Nemi Sedai saw the flows of spirit being vowen, and then she
felt the gentle touch of the power somewhere inside her
paining head.
"This is simply not right!" the Accepted named Nynaeve muttered angrily under her breath, but Nemi heard it perfectly well. "Drinking like that, destroying her own head, and then going around in pain, not even asking for help. Honestly!"
With a sigh of relief, Nemi shivered to the momentarious feeling of unbearable coldness that turned her guts into an icicle and back. Pain and the heaviness had gone from her head utterly, but she suddenly felt tired, very tired...and hungry. She had to lean on the nearby wall to stand upright. I'm ridiculous, she thought, I'm becoming paranoid. Even more paranoid than I used to be. Thinking that the woman would attack me in the middle of the White Tower, especially THIS woman... Oh, come on! Yet, after the things I heard...one should definitely NOT listen to all the rumours, however funny and ridiculous they might see at the time.
Nemi smiled vaguely in Nynaeve's direction, and mumbled an ashamed "Thank you!", hoping that the embarassement wasn't showing on her face. Even if it was... well, the Accepted would probably think she were ashamed of drinking last night... No one could possibly guess her frantic thoughts from half a minute ago - they were too ridiculous.
Nynaeve nodded stiffly, curtsied, and hurried down the hall. Nemi looked at her back, feeling a slight and undefined regret - the woman could make a good Green Sedai, with her strenght and her temper - only, Nynaeve declared that she was interested ONLY in healing at the same day she came to the tower... Yet, if I try, I might still befriend her, Nemi thought. It was one of the great paradoxes of Nemi's personality - she despised people in general, but she still liked to socialize and have many friends (if not very close ones, though).
But it was not the most important matter now; the Amyrlin was waiting from the moment she heard Nemi Sedai was in the city - and Amyrlin was not to be kept waiting. The sudden thought of storming the kitchens on her way to the Amyrlin's study was wiped away almost at once. She was hungry, but it was not the dominant feeling right now.
Nemi's stomach crimpled and gradually turned into a burning knot. And the cause of it was most certainly NOT the instant hunger she felt at the moment of Healing.
What did Amirlyn want from her, what might be the reason of this sudden summoning - and at the practically same day Nemi arrived to the City. She wasn't even sure how the Amyrlin Seat KNEW about her arrival - but it was Siuan Sanche after all, and her web of eyes-and-ears was almost the thing of legend. But why, WHY did the woman want her so instantly?
Have I done something wrong. Something WRONGER than usually? It must be that, it must be about some penance I deserved... but WHAT? I left without telling anyone, but it is not actually FORBIDDEN, is it? Every Aes Sedai is (at least officially) free to go where she pleases (unless she is currently under a penance, and I'm not), although it is a practice to inform the head of your Ajah... But it is NOT FORBIDDEN, I'm absolutely sure... Polite, but NOT obligatory. So, it MUST be something else. Light, what have I done lately? Drank, behaved 'inappropriately for an Aes Sedai' as they usually put it... Was giving a bad example? But I wasn't even in town! Nothing serious done, anyway. The Amyrlin KNOWS about me and my habits. She gives me a penance from time to time all right... But it can't be about THAT. This seems so ACCUTE! She sent half the Tower in search after me and... Light, I'm exegarating, I have to calm down... But how can I calm down when she summoned me and it must be something and I've done something terrible and I don't even know what it is and she will begin to question me and I will not even know what she is talking about and I will not be able to answer and...
Stop! Nemi told herself firmly, after she almost walked right into the closed door of the Keeper's anteroom.
As she talked to herself, her voice kept getting thinner and thinner, until it matched the voice of ten-years-old girl summoned to answer for her 'sins'. She felt angsty and afraid, but she was aware that her feelings were utterly irrational. When you are afraid of something, you usually know what is the source of your fear. But she... she didn't quite know why she shivered; she couldn't explain to herself the goosbumps crawling up her spine as her shoulders sank lower and lower. She was even feeling as if she shrank to half her actual height.
I am a grown up woman, she told herself decidedly. Whatever happened, I know what I have done, and I know what I have NOT done (well, unless you were deadly drunk, said that small voice, usually known as self-irony). Amyrlin can talk to me, glare at me, give me a penance - but that's all. That have happened before. I'm not a little girl answering to her nurse. I have NOTHING to be afraid of. I am an Aes Sedai after all.
She stiffened her back and raised her chin stubbornly.
I am Nemi Sedai of the Green Ajah. I am unbreakable.
I will enter that door.
And SMILE.
She embraced the great void as she reached for the door handle, calmness and peace flooding her consciousness - like certain smoking herbs that she payed a small fortune for. The anxiety and worry stared at her from the edges of the great void, but she stared them back. She stared them DOWN.
***
"In the name of Light!" the Keeper exclaimed as she saw Nemi enter the anteroom. "You are going to meet Mother like THAT?! For Creator's sake, Nemi, you look like a Domani wench the morning after!!!"
"Hello Leane," Nemi grinned, on the edge of embracing Saidar. The call was too strong to resist, and she had to let the void go completely, or she couldn't keep back. Embracing the Source in the middle of a conversation would surely look strange... She surpressed the anxiety deeper down in her stomach, as she played relaxed. "An Accepted told me Mother wanted to talk to me."
"She sure does; she ORDERED you to come AT ONCE."
"Well, here I am. As soon as I heard. I wasn't...well, in The Tower, before twenty minutes ago."
"So that's why you come in wearing a slept-in dress stained with dryed youghurt?" Leane raised an eyebrow.
Nemi grinned.
"It's pleasant to talk to you, Leane, but I guess I should go in now or Mother will eat me alive..."
"Do NOT talk like that, Nemi Montoya. You know very well what a penance you can get for an insult of the Amyrlin."
"Light, Leane, you know me well enough to know I didn't MEAN anything."
"That kind of statements is not tolerated any more. Not even from a silly thing like you," Leanne smiled slightly, but there was no actual cheerfulness in her smile. "A few things have happened while you were...away. Be careful with what you say and to whom you say it. The world is changing."
Nemi stared at her for a moment, remembering the wildest rumours she had picked up in Caemlyn, and then dismissing them as ridiculous. But SOMETHING has happened. Myrelle's message was a proof, and now Leanne's words...
"Something serious is going on here," she said hesitantly, casting a sideways look towards the door of the Amyrlin's study.
"Yes, Nemi. But I can say no more right now."
"Is there something...important that I don't know about?"
"Yes. There is. There is something you don't know anything about... Or at least I HOPE you don't."
"What do you mean?"
"You will find out soon. Go in now. We shouldn't keep Mother waiting more than necessary. She wants to talk to you alone."
That was mostly unusual: the Keeper used to be present at the audiences with Amyrlin, whatever happened. Nemi looked at Leanne in confusion, but the unreadable eyes of the willowy woman didn't tell her a thing. Hesitantly she turned to the door, slowly realizing that something worse than a penance for unapropriate behaviour was taking place. The wards around the room were easy to notice - those were wards against eavsdropping, Nemi knew and shivered. Light, what was going on? She remembered her decision to play that famous I-Am-Aes- Sedai-And-Nothing-Affects-My-Composure role, and she stiffened her back, trying to look as regally as possible. (It wasn't that easy - she didn't have much chance to meet royalty, and she certainly was of no noble raising herself - but she rather successfuly copied the attitude so characteristical for Kiruna or Moiraine. She used to practice it when no one looked.). Ignoring the fact that her dress was in a sad state, she composed herself perfectly, and reached for the doorhandle.
"Oh, and Nemi!" Leane grinned. "Remember to knock before you go in. It's polite, you know."
***
"Good morning, Mother," Nemi said in the calmest voice she could squeeze out of herself.
The study of the Amyrlin Seat was almost not ornated at all, and every thought of applying the word 'luxory' to that simple chamber would be ridiculous. The room was dominated by a plain wooden table of enormous dimensions, and behind it sat a woman whose face was known to every single person in The White Tower. Siuan Sanche, previously of the Blue Ajah, could be described as an ordinary looking woman - if it wasn't for her ageless Aes Sedai face that looked carved in stone (not any stone! granite!) and her steel-blue eyes that didn't look up when Nemi entered.
"So, the mysteriously disappeared Green Sister is finally back? Decided to honour us with your presence, did you?"
To Nemi not replying to this seemed like the best strategy. It wasn't much of a strategy, of course, but it was practically the only thing she could do. Any answer at all would be considered defeat, and that was the only thing she wanted to skip. She would not be arrogant, but she would not be submissive either. That was her decision anyway. She wasn't quite sure if she was capable of holding out...
After a silence that seemed as long as a night of insomnia, Amyrlin finally looked at her.
"You go without giving a notice. You come back as you please, when you please, and looking like a three days old dead fish. You make me wait for hours."
Nemi opened her mouth to apologize, with as much dignity as possible - and very little of that was possible when talking to Siuan Sanche. But, the Amyrlin did not let her speak up.
"However, DAUGHTER," the Amyrlin said the last word almost mockingly, if it was possible to interprete her icy voice at all. "To fishguts with all that. It is not the reason I summoned you. What I wanted to ask is: do you recognize these?"
Nemi watched the Amirlyn take a pack of something out of a small wooden box standing on the table. She took the layers of cloth away, and the sunlight shone on the metal, reflecting the light riht into Nemi's eyes, and blinding her for a moment.
"They have been recognized by a number of sisters, so you do not have much choice. What do you have to say?"
Nemi stared at the three daggers Amirlyn held, and she understood not a thing.
"Why, of course I recognize them, Mother. They belong to..."
Suddenly, a veil vowen of darkness and ice fell over Nemi's eyes, wrapping her in terrifying cloak of claustropfoby and despaire. The feeling passed in a moment, however, and she was capable of thinking clearly again. She knew the feeling too well. She was cut from the true source, and shield was being held...
She stared at the Amyrlin with wide eyes, unable to react in any way, utterly forgetting she decision of behaving regally. The worst of the rumours she had heard suddenly came back to her, filling her with pure and undestilled terror...
"Then," the Amyrlin continued coldly, "perhaps you will be able to explain the murders these daggers were used for."
"This is simply not right!" the Accepted named Nynaeve muttered angrily under her breath, but Nemi heard it perfectly well. "Drinking like that, destroying her own head, and then going around in pain, not even asking for help. Honestly!"
With a sigh of relief, Nemi shivered to the momentarious feeling of unbearable coldness that turned her guts into an icicle and back. Pain and the heaviness had gone from her head utterly, but she suddenly felt tired, very tired...and hungry. She had to lean on the nearby wall to stand upright. I'm ridiculous, she thought, I'm becoming paranoid. Even more paranoid than I used to be. Thinking that the woman would attack me in the middle of the White Tower, especially THIS woman... Oh, come on! Yet, after the things I heard...one should definitely NOT listen to all the rumours, however funny and ridiculous they might see at the time.
Nemi smiled vaguely in Nynaeve's direction, and mumbled an ashamed "Thank you!", hoping that the embarassement wasn't showing on her face. Even if it was... well, the Accepted would probably think she were ashamed of drinking last night... No one could possibly guess her frantic thoughts from half a minute ago - they were too ridiculous.
Nynaeve nodded stiffly, curtsied, and hurried down the hall. Nemi looked at her back, feeling a slight and undefined regret - the woman could make a good Green Sedai, with her strenght and her temper - only, Nynaeve declared that she was interested ONLY in healing at the same day she came to the tower... Yet, if I try, I might still befriend her, Nemi thought. It was one of the great paradoxes of Nemi's personality - she despised people in general, but she still liked to socialize and have many friends (if not very close ones, though).
But it was not the most important matter now; the Amyrlin was waiting from the moment she heard Nemi Sedai was in the city - and Amyrlin was not to be kept waiting. The sudden thought of storming the kitchens on her way to the Amyrlin's study was wiped away almost at once. She was hungry, but it was not the dominant feeling right now.
Nemi's stomach crimpled and gradually turned into a burning knot. And the cause of it was most certainly NOT the instant hunger she felt at the moment of Healing.
What did Amirlyn want from her, what might be the reason of this sudden summoning - and at the practically same day Nemi arrived to the City. She wasn't even sure how the Amyrlin Seat KNEW about her arrival - but it was Siuan Sanche after all, and her web of eyes-and-ears was almost the thing of legend. But why, WHY did the woman want her so instantly?
Have I done something wrong. Something WRONGER than usually? It must be that, it must be about some penance I deserved... but WHAT? I left without telling anyone, but it is not actually FORBIDDEN, is it? Every Aes Sedai is (at least officially) free to go where she pleases (unless she is currently under a penance, and I'm not), although it is a practice to inform the head of your Ajah... But it is NOT FORBIDDEN, I'm absolutely sure... Polite, but NOT obligatory. So, it MUST be something else. Light, what have I done lately? Drank, behaved 'inappropriately for an Aes Sedai' as they usually put it... Was giving a bad example? But I wasn't even in town! Nothing serious done, anyway. The Amyrlin KNOWS about me and my habits. She gives me a penance from time to time all right... But it can't be about THAT. This seems so ACCUTE! She sent half the Tower in search after me and... Light, I'm exegarating, I have to calm down... But how can I calm down when she summoned me and it must be something and I've done something terrible and I don't even know what it is and she will begin to question me and I will not even know what she is talking about and I will not be able to answer and...
Stop! Nemi told herself firmly, after she almost walked right into the closed door of the Keeper's anteroom.
As she talked to herself, her voice kept getting thinner and thinner, until it matched the voice of ten-years-old girl summoned to answer for her 'sins'. She felt angsty and afraid, but she was aware that her feelings were utterly irrational. When you are afraid of something, you usually know what is the source of your fear. But she... she didn't quite know why she shivered; she couldn't explain to herself the goosbumps crawling up her spine as her shoulders sank lower and lower. She was even feeling as if she shrank to half her actual height.
I am a grown up woman, she told herself decidedly. Whatever happened, I know what I have done, and I know what I have NOT done (well, unless you were deadly drunk, said that small voice, usually known as self-irony). Amyrlin can talk to me, glare at me, give me a penance - but that's all. That have happened before. I'm not a little girl answering to her nurse. I have NOTHING to be afraid of. I am an Aes Sedai after all.
She stiffened her back and raised her chin stubbornly.
I am Nemi Sedai of the Green Ajah. I am unbreakable.
I will enter that door.
And SMILE.
She embraced the great void as she reached for the door handle, calmness and peace flooding her consciousness - like certain smoking herbs that she payed a small fortune for. The anxiety and worry stared at her from the edges of the great void, but she stared them back. She stared them DOWN.
***
"In the name of Light!" the Keeper exclaimed as she saw Nemi enter the anteroom. "You are going to meet Mother like THAT?! For Creator's sake, Nemi, you look like a Domani wench the morning after!!!"
"Hello Leane," Nemi grinned, on the edge of embracing Saidar. The call was too strong to resist, and she had to let the void go completely, or she couldn't keep back. Embracing the Source in the middle of a conversation would surely look strange... She surpressed the anxiety deeper down in her stomach, as she played relaxed. "An Accepted told me Mother wanted to talk to me."
"She sure does; she ORDERED you to come AT ONCE."
"Well, here I am. As soon as I heard. I wasn't...well, in The Tower, before twenty minutes ago."
"So that's why you come in wearing a slept-in dress stained with dryed youghurt?" Leane raised an eyebrow.
Nemi grinned.
"It's pleasant to talk to you, Leane, but I guess I should go in now or Mother will eat me alive..."
"Do NOT talk like that, Nemi Montoya. You know very well what a penance you can get for an insult of the Amyrlin."
"Light, Leane, you know me well enough to know I didn't MEAN anything."
"That kind of statements is not tolerated any more. Not even from a silly thing like you," Leanne smiled slightly, but there was no actual cheerfulness in her smile. "A few things have happened while you were...away. Be careful with what you say and to whom you say it. The world is changing."
Nemi stared at her for a moment, remembering the wildest rumours she had picked up in Caemlyn, and then dismissing them as ridiculous. But SOMETHING has happened. Myrelle's message was a proof, and now Leanne's words...
"Something serious is going on here," she said hesitantly, casting a sideways look towards the door of the Amyrlin's study.
"Yes, Nemi. But I can say no more right now."
"Is there something...important that I don't know about?"
"Yes. There is. There is something you don't know anything about... Or at least I HOPE you don't."
"What do you mean?"
"You will find out soon. Go in now. We shouldn't keep Mother waiting more than necessary. She wants to talk to you alone."
That was mostly unusual: the Keeper used to be present at the audiences with Amyrlin, whatever happened. Nemi looked at Leanne in confusion, but the unreadable eyes of the willowy woman didn't tell her a thing. Hesitantly she turned to the door, slowly realizing that something worse than a penance for unapropriate behaviour was taking place. The wards around the room were easy to notice - those were wards against eavsdropping, Nemi knew and shivered. Light, what was going on? She remembered her decision to play that famous I-Am-Aes- Sedai-And-Nothing-Affects-My-Composure role, and she stiffened her back, trying to look as regally as possible. (It wasn't that easy - she didn't have much chance to meet royalty, and she certainly was of no noble raising herself - but she rather successfuly copied the attitude so characteristical for Kiruna or Moiraine. She used to practice it when no one looked.). Ignoring the fact that her dress was in a sad state, she composed herself perfectly, and reached for the doorhandle.
"Oh, and Nemi!" Leane grinned. "Remember to knock before you go in. It's polite, you know."
***
"Good morning, Mother," Nemi said in the calmest voice she could squeeze out of herself.
The study of the Amyrlin Seat was almost not ornated at all, and every thought of applying the word 'luxory' to that simple chamber would be ridiculous. The room was dominated by a plain wooden table of enormous dimensions, and behind it sat a woman whose face was known to every single person in The White Tower. Siuan Sanche, previously of the Blue Ajah, could be described as an ordinary looking woman - if it wasn't for her ageless Aes Sedai face that looked carved in stone (not any stone! granite!) and her steel-blue eyes that didn't look up when Nemi entered.
"So, the mysteriously disappeared Green Sister is finally back? Decided to honour us with your presence, did you?"
To Nemi not replying to this seemed like the best strategy. It wasn't much of a strategy, of course, but it was practically the only thing she could do. Any answer at all would be considered defeat, and that was the only thing she wanted to skip. She would not be arrogant, but she would not be submissive either. That was her decision anyway. She wasn't quite sure if she was capable of holding out...
After a silence that seemed as long as a night of insomnia, Amyrlin finally looked at her.
"You go without giving a notice. You come back as you please, when you please, and looking like a three days old dead fish. You make me wait for hours."
Nemi opened her mouth to apologize, with as much dignity as possible - and very little of that was possible when talking to Siuan Sanche. But, the Amyrlin did not let her speak up.
"However, DAUGHTER," the Amyrlin said the last word almost mockingly, if it was possible to interprete her icy voice at all. "To fishguts with all that. It is not the reason I summoned you. What I wanted to ask is: do you recognize these?"
Nemi watched the Amirlyn take a pack of something out of a small wooden box standing on the table. She took the layers of cloth away, and the sunlight shone on the metal, reflecting the light riht into Nemi's eyes, and blinding her for a moment.
"They have been recognized by a number of sisters, so you do not have much choice. What do you have to say?"
Nemi stared at the three daggers Amirlyn held, and she understood not a thing.
"Why, of course I recognize them, Mother. They belong to..."
Suddenly, a veil vowen of darkness and ice fell over Nemi's eyes, wrapping her in terrifying cloak of claustropfoby and despaire. The feeling passed in a moment, however, and she was capable of thinking clearly again. She knew the feeling too well. She was cut from the true source, and shield was being held...
She stared at the Amyrlin with wide eyes, unable to react in any way, utterly forgetting she decision of behaving regally. The worst of the rumours she had heard suddenly came back to her, filling her with pure and undestilled terror...
"Then," the Amyrlin continued coldly, "perhaps you will be able to explain the murders these daggers were used for."