The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5)

The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time #5) Page 154

Vaguely, she heard Elayne say, “Remember to ask her again.”

Sleep took her.

She stood outside the wagon, in the night. The moon was high, and drifting clouds cast shadows over the camp. Crickets chirruped, and the nightbirds called. The lions' eyes shone as they watched her from their cages. The whitefaced bears were dark sleeping mounds behind the iron bars. The long picket line stood empty of horses, Clarine's dogs were not on their leashes beneath her and Petra's wagon, and the space where the s'redit stood in the waking world was bare. She had come to understand that only wild creatures had reflections here, but whatever the Seanchan woman claimed, it was hard to think that those huge gray animals had been domesticated so long that they were no longer wild.

Abruptly she realized that she was wearing the dress. Blazing red, far too snug around the hips for decency, and a square neck cut so low she thought she might pop out. She could not imagine any woman but Berelain donning it. For Lan, she might. If they were alone. She had been thinking of Lan when she drifted off. I was, wasn't I?

In any case, she was not about to let Birgitte see her in the thing. The woman claimed to be a soldier, and the more time Nynaeve spent with her, the more she realized that some of her attitudes and comments were as bad as any man's. Worse. A combination of Berelain and a tavern brawler. The comments did not come out all the time, but they certainly did whenever Nynaeve allowed idle thoughts to put her in anything like this dress. She changed to good stout Two Rivers wool, dark, with a plain shawl she did not need, her hair decently braided again, and opened her mouth to call Birgitte.

“Why did you change?” the woman said, stepping out from the shadows to lean on her silver bow. Her intricate golden braid hung over her shoulder, and moonlight shone on her bow and arrows. “I remember wearing a gown that could have been twin to that, once. It was only to attract attention so Gaidal could sneak by — the guards' eyes bulged like frogs' — but it was fun. Especially when I wore it dancing with him later. He always hates dancing, but he was so intent on keeping any other man from getting close that he danced every dance.” Birgitte laughed fondly. “I won fifty gold solids from him that night at spin, because he stared so much, he never looked at his tiles. Men are peculiar. It was not as if he had never seen me —”

“That's as may be,” Nynaeve cut in primly, wrapping the shawl firmly around her shoulders.

Before she could add her question, Birgitte said, “I have found her,” and all thought of the question fled.

“Where? Did she see you? Can you take me to her? Without her seeing?” Fear fluttered in Nynaeve's belly — a fat lot Valan Luca would say about her courage if he could see her now — but she was sure it would turn to anger as soon as she saw Moghedien. “If you can bring me close...” She trailed off as Birgitte raised a hand.

“I cannot think she saw me, or I doubt I would be here now.” She was all seriousness now; Nynaeve found it much easier to be around her when she showed this side of being a soldier. “I can take you close for a moment, if you want to go, but she is not alone. At least... You will see. You must be silent, and you must take no action against Moghedien. There are other Forsaken. Perhaps you could destroy her, but can you destroy five of them?”

The fluttering in Nynaeve's middle spread to her chest. And her knees. Five. She should ask what Birgitte had seen or heard and let it go at that. Then she could return to her bed and... But Birgitte was looking at her. Not questioning her courage, only looking. Ready to do this thing if she said. “I will be silent. And I won't even think of channeling.” Not with five Forsaken together. Not that she could have channeled a spark at that moment. She stiffened her knees to keep them from knocking. “Whenever you are ready.”

Birgitte hefted her bow and put a hand on Nynaeve's arm...

...and Nynaeve's breath caught in her throat. They were standing on nothing, infinite blackness all around, no way to tell up from down, and in every direction a fall that would last forever. Head spinning, she made herself look where Birgitte pointed.

Below them, Moghedien also stood on darkness, garbed nearly as black as what surrounded her, bent and listening intently. And as far below her, four huge, highbacked chairs, each different, sat on an expanse of glistening whitetiled floor floating in the blackness. Strangely, Nynaeve could hear what those in the chairs said as well as if she had been among them.

“... never been a coward,” a plumply pretty, sunhaired woman was saying, “so why begin?” Seemingly attired in silverygray mist and sparkling gems, she lounged in a chair of ivory worked so it appeared made of naked acrobats. Four carved men held it aloft, and her arms rested along the backs of kneeling women; two men and two women held a white silk cushion behind her head, while above more were contorted into shapes Nynaeve did not believe a human body could attain. She blushed when she realized that some were performing more than acrobatic tricks.

A compact man of middling height, with a livid scar across his face and a square golden beard, leaned forward angrily. His chair was heavy wood, carved with columns of armored men and horses, a steelgauntleted fist clasping lighting at the back's peak. His red coat made up for the lack of gilding on the chair, for golden scrollwork rolled across his shoulders and down his arms. “No one names me coward,” he said harshly. “But if we continue as we are, he will come straight for my throat.”

“That has been the plan from the beginning,” said a woman's melodious voice. Nynaeve could not see the speaker, hidden behind the towering back of a chair that seemed all snowwhite stone and silver.

The second man was large and darkly handsome, with white wings streaking his temples. He toyed with an ornate golden goblet, leaning back in a throne. That was the only possible word for the gemencrusted thing. A mere hint of gold showed here and there, but Nynaeve would not have doubted that it was solid gold beneath all those glittering rubies and emeralds and moonstones; it had an air of weight quite apart from its massive size. “He will concentrate on you,” the big man said in a deep voice. “If need be, one close to him will die, plainly at your order. He will come for you. And while he is fixed on you alone, the three of us, linked, will take him. What has changed to alter any of that?”

“Nothing has changed,” the scarred man growled. “Least of all, my trust for you. I will be part of the li