Outside in the city, bells were beginning to chime. The tolling, filling the gaps in the fading birdsong, marked the passing of the night—the ending of a vigil—but to what it dawned remained to be shown. Nynaeve blinked; a syncopated dropping of lids. Yes, through the open-flung windows the sky was beginning to pale. The night, to be spent in holy contemplation, had spent itself at last. Every revelation worth having had come to her beforetime—though none too soon—and so she had waited out the customary vigil in a half-stupor, empty-headed though still waking. Really, she hadn't thought one person could be this exhausted and still remain conscious. But she had abstained from sleep, as dictated by the Tower's all-important traditions, and, well, if her thoughts did not linger upon the sacred trust she prepared to take, her thoughts were her own. If this mess had taught her anything—unnecessary, inconvenient, and painful as it was—at least it had served to redefine the distinctions she had been afraid to examine too closely before, and her priorities lay before her now in sharper shades of Dark and Light than they'd been in a long while. If her thoughts wandered, they wandered with a purpose. If her focus was not directed where they would have wished, it was diligent, and this newly kindled trust was far more sacred to her. Taking Lan's Bond from Myrelle as she had may have been ill-considered, but she would do it again, given the chance. She had waited patiently for so long. Here, at the raggedy edge of the world, there was no more room for excuses or pretenses. The time for putting off had passed: there would be no more holding back. The whole of Creation risked everything, and she would risk nothing more.
There had been no one to teach her, of course, but when had there ever been? She was well used to muddling and intuiting her way through what no one ever bothered to explain. So, all the night long she had grappled with the handling of him: that bubble of otherness nestled at the back of her skull, so familiar and beloved, so foreign. The night long, she had played at letting that awareness contract and expand, burgeoning, taking root: loose and unthinkingly, as she had long ago let those occasional Healings flow through her unforced. Half an continent away, imperfectly, without ever speaking, without ever knowing whether he was aware of the change—though Nynaeve flattered herself he was—with a lover's tenderness she learned him anew. Kneeling unmoving in the center of the rug, clad still in the simple gown she'd donned that morning, a lifetime ago, she obtained a sense of peace. It was something she'd never really known: it settled itself around the resolve that had grown up through her spine, fortifying the woody trunk with new, strong shoots. The whole world might any moment rip asunder. She knew exactly what she must do—and must never do again.
By imperceptible degrees, the crickets grew still, and the small room filled up with a watery blue light thrown back off the white stone of Tar Valon. Nynaeve had not remarked on the inadequacy of the rooms relegated to her in the Yellows' quarters. They served their purpose well enough: she didn't mean to linger here any longer than she had to. The welcome she'd received, even returning from the testing, could hardly be called that, bu she didn't grudge the other Yellow sisters their hesitance. She hardly knew what to do with herself: how could she expect anyone else to? It hardly mattered, anyhow. This was merely a waystop on the gallop to Tarmon Gai'don, a small thing that needed doing. She had promised Egwene, oh, how long ago? And these were not the days for forgetting promises. Oaths sworn in peace were even more important now, to her reckoning. Be it a ring, or a word, or an army.
As if for the first time, she unfolded her creaking, protesting legs from beneath her and rose, feeling every one of her years—and several decades besides that did not belong to her at all—weigh heavily on her shoulders. Her eye sockets, her mouth felt as if they had somehow become filled with sand. Had that actually...happened? she wondered as the thought prodded a hazy memory, but she jerked away. Best not to think of that. It would only make her angry, and she hadn't the energy for it.
Instead, she regarded herself in the oblong of smoky glass above the washbasin. The hands she laid on the rim of the stone bowl were not for support, surely. Her gown of linen, patterned in mustard and bronze, would be none the worse for being worn two days in succession—while the body now shelled inside had been subjected to the vast bulk of the abuse it had seen in that time, the dress had been neatly folded out of harm's way. Grimacing at her reflection, Nynaeve began to regret her stout refusal of that Sumiko's offer of additional Healing—beyond that initial shock that had ensured she'd survive the night; she had not gotten a say in that. The whole left side of her face was one blotch of purple going faintly green in odd patches. Her eye was drawn to the bright spot of color between her brows, and skittered away uncomfortably again; the painted-on ki'sain looked nothing so much like a drop of blood, amid the rest of the gore. Yes, those were burn marks, mingled with the ragged scrapes along her chin and jaw. The deep split in her lip was skinning over much too tight and, judging by the tenderness, she suspected her nose—among other things—might have been broken at some point. Nynaeve whistled low, fingering a singed eyebrow. No two ways about it, she looked a bloody fright. Likely, the rest of her was no better—she'd stopped trying to catalog individual pains hours ago and resigned herself to one indistinct mass of soreness—but at least the dress covered most of it, and the dress looked fine. She didn't much relish the thought of going before the Hall in this state, but perverse pride made her throw her groaning shoulders back. They'd forced this on her, with their reliance on outmoded, inapplicable formalities. Far be it for her to cheapen the gesture, and far be it for her to assuage any guilt the Sisters might feel at her mistreatment by erasing the evidence. This would simply have to do. Peremptorily, she began twisting at her hair, but dropped it again with an exasperated sigh seconds later.
It just wouldn't hang right. Having lost the greater part of her waist-length, pin-straight tresses, the burned off margin fell across the leading edge of her wing bones. Without the constant, familiar weight gently dragging her chin up, she felt vulnerable, half-naked; the lightness of the missing weight was just as disorientating as the lightheadedness caused by fatigue.
Cloistering herself for the vigil, she'd taken the time to wash up, uncaring whether that was allowed or not—they'd troubled to leave a basin of water, so surely it was not forbidden, That had sorted the worst of it, dislodging the clots of dirt and blood and soot—and Light knew what else—the left-over remnants that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place. Leaving it to fall wet and clammy around her face, she'd become accustomed to its cut-off fall, as she'd become accustomed to the various bruises and burns still marking her, while it dried slowly as she knelt on the rug. Now, she was at an utter loss. Too short to make a proper braid—too abundant to make even a decent foreshortened one. Not one morning in the past ten years could she remember beginning without the ritual strand-over-strand. It was more than just a way to keep her hair ordered, out of her face; it meant something. It was who she was.
All those years ago, her braid had been a status symbol, an object of pride, when the Women's Circle had permitted her to bind her hair up at sixteen—a year or two sooner than most girls. Taking up the Wisdom's staff at only twenty—the youngest ever—she had been more than hard pressed to get the lot of them to remember that she was a grown woman, behind her overly-youthful face, and nevermind her office.
Out here, removed from cultural context, where a thing as innocuous as braided hair should have been meaningless, to her, perhaps, it meant more. In the largely homogenous society of the Two Rivers, one learned to equate the ubiquitous waist-length braid with womanhood. Snatched roughly from that shelter, she'd been confronted with a much wider world than she'd ever countenanced: a world where motives were not always simple to decipher, where others' ideals and morality differed so vastly from her own, and women wore their hair anywhich way they pleased. Even Egwene, who'd been so pleased a year and a half before to be allowed her braid, had shucked the practice almost as soon as she'd learned she could channel. But she'd held on, as much out of defiance as habit. Though the world might invert itself crazily—so that folk walked on clouds and breathed water instead of air—her heritage was one thing Moiraine could not take from her. Not Moiraine, or Moghedion, or the White Tower, or the Dark One himself. Only... and Nynaeve shut her eyes briefly to banish the image in the imperfect mirror—Light, she would not cry. She would not! She was tired, that was all. Only, she admitted, toying half-heartedly with the still blackened fringe of her cinnamon-brown, only it seemed the White Tower, so bent on conformity, had finally succeeded in wresting from her what she had so far refused to give.
Letting blow an in-held breath of frustration, Nynaeve splashed up a handful of cold water, wetting her face and partially slicking back the leading edge of her now less-than-ruly mop. Though it was a futile wish, she'd have liked to know exactly which of the sisters had been responsible for her unorthodox shearing. Not that it would make a difference—what was done, was done—but she would rather like to give that woman a piece of her mind. Once, only once, in her entire life had her hair been cut: then, only to thwart the rampage of the fever that took her mother and da. Regarding the face looking back at her, so unfamiliar, Nynaeve could hardly be persuaded that it was her own. The humiliation, she could countanence—the physical abuse, the constant doubt and patronization. That, she could forgive. This—she let a fistful of hair by her ear fall a meager distance in a slanted curtain—this was another thing entirely. This was simply cruel.
Experimentally, Nynaeve gathered up what remained of the length of her hair and held it messily behind her, coiling this way, dragging that. Dissatisfied, she let it go, and shivered. It fell all wrong. Over-shortened—much shorter than she was used to, though not as cropped as Min's, or others' she'd seen—it fell at an angle that was wholly unfamiliar. The bottom edge twitched uncomfortably between her shoulder blades, tickling, itching. It nestled there, mimicking the warning prickle that something lurked behind; moving restively as she moved, like the crawling feet of an overlarge beetle administering a constant, unanswerable imperative to turn round, quick, and look. Once or twice, she'd caught herself doing just that, but there was never anything there, and the rapid motion only served to make her more jumpy, and dizzy besides. Yet she could not shake the uncanny illusion of something on her back, perpetuated by the choppy fall of hair. Poking at its uneven length, Nynaeve thought she must really do something about that. For now, though, she'd content herself with getting it up off her neck, making herself as presentable as could be hoped for. Perhaps pulling it back, simulating the tension her her usual braid, would alleviate some of the discomfort. Noting the mellowing light and diffusing birdsong, she continued to play at it, until she found that with the larger part of her hair bunched to the back, it no longer attempted so vehemently to escape. Inspired, Nynaeve coiled the lot of it loosely, binding it and securing the knot with a handful of stocking needles.
There! She stepped back, a small satisfaction lifting the corners of her mouth. The fist-sized knot, coming to rest just where the base of her skull fitted to the nape of her neck, made an elegant compromise. With all but the shortest, most stubborn strands pulled back from her face, she looked much more like herself. With the pendulous weight of her hair concentrated at the apex of her spine, exerting a continuous, familiar pressure to her scalp and reminding her to hold herself a little straighter, she felt much more like herself.
The savor of that small victory diminished a little as she was forced to contemplate the fact that even she was not sure who that was, anymore. Waist level, her fingers twitched resent fully at empty air. She pinned so much of her identity on outside factors. As Wisdom, she'd strove so hard to mold herself to those things a Wisdom needed to be, to be what others needed from her. On this helter-skelter from Emond's Field—that surely was not over yet—it had always been her cleaving to that identity that had allowed her to come through each new turning with at least a little sanity left. She might know nothing at all about the world or what exactly was her place in it—but unfailingly, she could turn to the deeply rooted conviction of who she was. Whatever else was in contention, that much had always been clear. Now, confronting her bizarrely unfamiliar visage in the looking glass, that solidity was much more unstable. Brick and mortar, gone to wax. Nynaeve sighed, impatient with herself. The whole of Creation was going awry: why should her tiny little world be any different?
And, really, what difference did it make? Appearances mattered for little—there were so many ways illusion could alter perception. She of all people should know better than to put too much stock in something so changeable. Her own mode of dress differed as the situation or the weather dictated: dependant upon where Rand had settled for any given day, where the turnings of these ridiculous past two years had taken her, she'd donned everything from an Ebou Dari's exposed petticoats, to the plunging square neckline of Caemlyn nobility, to the throat-hugging cuts favored in Arad Doman—though she retained enough sense not to imitate any so form-fitting, or sheer, as a Domani woman might wear. How much, truly, did one more small alteration matter?
It didn't, that was how much. Craning her head at angles, she studied the effect. It was only hair, after all, and would grow back. Eventually. She could buy hairpins later, and for now, the borrowed needles would do nicely. She could work with this, she supposed. The knot was not a bad compromise: it still wasn't at all right, but it wasn't bad. Nynaeve pursed her lips and glanced sidelong over her far shoulder at the little fist of hair tucked close to the nape of her neck. It was nothing at all like Cadsuane's. It would grow back. And, really, Lan would not care a whit if she began shaving her scalp like a fool Seanchan.
Impatient with herself, Nynaeve took a step back, hands fisted rigidly at her sides. That was not the point. Blighted if she would stand there and make petty justifications for them. Yes, she could live with it, but it was the simple fact that she had to that she could never forgive. Because thatwas what the White Tower did to folk. It chewed you up, and spat you out again only when it was satisfied with the image it had made; forcing one compromise, then another, and then another, til you could scarse recognize your own face. The Tower, as an entity, was simply too large, too cold to remember that it was comprised of individual souls: sucked into its workings, one was simply hammered in to fit, nothing more than a cog, a mechanism in its broader schemes. She must never grow complacent enough to forget that. It was the very reason she had first sworn vengeance on Moiraine. She could not hate her, not anymore—for she saw now that the Blue was as much a victim of Tower machinations as those she extended them upon—but she must not lose sight of what had driven her out of Emond's Field back then. It was just as important now.
Her fingers itched: she clenched them in her skirts. In a way, she could almost be glad they'd seen fit to so rudely lop her hair off. Even after these bruises faded, that would remain, a jarring reminder of how her life had been altered so irrevocably. They might try and bend and shape and mold her into whatever configuration they thought would serve them best, but they would continue to find her mettle sterner than they bargained for. Even a smith of Perrin's skill would shy from attempting to reshape her. She would not be a Tower puppet, if she had to fight them screaming and clawing all the way to Tarmon Gai'don for it.
Finally, the muted birds settled down, and though she was far too tired to be impatient, Nynaeve wondered briefly if the lot of them mightn't have forgotten about her after all, or else the world had just decided to end while she wasn't looking. Probably, though, she reasoned with herself, it was only her own jitteriness that made the time seem to drag on so. Forcibly unclenching her fingers, she shut her eyes and reached out to stroke Lan's Bond once more. She was not nervous about the imminent ceremony, or swearing the Oaths, not at all. There was nothing to be nervous about—although she still was not looking forward to the fact that she would be swearing, against her better judgment. Oh, she understood the necessity of it well enough—she even agreed with Egwene in this matter, rare as that was, these days—that did not change the fact she was still not overly fond of the idea of swearing in the first place. The vow of honesty was a sad farce, the lot of them merely annoying constrictions, as far as she was concerned. A person should live by as simple a moral code without coercion: being Oath-bounden to rather defeated the purpose, she thought, nevermind the myriad ways to circumvent them. Recent discoveries into the nature of the Oath Rod itself did nothing to ease her, either. But it was the gesture itself that was the meat of the matter, and so swear she would, and not complain. As long as they witnessed her buckling the shackle, they'd have no qualms in granting her her freedom; and she had much more important things to be about than catering to a passel of fusty old womens' notion of formalities. Even if she had promised Egwene.
A timid knock came at the door and, following her startled call of admittance, a furtive Accepted in dark Taraboner braids peeped in. "Please—uh, my lady," she fumbled over the title, licking her lips as she just caught herself from bestowing the regular honorific on Nynaeve's controversial head. "Please, they want you now."
"Well then, lead on, child." she gave her best reassuring smile, and forgave the way the girl's huge eyes lingered. The Healing had done for the swelling, but the discoloration wouldn't budge. She couldn't blame the girl for taking on so.
Following the flick of a seven-colored hem as her escort disappeared down the hallway—to where waited another bunch of women ready to pass judgment on her as she tried to keep from choking on their learned lines—Nynaeve caught a final glimpse of her reflection. For good and all, she'd given up the Wisdom of Emond's Field, as surely as its people had given up on her. The last vestigial ties to that old life had been severed; she could no longer purport the illusion that there could be any going back. She was someone else, now, and that old skin would have a great deal of trouble holding her, much as Egwene the Amyrlin could never again just be the Mayor's daughter.
Her stomach gave a sickening drop as she contemplated for the first time the startling possibility that the most likely to have cut her hair was in fact Egwene. The very worst of the trials seemed to have been her doing, after all. Only she would fully comprehend the significance of her act. Likely, she'd done it on purpose, the Yellow groused inwardly. Merely to prove a point. And she'd do it, too. But, Nynaeve affirmed, she would not be vexed with the girl. For, she considered with uncharacteristic humility, perhaps it was a lesson that she needed to be taught. In the days to come, the lot of them must all look forward in the hopes that their combined efforts would engender a future in which the sun would rise each morning over a world where the Light held sway. If they were held back, distracted or inhibited, they might as well lie down now and save the Dark One the trouble. Many sacrifices, and hard choices, must be made. Not a one of them could afford to misstep or trip over their own pride. Wasn't that what Rand so needed her to help Egwene see? To be heard, she'd be happy to surrender ground that really wasn't all that important to begin with.
Hastening to catch up the hurrying Accepted, Nynaeve wound a stray loop of hair more firmly around the base of her bun. It was really nothing like Cadsuane's, she told herself. Not a bit.