Chapter Fifteen
"Are you sure, Nynaeve?" Sharina stared at her incredulously.
"Sharina, I have been sick every morning recently, and my weaves have started to slip from me. This is what happened to Elayne and Aviendha when they were pregnant." Sharina started to fuss over Nynaeve and started planning about what would happen when she was giving birth. Imagine the First Weaver giving birth! Nynaeve winced. She hated that title. Egwene gave it to her when she had deposed the usurper Elaida and taken the White Tower. But Nynaeve and Egwene both knew that she would give up that title when this war was over, and, hopefully, when Malkier would be rebuilt. But then, Nynaeve would have to pick her successor from the Tower.
"What would you say is a good cure for morning sickness, Nynaeve? I understand that you were the Wisdom of Emond's Field before you became an Aes Sedai."
"Well…" Nynaeve and Sharina started to ramble off about different herbs, quite forgetting the world around them."
"What do you have to say about my mother? And which one, I have a birth mother and an adoptive mother." Rand said to Cyndane.
"Both. The Black Ajah influenced Tigraine or Shaiel, whichever way you want to call your real mother. She was involved with the Black Ajah!" she said. Rand wove a quick weave of fire and air, and struck her across her body. Her back arched in pain.
"Listen to me, and listen to me well, Mierin. I do not want to here any of your light-forsaken ideas about my mother. Now keep yourself quiet, before I gag you myself."
She quickly said something that made him think.
"Lews Therin Telamon. Rand al'Thor. Whatever you want to call yourself nowadays, let me just say one thing. I know about your young friend Elayne. I know about her skill in making and replicating ter'angreal. The cuendillar focus points you and your companions made are weakening. That is what let me out, as you well know. I know for a fact that one of the seven focus points is still whole. With that, Elayne," she spat the name out as if it were something disgusting, "could make another six seals to use on the Dark One's prison."
"I said, don't talk!" He gagged her with a flow of air, but his brain was working overtime. Why didn't he think of Elayne and the last seal before?"
When he was down in the camp, he summoned together all his commanders. Loial, Commander of the Ogier Legions. Perrin, Commander of the Wolf Armies. Mat Cauthon, High General of the Seanchan Armies. Logain Ablar, the newly instated M'Hael of the Asha'man, Tam al'Thor, Head of the Archers. Davram Bashere was also there, as the General of the main army; Elayne was there, without their children, because she was an important part of his plan, and also Verin Mathwin, even though Rand had not summoned her.
"I've summoned you here, because someone gave me an idea that I had not thought of before. We have found six of the seven seals, and those six are now all broken. There is only one seal that we have not found yet. We need to find that seal. I want as many of you as possible to look through as many documents as you can. Try and find that seal!" With that, everyone accept Verin left the tent.
"Rand al'Thor, there is no need to ask everyone to find that seventh seal. I know where it is"
"Where is it?" Rand asked. He looked desperately at Verin.
"It is in my possession, in my rooms at the White Tower." She wove a Gateway to her rooms in the Tower. "Follow me, Rand."
As they both walked into her rooms, Verin moved a bookcase away from the wall, and revealed a small door. She took a small golden key from a chain around her neck and unlocked it. She pushed the door open with difficulty, and she made a small ball of fire and they walked down the corridor covered in cobwebs.
"What is this, Verin?"
"Three thousand years ago, during the Breaking of the World, there was an Aes Sedai called Latra Posae Decume. She was the creator of the seven Ajahs. She also founded a secret Ajah, like the Black Ajah, but this was called the Purple Ajah.
Now, Latra Posae Decume was a powerful Aes Sedai, and she opposed the idea of sealing the Bore with the seven seals. It was because of her, that Lews Therin Telamon sealed the Bore with only male Aes Sedai, but I diverge. Latra Posae Decume made Aes Sedai who wished to join the ranks of the Purple Ajah, the oath 'I swear to preserve the knowledge of the Age of Legends needed to help the Dragon Reborn in Tarmon Gai'don' That was the first oath that some Aes Sedai took. When the Trolloc Wars made the Aes Sedai to swear the Three Oaths, the Aes Sedai in the Purple Ajah found that there was a strange result."
"What?" Rand was confused.
"Usually, a normal Aes Sedai lives to be around three hundred years old. The people in the Kin and the Knitting Circle live to be around six hundred, but that is because they do not swear on the Oath Rod. The Aes Sedai in the Purple Ajah found that their lives were extended to seven hundred and fifty years."
"Are you saying that there are Aes Sedai in Tar Valon that have been living from the 400's?"
"Rand, I am one of those Aes Sedai. I am the First Keeper of the Purple Ajah. For three thousand years we have our covenant, and we have stored what you will need for the Last Battle.
When the White Tower was first being built by the Ogier Stonemasons and aided by the Aes Sedai, this room was built to be a small storeroom, a storage room for the overflow of books in the Library. But we of the Purple Ajah used it for our own means." They reached a thick, ironclad door, and Verin took another, heavier key from the same chain and unlocked it. Inside it were shelves of books and a large chest on the table.
"In those books are a complete collection of the Karenathon Cycle, with translations in every language, along with books from the Breaking, and the earlier Ages, before the Age of Legends."
"I thought the Tower didn't have any of them." Rand said. "Egwene only told me that you had the thirteenth Depository."
"The thirteenth Depository has only a tenth of the knowledge that we hold in here. However, under one hundred sisters have known about this room since the Tower was built, so…" she rambled off, and Rand started to look around the room.
" 'Disassembly of Reason'? I thought that no copies of this had survived. Elan Morin Tedroni's work was all destroyed."
"We managed to find copies of all the Forsaken's works. It helped us create a better knowledge of them. But that particular work of Ishamael's is like reading pure poison." She stopped as Rand walked over to the table, and undid the clasps on the box that lay on it.
"Rand, when you open this box, you must understand that what I have kept from you, what the Tower has kept from the World was because we knew what was going to happen in this moment."
Rand nodded, and he opened the box.