The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,275

I know it would burn me to a crisp, and I want it anyway.” She shivered. “I just wish you were more afraid.”

“I am afraid,” Egwene said with a sigh. “I’m terrified. But it doesn’t seem to help. What about you, Elayne?”

“The only thing that terrifies me,” Elayne said airily, “is washing dishes. It seems as if I have to wash dishes every day.” Egwene threw her pillow at her. Elayne pulled it off her head and threw it back, but then her shoulders slumped. “Oh, very well. I am so scared I don’t know why my teeth are not chattering. Elaida told me I’d be so frightened that I would want to run away with the Traveling People, but I did not understand. A man who drove oxen as hard as they drive us would be shunned. I am tired all the time. I wake up tired and go to bed exhausted, and sometimes I’m so afraid that I will slip and channel more of the Power than I can handle that I. . . .” Peering into her lap, she let the words trail off.

Egwene knew what she had not spoken. Their rooms lay right next to each other, and as in many of the novice rooms, a small hole had long ago been bored through the wall between, too small to be seen unless you knew where to look, but useful for talk after the lamps were extinguished, when the girls could not leave their rooms. Egwene had heard Elayne crying herself to sleep more than once, and she had no doubt that Elayne had heard her own crying.

“The Traveling People are tempting,” Nynaeve agreed, “but wherever you go, it will not change what you can do. You cannot run from saidar.” She did not sound as if she liked what she was saying.

“What do you see, Min?” Elayne said. “Are we all going to be powerful Aes Sedai, or will we spend the rest of our lives washing dishes as novices, or. . . .” She shrugged uncomfortably as if she did not want to voice the third alternative that came to mind. Sent home. Put out of the Tower. Two novices had been put out since Egwene came, and everyone spoke of them in whispers, as if they were dead.

Min shifted on her stool. “I don’t like reading friends,” she muttered. “Friendship gets in the way of the reading. It makes me try to put the best face on what I see. That’s why I don’t do it for you three anymore. Anyway, nothing has changed about you that I can. . . .” She squinted at them, and suddenly frowned. “That’s new,” she breathed.

“What?” Nynaeve asked sharply.

Min hesitated before answering. “Danger. You are all in some kind of danger. Or you will be, very soon. I can’t make it out, but it is danger.”

“You see,” Nynaeve said to the two girls sitting on the bed. “You must take care. We all must. You must both promise not to channel again without someone to guide you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Egwene said.

Elayne nodded eagerly. “Yes. Let’s talk about something else. Min, if you put on a dress, I’ll wager Gawyn would ask you to go walking with him. You know he’s been looking at you, but I think the breeches and the man’s coat put him off.”

“I dress the way I like, and I won’t change for a lord, even if he is your brother.” Min spoke absently, still squinting at them and frowning; it was a conversation they had had before. “Sometimes it is useful to pass as a boy.”

“No one who looks twice believes you are a boy.” Elayne smiled.

Egwene was uncomfortable. Elayne was forcing a semblance of gaiety, Min was hardly paying attention, and Nynaeve looked as if she wanted to warn them again.

When the door swung open once more, Egwene bounded to her feet to close it, grateful for something to do besides watch the others pretend. Before she reached it, though, a dark-eyed Aes Sedai with her blond hair done in a multitude of braids stepped into the room. Egwene blinked in surprise, as much at it being any Aes Sedai as at Liandrin. She had not heard that Liandrin had returned to the White Tower, but beyond that, novices were sent for if an Aes Sedai wanted them; it could mean no good, a sister coming herself.

The room was crowded with five women in it. Liandrin