young despite their Aes Sedai faces, but pale-haired Delana, whom Egwene had thought must be nearly as old as Romanda, stood less than halfway down the line, while Lelaine and Janya, both quite pretty women without a touch of gray in their dark hair, both came just ahead of the white-haired Yellow. Each made her curtsy and kissed Egwene’s ring with absolutely no expression—though some did glance at Egwene’s banded hem—and left the room by a rear door without another word. Normally there would have been more, but the rest of the ceremony was to wait on morning.

At last Egwene was alone with the three women who had pledged for her. She was still not sure what that meant. Myrelle went to let in the other three as Egwene stood. “What would have happened if Romanda hadn’t stood?” Supposedly there would have been one more chance, one more round of foot-washing and asking to be allowed to serve, but she was sure that if Romanda had voted no the second time, she would have the third.

“Then she very probably would have been raised Amyrlin herself in a few days,” Sheriam replied. “Her or Lelaine.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Egwene said. “What would have happened to me? Would I just have gone back to being Accepted?” Anaiya and the others came hurrying up, smiling, and Myrelle began helping Egwene out of the banded white dress and into a pale green silk that she would wear only long enough to reach her bed. It was late, but the Amyrlin could not walk about in the dress of an Accepted.

“Very probably,” Morvrin answered after a moment. “I can’t say whether that would be luck or not, being an Accepted that every Sitter knew had almost had the Amyrlin Seat.”

“It has seldom happened,” Beonin said, “but a woman refused the Amyrlin Seat is usually exiled. The Hall strives for harmony, and she could not help being a source of disharmony.”

Sheriam looked straight into Egwene’s eyes as if to impress her words. “We surely would have been exiled. Myrelle and Morvrin and I for certain, since we stood pledge for you, and likely Carlinya and Beonin and Anaiya as well.” Her smile was abrupt. “But it did not happen that way. The new Amyrlin is supposed to spend her first night in contemplation and prayer, but once Myrelle finishes with those buttons, it might be best if we gave at least a little of it to telling you how matters stand in Salidar.”

They were all looking at her. Myrelle was behind her, doing up the last button, but she could feel the woman’s eyes. “Yes. Yes, I think that might be best.”

Egwene raised her head from the pillows and looked around, for a moment surprised to find herself in a canopied bed in a large room. Early-morning light spilled in at the windows, and a plumply pretty woman in a simple gray wool dress was setting a large white pitcher of hot water on the washstand. Chesa had been introduced to her last night as her maid. The Amyrlin’s maid. A covered tray already sat beside her comb and brush on a narrow table beneath a mirror with a silver-worked frame. The smell of hot bread and stewed pears drifted in the air.

Anaiya had prepared the room for Egwene’s arrival. The furnishings still did not match, but they were the best Salidar had to offer, from the padded armchair upholstered in green silk to the stand-mirror in the corner with all its gilding intact to the ornately carved wardrobe where her belongings now hung. Unfortunately, Anaiya’s taste seemed to run heavily to frothy lace and frills. Both thickly bordered the canopy of the bed and the drawn-back bed curtains, and one or the other decked the table and its stool, the arms and legs of the padded chair, the coverlet Egwene had tossed on the floor and the thin silk sheet that had followed. The curtains at the windows were lace, too. Egwene put her head back down. Lace edged the pillows as well. The room made her feel she might drown in lace.

There had been a great deal of talk after Sheriam and the others brought her here to what they called the Little Tower, almost all of it on
their side. They were not really interested in what she thought Rand was up to, or what Coiren and the others might want. There was an embassy on its way to Caemlyn under Merana, who knew what to do, though they were rather vague about exactly what that was. For the most part, they did the talking, she the listening, her questions brushed aside. The answers to some were unimportant, she was told, for now anyway; those that were answered got a quick gloss before they went on to what was important. Embassies had been sent off to every ruler, each one named in turn, with an explanation of why he or she was absolutely vital to Salidar’s cause, which it seemed every one was. They did not quite say everything would fail if even one ruler went against them, but the emphasis they laid on every one said it for them. Gareth Bryne was building an army that would eventually be strong enough to prosecute their—her—claims against Elaida, if it came to that. They did not seem to think it would, despite Elaida’s demand that they return to the Tower; they seemed to believe that once word of Egwene al’Vere’s elevation to the Amyrlin Seat was spread, Aes Sedai would come to her, even some of those in the Tower now, enough that Elaida would have no choice but to step down on demand. The Whitecloaks were twiddling their thumbs for some reason, so Salidar was as safe as anywhere for as long as was necessary. That Logain had been Healed as well as Siuan—and Leane; of course she would have been Healed if she was here; it was just a surprise to find out she was—came up almost in passing.

“Nothing to worry you there,” Sheriam said soothingly. She stood over Egwene, who sat in the padded armchair, with the others in an arc around her. “The Hall will argue whether to gentle him again until old age relieves us of the problem.”

Egwene tried to stifle another yawn—it was getting late—and Anaiya said, “We need to let her sleep. Tomorrow is almost as important as tonight was, child.” Abruptly she laughed to herself softly. “Mother. Tomorrow is important too, Mother. We will send Chesa to help you get ready for bed.”

Even after they left, going to bed was not easy. While Chesa was still undoing Egwene’s dress, Romanda appeared with a number of suggestions for the Amyrlin, delivered in a firm no-nonsense voice, and no sooner did she go than Lelaine came, as if the Blue Sitter had been waiting for the Yellow’s departure. Lelaine had her own helpful counsel, given with Egwene sitting up in bed after Chesa was gently but firmly put out of the room. It was not a bit like Romanda’s advice—neither was much like Sheriam’s—and came with a warm, even affectionate, smile, but with just as much certainty that Egwene would need a little guidance in her first months. Neither woman
exactly said that she could guide Egwene to what was best for the Tower better than Sheriam, or that Sheriam and her little circle might try to tug in too many directions, or that they might give bad advice, but the strong implications were there. Romanda and Lelaine also each hinted that the other might have her own agenda, one that undoubtedly would cause untold misery.

By the time Egwene channeled the last lamp out, she expected a sleep full of nightmares. In fact there were only two that she remembered the next morning. In one she was Amyrlin—Aes Sedai, but without taking the oaths—and everything she did led to disaster. That wakened her bolt upright, just to get away, yet she was sure it was not a dream with meaning. It was much the same as one of her experiences inside the
ter’angreal
where she had been tested for Accepted; as far as anyone knew, those had no connection to reality. Not to this reality. The other was the sort of foolishness she expected; she knew enough about her own dreams now to know that, even if she had to wake herself finally to escape that one as well. Sheriam had snatched the stole from her shoulders, and then everyone was laughing at her and pointing at the fool who really believed a girl of barely eighteen years could be Amyrlin. Not just the Aes Sedai, but all the Wise Ones, and Rand and Perrin and Mat, Nynaeve and Elayne, almost everyone she had ever met, while she stood there naked, desperately trying to put on an Accepted’s dress that might have fit a ten-year-old child.