The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson Page A

debilitating failure.
    But light, she couldn’t bow to Elaida either! The Amyrlin did no such thing!
    Or . . . no. The Amyrlin did what was required of her. Which was more important? The White Tower, or Egwene’s pride? The only way to win this battle was to let Elaida think that
she
was winning. No . . . No, the only way to win was to let Elaida think there
was no battle
.
    Could Egwene keep a civil tongue long enough to survive this night? She wasn’t certain. However, she
needed
to leave this dinner with Elaida feeling that she was in control, that Egwene was properly cowed. The best way to achieve that while maintaining some measure of pride would be to say nothing at all.
    Silence. That would be her weapon this evening. Steeling herself, Egwene knocked.
    Her first surprise came when an Aes Sedai opened the door. Didn’t Elaida have servants to perform that function? Egwene didn’t recognize the sister, but the agelessface was obvious. The woman was of the Gray, as indicated by her shawl, and she was slender with a full bust. Her golden brown hair fell to the middle of her back, and she had a haunted cast to her eyes, as if she’d been under great strain recently.
    Elaida sat inside. Egwene hesitated in the doorway, looking in at her rival for the first time since departing from the White Tower with Nynaeve and Elayne to hunt the Black Ajah, a turning point that seemed an eternity ago. Handsome and statuesque, Elaida seemed to have lost a small measure of her sternness. She sat, secure and smiling faintly, as if thinking on some joke that only she understood. Her chair was almost a throne, carved, gilded and painted with red and white. There was a second place set at the table, presumably for the nameless Gray sister.
    Egwene had never visited an Amyrlin’s own quarters before, but she could imagine what Siuan’s might have looked like. Simple, yet not stark. Just enough ornamentation to indicate that this was the room of someone important, but not enough to become a distraction. Under Siuan, everything would have served a function—perhaps several functions at once. Tables with hidden compartments. Wall hangings that doubled as maps. Crossed swords over the hearth that were oiled, should the Warders need them.
    Or perhaps that was just fancy. Regardless, not only had Elaida taken different rooms for her quarters; her decorations were notably rich. The entire suite hadn’t been decorated yet—there was talk that she was adding to her rooms day by day—but what was there was very lavish. New silk brocades, all of red, hung from the walls and ceilings. The Tairen rug underfoot depicted birds aflight, and was so finely woven that it could almost be mistakenfor a painting. Scattered through the room were pieces of furniture of a dozen different styles and makes, each one lavishly carved and inlaid with ivory. Here a series of vines, there a knobby ridged design, there crisscrossing serpents.
    More infuriating than the extravagance was the stole across Elaida’s shoulders. It was striped with six colors. Not seven, but six! Though Egwene had not chosen an Ajah herself, she would have taken the Green. But that didn’t stop her from feeling a surge of anger at seeing that shawl with blue removed. One did not simply
disband
one of the Ajahs, even if one were the Amyrlin Seat!
    But Egwene held her tongue. This meeting was about survival. Egwene could bear straps of pain for the good of the Tower. Could she bear Elaida’s arrogance as well?
    “No curtsy?” Elaida asked as Egwene entered the room. “They
said
that you were stubborn. Well, then, you shall visit the Mistress of Novices when this supper is through and inform her of the lapse. What do you say to that?”
    That you are a plague upon this structure as vile and destructive as any disease that has struck city and people in all years past. That you—
    Egwene broke her gaze away from Elaida’s. And—feeling the shame of it vibrate through her very