The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3)

The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time #3) Page 52

Nynaeve accompanied her all the way back to the novices' quarters, not turning aside to the Accepted's quarters. The galleries were still empty, and they met no one as they climbed the spiraling ramps.

As they came up on Elayne's room, Nynaeve stopped, knocked once, and immediately opened the door and put her head inside. Then she was letting the white door swing shut and striding toward the next, Egwene's room. “She isn't here yet,” she said. “I need to talk to both of you.”

Egwene caught her shoulders and pulled her to an abrupt halt. “What—?” Something tugged at her hair, stung her ear. A black blur streaked in front of her face to clang against the wall, and in the next breath Nynaeve was bearing her to the gallery floor, behind the railing.

Wideeyed and sprawling, Egwene stared at what lay on the stone in front of her door, where it had fallen. A bolt from a crossbow. A few dark strands from her hair were tangled in the four heavy prongs, meant for punching through armor. She raised a trembling hand to touch her ear, to touch the tiniest nick, damp with a bead of blood. If I had not stopped just then... If I hadn't... The quarrel would have gone right through her head, and would probably have killed Nynaeve, too. “Blood and ashes!” she gasped. “Blood and bloody ashes!”

“Watch your language,” Nynaeve admonished, but her heart was not in it. She lay peering between the white stone balusters toward the far side of the galleries. A glow surrounded her, to Egwene's eyes. She had embraced saidar.

Hastily, Egwene tried to reach out for the One Power, too, but at first haste defeated her. Haste, and images that kept intruding on the emptiness, images of her head being ripped apart like a rotten melon by a heavy quarrel that went on to bury itself in Nynaeve. She took a deep breath and tried again, and finally the rose floated in nothingness, opened to the True Source, and the Power filled her.

She rolled onto her stomach to peer through the railing beside Nynaeve. “Do you see anything? Do you see him? I'll put a lightning bolt through him!” She could feel it building, pressing on her to loose it. “It is a man, isn't it?” She could not imagine a man coming into the novices' quarters, but it was impossible to picture a woman carrying a crossbow through the Tower.

“I don't know.” Quiet anger filled Nynaeve's voice; her anger was always at its worst when she grew quiet with it. “I thought I saw — Yes! There!” Egwene felt the Power pulse in the other woman, and then Nynaeve was unhurriedly getting to her feet, brushing at her dress as if there were nothing more to worry about.

Egwene stared at her. “What? What did you do? Nynaeve?”

“ 'Of the Five Powers,' ” Nynaeve said in a lecturing tone, faintly mocking, “ 'Air, sometimes called Wind, is thought by many to be of the least use. This is far from true.' ” She finished with a tight laugh. “I told you there were other ways to defend ourselves. I used Air, to hold him with air. If it is a he; I could not see him clearly. A trick the Amyrlin showed me once, though I doubt she expected me to see how it was done. Well, are you going to lie there all day?”

Egwene scrambled up to hurry after her around the gallery. Before long a man did come into sight around the curve, dressed in plain brown breeches and coat. He stood facing the other way, balanced on the ball of one foot, with the other hanging in midair as if he had been caught in the middle of running. The man would feel as if he were buried in thick jelly, yet it was nothing but air stiffened around him. Egwene remembered the Amyrlin's trick, too, but she did not think she could duplicate it. Nynaeve only had to see a thing done once to know how to do it herself. When she could manage to channel at all, of course.

They came closer, and Egwene's melding with the Power vanished in shock. The hilt of a dagger stood out from the man's chest. His face sagged, and death had already filmed his halfclosed eyes. He crumpled to the gallery floor as Nynaeve loosed the trap that had held him.

He was an averageappearing man, of average height and average build, with features so ordinary Egwene did not think she would have noticed him in a group of three. She only studied him a moment, though, before realizing that something was missing. A crossbow.

She gave a start and looked about wildly. “There had to be another one, Nynaeve. Somebody took the crossbow. And somebody stabbed him. He could be out there ready to shoot at us again.”

“Calm yourself,” Nynaeve said, but she peered both ways along the gallery, jerking at her braid. “Just be calm, and we will figure out what to—” Her words cut off at the sound of steps on the ramp leading up to their level.

Egwene's heart pounded, seemingly in her throat. Eyes fastened on the head of the ramp, she desperately strove to touch saidar again, but for her that required calm, and her heartbeats shattered calm.

Sheriam Sedai stopped at the top of the ramp, frowning at what she saw. “What in the name of the Light has happened here?” She hurried forward, her serenity gone for once.

“We found him,” Nynaeve said as the Mistress of Novices knelt beside the corpse.

Sheriam put a hand to the man's chest, and jerked it back twice as fast, hissing. Steeling herself visibly, she touched him again, and maintained the Touch longer. “Dead,” she muttered. “As dead as it is possible to be, and more.” When she straightened, she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her fingers. “You found him? Here? Like this?”

Egwene nodded, sure that if she spoke, Sheriam would hear the lie in her voice.

“We did,” Nynaeve said firmly.

Sheriam shook her head. “A man — a dead man, at that! — in the novices' quarters would be scandal enough, but this... !”

“What makes him different?” Nynaeve asked. “And how could he be more than dead?”

Sheriam took a deep breath, and gave them each a searching look. “He is one of the Soulless. A Gray Man.” Absently, she wiped her fingers again, her eyes going back to the body. Worried eyes.

“The Soulless?” Egwene said, a tremor in her voice, at the same time that Nynaeve said, “A Gray Man?”

Sheriam glanced at them, a look as penetrating as it was brief. “Not a part of your studies, yet, but you seem to have gone beyond the rules in a great many ways. And considering you found this...” She gestured to the corpse. “The Soulless, the Gray Men, give up their souls to serve the Dark One as assassins. They are not really alive, after that. Not quite dead, but not truly alive. And despite the name, some Gray Men are women. A very few. Even among Darkfriends, only a handful of women are stupid enough to make that sacrifice. You can look right at them and hardly notice them, until it is too late. He was as much as dead while he walked. Now, only my eyes tell me that what is lying there ever lived at all.” She gave them another long look. “No Gray Man has dared enter Tar Valon sinc