Sheriam opened the door, and Egwene followed her in with Myrelle and Morvrin on her heels. The way they surrounded her, Egwene could not help thinking, was like guards set to make sure she did not run away.
The large, high-ceilinged room inside was not dark, far from it. Lamps lined the mantels of four wide stone fireplaces, and more lined the stairs leading to the next floor and the railed walkway overlooking the room. A tall branched stand-lamp, mirrored to increase the light, stood in each corner of the room. Blankets tacked over the window kept all that light in.
Nine chairs made a row down either side of the room, facing inward in groups of three. The women in them, the Sitters for the six Ajahs represented in Salidar, wore their shawls and dresses in the colors of their Ajahs. Their heads swiveled toward Egwene, faces showing nothing but cool serenity.
At the far end of the room was another chair, standing on a small dais more like a flat box. A tall heavy chair, the legs and uprights carved in spirals, it had been painted in yellow and blue, green and white, gray and brown and red. A stole lay across the arms, striped with seven colors. It seemed miles from where Egwene stood to that stole.
“Who comes before the Hall of the Tower?” Romanda demanded in a high, clear voice. She sat just below the colorful chair, opposite the three Blue sisters. Sheriam stepped smoothly aside, revealing Egwene.
“One who comes obediently, in the Light,” Egwene said. Her voice should have been shaking. Surely they were not really going to do this.
“Who comes before the Hall of the Tower?” Romanda demanded again.
“One who comes humbly, in the Light.” Any moment this would turn into her trial for pretending to be Aes Sedai. No, not that; they would just have shielded her and locked her away until time if that was the case. But surely. . . .
“Who comes before the Hall of the Tower?”
“One who comes at the summons of the Hall, obedient and humble in the Light, asking only to accept the will of the Hall.”
Among the Grays below Romanda a dark, slender woman stood. As the youngest Sitter, Kwamesa spoke the ritual question that dated to the Breaking of the World. “Are there any present save women?”
Romanda flung back her shawl deliberately and left it over the back of her chair as she stood. As eldest, she would answer first. Just as deliberately she unfastened her dress and pushed it down to her waist along with her shift. “I am a woman,” she pronounced.
Carefully, Kwamesa laid her own shawl across her chair and stripped to the waist. “I am a woman,” she said.
The others rose then and began baring themselves, each announcing, once she was showing proof, that she was a woman. Egwene struggled a little with the snug-bodiced Accepted’s dress that had been found for her, and had to have Myrelle’s help with the buttons, but quickly they four were as bare as anyone else.
“I am a woman,” Egwene said with the others.
Kwamesa walked slowly around the room, pausing before each woman for an almost insultingly direct stare, then halted in front of her own chair again and announced that there were none present but women. The Aes Sedai sat and most began pulling up their bodices. Not in haste, exactly, but few wasting any time either. Egwene almost shook her head. She could not cover until later in the ceremony. Long ago, Kwamesa’s question would have required more proof; in those days, formal ceremonies were held “clad in the Light,” which was to say in nothing but your own skin. What would these women make of an Aiel sweat tent or a Shienaran bath?
There was no time for thought.
“Who stands for this woman,” Romanda said, “and pledges for her, heart for heart, soul for soul, life for life?” She sat erect and supremely dignified, her plump bosom remaining bare.
“I so pledge,” Sheriam said firmly, followed a moment later by the strong voices of Morvrin and Myrelle in turn.
“Come forward, Egwene al’Vere,” Romanda commanded sharply. Egwene walked forward three paces and knelt; she felt numb. “Why are you here, Egwene al’Vere?”
She really was numb; she could not feel anything. She could not remember her responses, either, but somehow they rolled from her tongue. “I was summoned by the Hall of the Tower.”
“What do you seek, Egwene al’Vere?”
“To serve the White Tower, nothing more and nothing less.” Light, they were going to do it!
“How would you serve, Egwene al’Vere?”
“With my heart and my soul and my life, in the Light. Without fear or favor, in the Light.”
“Where would you serve, Egwene al’Vere?”
Egwene breathed deeply. She could still stop this idiocy. She could not possibly be up to actually. . . . “In the Amyrlin Seat, if it pleases the Hall of the Tower.” Her breath froze. Too late for turning back now. Maybe it had been too late in the Heart of the Stone.
Delana was the first to stand, then Kwamesa and Janya, more, until nine Sitters stood before their chairs, signifying acceptance. Romanda was still firmly in her seat. Nine of eighteen. The acceptance had to be unanimous—the Hall always sought consensus; in the end, all votes were unanimous, though it could take a great deal of talking to make it so—but there would be no talking aside from the ceremonial phrases tonight, and this was one short of outright rejection. Sheriam and the others had ridiculed her suggestion that that might happen, and did so so quickly that she might have worried if the whole thing was not so ridiculous, but they had warned her almost in passing that this could occur. Not a rejection, but a statement that the Sitters who remained in their chairs did not mean to be lapdogs. Only a gesture, a token, according to Sheriam, but looking at Romanda’s stern face, and Lelaine’s, scarcely less so above her bare chest, Egwene was not certain of that at all. They had said it might be as many as three or four, too.
Without a word the standing women retook their places. No one spoke, but Egwene knew what to do. Her numbness had vanished.
Rising, she moved toward the nearest Sitter, a sharp-faced Green named Samalin who had stayed in her chair. As Egwene went to her knees again in front of Samalin, Sheriam knelt beside her, a wide basin of water in her hands. Ripples danced on the surface of the water. Sheriam appeared cool and dry, while Egwene was beginning to glisten with sweat, but Sheriam’s hands were trembling. Morvrin knelt and handed Egwene a cloth, Myrelle waiting at her side with lengths of toweling over her arm. Myrelle loo