Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6)

Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time #6) Page 119

Melaine was chortling quite openly, and Egwene found herself giggling too. Some Aiel humor was beyond explaining, but not this. She had only met Carlinya three times, but the image of that stiff, icily supercilious woman dancing about trying to haul snakes out of her dress—it was all she could do to keep from laughing out loud.

“At least your humor is in good fettle,” Melaine said. “The head pains have not come back?”

“My head feels fine,” Egwene lied, and Bair nodded.

“Good. We were worried when they persisted. So long as you refrain from entering the dream for a while longer, they should stay away. Do not fear you suffer any ill effect from them; the body uses pain to tell us to rest.”

That nearly made Egwene laugh again, though not in humor. Aiel ignored gaping wounds and broken bones because they could not be bothered right then. “How much longer do I have to stay out?” she asked. She hated lying to them, but she hated doing nothing even worse. The first ten days after Lanfear hit her with whatever that had been were bad enough; then she could not even think without her head splitting. Once she could, what her mother called “the itchy hands of idleness” had driven her into Tel’aran’rhiod behind the Wise Ones’ backs. You learned nothing resting. “The next meeting, you said?”

“Perhaps,” Melaine replied with a shrug. “We will see. But you must eat. If your desire for food is gone, something is wrong that we do not know.”

“Oh, I can eat.” The porridge cooking outside did smell good. “I was just being lazy, I suppose.” Getting up without wincing was a chore; her head did not like being moved yet. “I thought of some more questions last night.”

Melaine rolled her eyes in amusement. “Since, you were hurt you ask five questions for every one you asked before.”

Because she was trying to puzzle things out for herself. She could not say that, of course, so she just dug a clean shift from one of the small chests lining the tent wall and exchanged it for her sweaty one.

“Questions are good,” Bair said. “Ask.”

Egwene chose her words carefully. And went on with her dressing, casually, in the same white algode blouse and bulky wool skirt the Wise Ones wore. “Is it possible to be pulled into someone’s dream against your will?”

“Of course not,” Amys said, “not unless your touch is all thumbs.”

But right on top of her, Bair said, “Not unless there is strong emotion involved. If you try to watch the dream of someone who loves or hates you, you can be pulled in. Or if you love or hate them. That last is why we do not dare try to watch Sevanna’s dreams, or even to speak with the Shaido Wise Ones in their dreams.” It still surprised Egwene that these women, and the other Wise Ones, all visited and talked with the Shaido Wise Ones. Wise Ones were supposed to be above feuds and battles, but she would have thought opposing the Car’a’carn, vowing to kill him, took the Shaido well beyond that. “Leaving the dream of someone who hates you, or loves you,” Bair finished, “is like trying to climb from a deep pit with sheer sides.”

“There is that.” Amys seemed to recover her humor suddenly; she gave Melaine a sidelong glance. “That is why no dreamwalker ever makes the mistake of trying to watch her husband’s dreams.” Melaine stared straight ahead, face darkening. “She does not make it twice anyway,” Amys added.

Bair grinned, deepening the creases of her face, and very pointedly did not look at Melaine. “It can be quite a shock, especially if he is angry with you. If, to choose an example from air, ji’e’toh takes him away from you, and you, like some silly child, were foolish enough to tell him he would not go if he loved you.”

“This is running far afield from her question,” a crimson-faced Melaine said stiffly. Bair cackled loudly.

Egwene stifled curiosity, and amusement. She made her voice ever so offhanded. “What if you don’t try to look in?” Melaine gave her a grateful look, and she felt a twinge of guilt. Not enough that she would not ask for the whole story later, though. Anything that made Melaine blush so had to be hilarious.

“I heard of such a thing,” Bair said, “when I was young and just beginning to learn. Mora, the Wise One of Colrada Hold, trained me, and she said that if the emotion was very strong, love or hate so great it left room for nothing else, you could be drawn in merely by letting yourself be aware of the other’s dream.”

“I have never heard anything like that,” Melaine said. Amys merely looked doubtful.

“Nor have I from any save Mora,” Bair told them, “but she was a remarkable woman. It was said she was approaching her three hundredth year when she died from a bloodsnake’s bite, yet she looked as young as either of you. I was only a girl, but I remember her well. She knew many things, and could channel strongly. Other Wise Ones came from every clan to learn from her. I think love so great, or hate so, is very rare, but she said this happened to her twice, once with the first man she married, and once with a rival for her third husband’s interest.”

“Three hundred?” Egwene exclaimed, a soft knee-high boot half-laced. Surely even Aes Sedai did not live that long.

“I said that it was said,” Bair replied, smiling. “Some women age more slowly than others, like Amys here, and when it is a woman like Mora, tales are born. Someday I will tell you the story of how Mora moved a mountain. Supposedly, at least.”

“Another day?” Melaine said a touch too politely. Plainly she still smarted over whatever had happened in Bael’s dream, and over the fact the others knew. “I heard every tale of Mora when I was a child; I have them all by heart, I think. If Egwene ever finishes dressing, we must see her fed.” A gleam in her green eyes said she meant to watch every bite go down; clearly her suspicions about Egwene’s health had not been soothed. “And answer the rest of her questions.”

Frantically Egwene fumbled for another. Usually she had a slew of questions, but the events of the night had left her with just that one. If she let it remain at that, they might start wondering whether it had come because she had sneaked off to spy on someone’s dream. Another question. Not about her own odd dreams. Some of them probably had meaning, if she could ferret it out. Anaiya claimed Egwene was a Dreamer, able to foretell the course of future events, and these three women thought it might be so, but they said she had to learn it from within. Besides, she was not sure she wanted to discuss her dreams with anyone. These women already knew more than she really liked about what went on inside her head. “Ah . . . what about dreamwalkers who aren’t Wise Ones? I mean, do you ever see other women in Tel&rsqu