The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,185

me?” she said excitedly. “I saw it around you. Sheriam Sedai said I would, eventually. This was the first time. For you, too?”

Egwene nodded, laughing along with the other girl. “I like you, Elayne. I think we’re going to be friends.”

“I think so, too, Egwene. You are from the Two Rivers, from Emond’s Field. Do you know a boy named Rand al’Thor?”

“I know him.” Abruptly Egwene found herself remembering a tale Rand had told, a tale she had not believed, about falling off a wall into a garden and meeting. . . . “You’re the Daughter-Heir of Andor,” she gasped.

“Yes,” Elayne said simply. “If Sheriam Sedai as much as heard I’d mentioned it, I think she would have me into her study before I finished talking.”

“Everyone talks about being called to Sheriam’s study. Even the Accepted. Does she scold so fiercely? She seems kindly to me.”

Elayne hesitated, and when she spoke it was slowly, not meeting Egwene’s eye. “She keeps a willow switch on her desk. She says if you can’t learn to follow the rules in a civilized way, she will teach you another way. There are so many rules for novices, it is very hard not to break some of them,” she finished.

“But that’s—that’s horrible! I’m not a child, and neither are you. I won’t be treated as one.”

“But we are children. The Aes Sedai, the full sisters, are the grown women. The Accepted are the young women, old enough to be trusted without someone looking over their shoulders every moment. And novices are the children, to be protected and cared for, guided in the way they should go, and punished when they do what they should not. That is the way Sheriam Sedai explains it. No one is going to punish you over your lessons, not unless you try something you’ve been told not to. It is hard not to try, sometimes; you will find you want to channel as much as you want to breathe. But if you break too many dishes because you are daydreaming when you should be washing, if you’re disrespectful to an Accepted, or leave the Tower without permission, or speak to an Aes Sedai before she speaks to you, or. . . . The only thing to do is the best you can. There isn’t anything else to do.”

“It sounds almost as if they’re trying to make us want to leave,” Egwene protested.

“They aren’t, but then again, they are. Egwene, there are only forty novices in the Tower. Only forty, and no more than seven or eight will become Accepted. That is not enough, Sheriam Sedai says. She says there are not enough Aes Sedai now to do what needs to be done. But the Tower will not . . . cannot . . . lower its standards. The Aes Sedai cannot take a woman as a sister if she does not have the ability, and the strength, and the desire. They can’t give the ring and the shawl to one who cannot channel the Power well enough, or who will allow herself to be intimidated, or who will turn back when the road turns rough. Training and testing take care of the channeling, and for strength and desire. . . . Well, if you want to go, they will let you. Once you know enough that you won’t die of ignorance.”

“I suppose,” Egwene said slowly, “Sheriam told us some of that. I never thought about there not being enough Aes Sedai, though.”

“She has a theory. She says we have culled humankind. You know about culling? Cutting out of the herd those animals that have traits you don’t like?” Egwene nodded impatiently; no one could grow up around sheep without knowing about culling the flock. “Sheriam Sedai says that with the Red Ajah hunting down men who could channel for three thousand years, we are culling the ability to channel out of us all. I would not mention this around any Reds, if I were you. Sheriam Sedai has been in more than one shouting match over it, and we are only novices.”

“I won’t.”

Elayne paused, and then said, “Is Rand well?”

Egwene felt a sudden stab of jealousy—Elayne was very pretty—but over it came a stronger stab of fear. She went over the little she knew of Rand’s one meeting with the Daughter-Heir, reassuring herself: Elayne could not possibly know that Rand could channel.

“Egwene?”

“He is as well as he can be.” I hope he is, the wool-headed idiot. “He was riding with