The Gathering Storm полностью

And every one of them crowded the walkway around the pavilion at the center of camp. They stood arm-to-arm, a wall of white topped by heads of hair in every natural hue. No ordinary meeting of the Hall would have drawn such attention. Something must be going on.

Siuan set the wicker laundry basket on a stump, then pulled a towel over it. She didn’t trust that sky, although it hadn’t rained more than the occasional drizzle in the past week. Don’t trust a dockmaster’s sky. Words to live by. Even if the consequence only meant a basket of wet clothing, soiled at that.

She hurried across the dirt road and stepped up onto one of the wooden walkways. The rough boards shifted slightly underfoot and creaked with her footfalls as she hurried towards the pavilion. There was talk of replacing the walkways with something more permanent, perhaps as expensive as paving stones.

She reached the backs of the gathered women. The last meeting of the Hall that had drawn this level of attention had revealed that Asha’man had bonded sisters and that the taint itself had been cleansed. Light send that there weren’t any surprises of that size waiting! Her nerves were taut enough, dealing with Gareth bloody Bryne. Suggesting that she let him teach her how to hold a sword, just in case. She’d never thought that swords were much use. Besides, who ever heard of an Aes Sedai with a weapon, fighting like a crazed Aiel? Honestly, that man.

She bullied her way through the novices, annoyed that she had to get their attention in order to make them let her pass. They gave way as soon as they saw a sister passing through them, of course, but they were so distracted that it took work to move them out of the way. She chided a few of them for not being about their duties. Where was Tiana? She should have had these girls back to their chores. If Rand al’Thor himself bloody appeared in camp, the novices should continue their lessons!

Finally, near the pavilion flaps, she found the woman she’d expected. Sheriam, as Egwene’s Keeper, couldn’t enter the Hall without the Amyrlin. And so she was reduced to waiting outside. It was probably better than stewing back in her tent.

The fire-haired woman had lost a fair bit of her plumpness over the previous weeks. She really needed to commission new dresses; her old ones were beginning to hang on her. Still, she seemed to have regained some calm recently, to be less erratic. Perhaps whatever had been ailing her had passed. She’d always insisted that nothing was wrong in the first place.

“Fish guts,” Siuan grumbled as a novice accidentally elbowed her. Siuan glared at the girl, who wilted and scurried away, her family of novices reluctantly following. Siuan turned back to Sheriam. “So what is it? Did one of the stable boys turn out to be the King of Tear?”

Sheriam raised an eyebrow. “Elaida has Traveling.”

“What?” Siuan asked, glancing into the tent. The seats were filled with Aes Sedai, and lanky Ashmanaille—of the Gray—was addressing them. Why hadn’t this meeting been Sealed to the Flame?

Sheriam nodded. “We found out when Ashmanaille was sent to collect from Kandor.” Tributes were one of the main sources of income for Egwene’s Aes Sedai. For many centuries, each kingdom had sent such donations to Tar Valon. The White Tower no longer relied on that income—it had far better means of sustaining itself, ones that didn’t rely on outside generosity. Still, tributes were never turned away, and many of the Borderland kingdoms still held to the old ways.

Before the White Tower broke, one of Ashmanaille’s duties had been to keep track of these donations and send monthly thanks on behalf of the Amyrlin. The split of the White Tower, and the discovery of Traveling, had made it very easy for Egwene’s Aes Sedai to send a delegation and collect tributes in person. The Kandori chief clerk hadn’t cared which of the two White Tower sides he supported, so long as the tribute was sent, and had been happy to deliver the money to Ashmanaille directly.

The siege of Tar Valon had made it simple to siphon this coin away from tributes that might have gone to Elaida, instead using them to pay Bryne’s soldiers. A very neat twist of fate. But no sea remained calm forever.

“The chief clerk was quite livid,” Ashmanaille said in her no-nonsense voice. “ ‘I already paid your money this month,’ he told me. ‘I gave it to a woman who came not one day gone. The woman bore a letter from the Amyrlin herself, sealed properly, which told me to give the money only to a member of the Red Ajah.’ ”

“This doesn’t say for certain Elaida has Traveling,” Romanda noted from inside the tent. “The Red sister could have gotten to Kandor by other means.”