The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,145

had no idea where she was, and did not care. “Oh, Light,” she moaned, “that hurt. Oh, Light, that hurt!” She ran her hands over herself, sure her skin must be scored or wealed to make such a burning, but she could not find a mark.

“We are here,” Nynaeve’s voice said from the darkness. “We’re here, Egwene.”

Egwene threw herself toward the voice and wrapped her arms around Nynaeve’s neck in sheer relief. “Oh, Light, I’m back. Light, I’m back.”

“Elayne,” Nynaeve said.

In a few moments one of the candles was giving a small light. Elayne paused with the candle in hand and the spill she had lit with flint and steel in the other. Then she smiled, and every candle in the room burst into flame. She stopped at the washstand and came back to the bed with a cool, damp cloth to wash Egwene’s face.

“Was it bad?” she asked worriedly. “You never stirred. You never mumbled. We did not know whether to wake you or not.”

Hurriedly, Egwene fumbled the leather cord from around her neck and hurled it and the stone ring across the room. “Next time,” she panted, “we decide on a time, and you wake me after it. Wake me if you have to stick my head in a basin of water!” She had not realized that she had decided there would be a next time. Would you put your head in a bear’s mouth just to show you weren’t afraid? Would you do it twice just because you’d done it once and didn’t die?

Yet it was more than a matter of proving to herself that she was not afraid. She was afraid, and knew it. But so long as the Black Ajah had those ter’angreal Corianin had studied, she would have to keep going back. She was sure the answer to why they wanted them lay in Tel’aran’rhiod. If she could find answers about the Black Ajah there—perhaps other answers, too, if half what she had been told about Dreaming were true—she had to go back. “But not tonight,” she said softly. “Not yet.”

“What happened?” Nynaeve asked. “What did you . . . dream?”

Egwene lay back on the bed and told them. Of it all, the only thing she left out was about Perrin talking to the wolf. She left the wolf out altogether. She felt a little guilty about keeping secrets from Elayne and Nynaeve, but it was Perrin’s secret to tell, when and if he chose, not hers. The rest she gave them word for word, describing everything. When she was done, she felt emptied.

“Aside from being tired,” Elayne said, “did he look hurt? Egwene, I cannot believe he would ever hurt you. I cannot believe he would.”

“Rand,” Nynaeve said dryly, “will have to look after himself awhile longer.” Elayne blushed; she looked pretty doing it. Egwene realized that Elayne looked pretty doing anything, even crying, or scrubbing pots. “Callandor,” Nynaeve continued. “The Heart of the Stone. That was marked on the plan. I think we know where the Black Ajah is.”

Elayne had regained her poise. “It does not change the trap,” she said. “If it is not a diversion, it is a trap.”

Nynaeve smiled grimly. “The best way to catch whoever set a trap is to spring it and wait for him to come. Or her, in this instance.”

“You mean go to Tear?” Egwene said, and Nynaeve nodded.

“The Amyrlin has cut us loose, it seems. We make our own decisions, remember? At least we know the Black Ajah is in Tear, and we know who to look for there. Here, all we can do is sit and stew in our own suspicions of everybody, wonder if there is another Gray Man out there. I would rather be the hound than the rabbit.”

“I have to write to my mother,” Elayne said. When she saw the looks they gave her, her voice became defensive. “I have already vanished once without her knowing where I was. If I do it again. . . . You do not know Mother’s temper. She could send Gareth Bryne and the whole army against Tar Valon. Or hunting after us.”

“You could stay here,” Egwene said.

“No. I will not let you two go alone. And I won’t stay here wondering if the sister teaching me is a Darkfriend, or if the next Gray Man will come after me.” She gave a small laugh. “I will not work in the kitchens while you two are off adventuring, either. I just have to tell