A spring rainstorm issuing from the low-hanging clouds suppressed the Dragonmount to a hulking shadow in the diffuse evening light. Dark buffers of cloud pooled in whimsical forms and raindrops pattered down onto the rippling surface of the Erinin.
The river widened and split in the middle, rushing to either side of the island that oversaw the deepest currents, as if the Erinin had spread into a lake. Barely visible behind the sheets of cascading rain, the sweeping white bridges spanned the impossible gap from the island to either riverbank. The bridge towns could not be seen through the storm. The island itself was packed to bursting with graceful buildings which shined lantern lights from their windows. At the height of the river-locked promontory, standing sentinel over the great city, rose the spire of the White Tower.
The riverboat stroked forward against the current on synchronized sweeps with the captain and his oar-master shouting at the crew while the helmsman drew on the tiller and guided them into the sheltered cove of South Harbor. Soon the riverboat was tied off to a jetty and longshoremen helped haul the flat-bottomed craft in. Gangplanks were run out to ship and the crew began the lengthy job of moving their cargo dockside.
Ragabash and Prancer were the least of Nordel's concerns; both horses followed benignly down the planks set side-by-side to support them, even with the on-again, off-again rain slickening the wood. During the trip up river, Nordel had managed to buy clean cloaks from the captain to hide their bloodstained clothes, making them at least somewhat presentable next to the grubby Tiarin crew. Sildane struggled valiantly to be helpful, but her fear and nervousness were beginning to tell. The bronze-haired girl, looking like a drowned rat in the downpour, stood shaking to the bone and frequently fumbled or dropped whatever she happened to be holding at the time. But, the older girl's diminishing reliability paled next to Nordel's real difficulties.
Rayanne's fever surged and worsened with the rain, and she seemed to resist acknowledging it. Though she hobbled on stiff legs and stumbled over seams between planks of decking, she tried stubbornly to shrug off aid. She was a proud woman having to face unaccustomed weakness and was not managing it gracefully. Nordel and Sildane worked together to guide a protesting Aes Sedai down the gangplank to keep her from falling off into the river. While the bowl-shaped hat helped to hide her ageless face, it complicated their threesome crossing the gangplank simultaneously.
"Just another step," Nordel said to her, "one foot there. We're almost ashore."
"How far?" the Aes Sedai gasped in pain as she stumbled. "Let me go, I can handle this..."
The plank swayed between ship and shore, impeding them a few steps before reaching the jetty.
"Ghedlyn...?" Rayanne winced, wanting to go back.
"Stay there!" Nordel ordered once they finally brought her to the dock.
Sildane moved close to the Aes Sedai to help to hold her up, "She's still on the ship."
"She is close to the edge," Rayanne exclaimed urgently, "she's so close. I need to talk to her. It's been too long for her!"
If Ghedlyn went aboard docilely, she fought like a rabid lion against leaving. When Nordel crossed back onto the riverboat for her, he found her again leaning over the gunwale staring down at the water, as she had the whole trip. Though soaked to the skin in her blood-darkened, mud-stained, formerly white dress, her attention did not waver. When the warder tried to drag her away from that place, she began to scream as if she were about to die.
"NO NO NO!" the black-haired girl wailed, "I DON'T KNOW YET, I DON'T KNOW YET! NO NO NO! I NEED TO KNOW! I NEED TO KNOW!"
"Come on now," Nordel grabbed her bodily and lifted her off her feet. He ended up carrying her under an arm, screaming, flailing and kicking. Her teeth were sharp points through his sleeve. Her fingernails slashed about like the talons of an eagle caught in a briar. How she managed to keep her favorite book neatly tucked under her arm throughout the struggle, Nordel could not say. "We have to leave the boat!" He prayed to the creator to keep her from picking this moment to let loose with all her channeling might and tear the riverboat in half. Unaware of the danger right beneath their noses, crewmen stared at the warder as he dragged the shrill girl down the plank off the boat and onto the dock.
"There," Rayanne pointed, "take us there, down to the water." She put weak pressure on Sildane's shoulder, urging the girl toward a set of stone stairs at the end of the jetty which led down to water level. "There."
Ghedlyn screaming and Rayanne stumbling, Nordel and Sildane managed to bring them to waterline. The younger girl calmed fractionally with the river so close. She dropped from Nordel's grip, dashed to the water's edge and dipped her hands into the river. He tucked the girl's precious leather-bound book against his side in a half-hearted attempt to keep it dry –now she forgot it. With Sildane's help, Rayanne sat down in the rain beside her.
Nordel could not hear the first few words his Aes Sedai whispered to the girl, but he could feel Rayanne's intent through the warder bond.
The Aes Sedai touched Ghedlyn's soaked hair and smoothed it back away from her face. The girl's eyes were closed and she wore an undefinable look. Her lips were moving.
"You didn't embrace the source," Rayanne said to her, "You did well there. I know how you must feel. It's tempting to hold saidar forever."
Ghedlyn seemed to ignore her, swaying and caressing the water.
"We're in Tar Valon," Rayanne said, "We made it to the city. You can touch the source."
"Aes Sedai!" Nordel protested, "If we're being tracked..."
Rayanne held her hand up to quiet him. "Many women can channel here. Maybe many women can feel her, but as many other women might also be channeling. One girl among that many will be hard to track."
"But this is Ghedlyn," Nordel reminded her. He could not think of any other protest.
"We need her in control," the Aes Sedai insisted. "She's losing it and has been since before the boat. How she's kept under control since the night of the attack, I can't guess."
Ghedlyn's eyes were open and Nordel knew she was watching them in her peripheral vision.
Rayanne touched the black-haired girl's shoulder, and looked toward Sildane, "Girl, weave a ball of light, any color you like."
"Are you certain?" Sildane asked, her voice pitched high and quavering.
Rayanne nodded, "Go on. Do it."
A ball of white light sprang into being at forehead level in front of Sildane's face. Her brown eyes were wide with fear. Her little light barely pushed back the impinging evening dimness and the weight of the rainstorm.
"There," Rayanne said sideways to Ghedlyn, "You see? I'm allowing it now."
"Saidar? I can... saidar? It is not wrong, is it not wrong? Has that changed?"
"You can hold saidar and I will let you channel for the moment."
"Saidar," Ghedlyn's head lolled back and her eyes drifted closed as rain streamed down her face. Her mouth, subtly tensed before, became relaxed.
Nordel did not follow what happened next. A gentle blast of air blew outward from the girl and they were all dry. The curtain of rain parted in a hemisphere around them and everybody's skin and clothing were all suddenly brushed free of water. The stone stairs instantly dried nearly up to the level of the dock, right to a sheer line where the rain continued to reach the ground. Her silken black hair spilling in a fall down her back, Ghedlyn tipped her head forward. The surface of the river where her hands touched flashed into a crust of ice which spread outward in a ring traveling across the South Harbor bay. Ice rattled and crackled audibly against ship hulls farther and farther away. Again, in a ring passing outward away from her hands, the surface of ice relaxed back into liquid water and surged momentarily with boiling bubbles. Longshoremen and boat crews gave cries of alarm and some looked at the river in amazement or pointed and called to fellows. Then, the water's surface became perfectly flat and smooth as if no rain were falling with no waves or boats bobbing in it and instead sat like a pane of solid glass. Finally, the water slouched back into its normal lapping waves, almost like nothing at all had happened.
Sated, Ghedlyn sat back on her haunches with her expression profoundly relieved. The rain fell on them again.
Rayanne coughed, producing blood into her hand that only Nordel noticed. "That should be plenty," the Aes Sedai said to the obsidian-eyed girl. "Sildane, you can release the source now too."
Sildane exhaled sharply and her tiny light winked out. Her eyes were wide with awe.
Nordel shook his head, "Aes Sedai, if you wanted a display nobody would notice... Light...!"
"We... we have to go to the White Tower now," Rayanne's voice seemed tiny and weak. "If touching the river like that calms her, it was worth it."
"If half the Aes Sedai in the Tower didn't feel that, I would be amazed," Nordel grumbled, positioning himself to help Rayanne up.
His Aes Sedai was shaking her head. A transient smile touched her lips, "That was not quite what you might believe it was. Sometimes..." she began thoughtfully and then cut off. "Sometimes, power isn't what it seems to be."
"You were right, Ghedlyn! You were exactly right!" Sildane exclaimed excitedly and leaped to hug her friend, "You're amazing Ghed! Will you teach me that one?"
In a distant address to no one, Ghedlyn murmured, "I see now. The Lace presses against it and distorts the metric."
Holding Rayanne upright with an arm under her good shoulder, Nordel passed the leather book wordlessly back to Ghedlyn, and then turned to help Rayanne up the stairs. He could not deny a tiny amount of fear toward the child. Because he spent the majority of his life around dangerous people, one young girl seemed hardly worth note. But, as she grew, he sometimes stumbled onto occasion to rethink what he considered dangerous.
"Ours is not to reason why," he mumbled to himself, "ours is but to do and die."