Semirhage cut off her streams of saidar abruptly, but minutes passed before the screams subsided into panting. "What is your name?" she asked gently. The question did not matter as long as it was one the woman would answer. It could have been "Do you still defy me?" — it was often pleasant to keep on with that one until they pleaded to prove they no longer did — but she needed to make every question count this time.
Involuntary shudders ran through the hanging woman. Giving Semirhage a wary, slitted gaze, she licked her lips, coughed, and finally muttered hoarsely, "Cabriana Mecandes."
Semirhage smiled. "It is good to tell me the truth." There were pain centers in the brain, and pleasure centers. She stimulated one of the latter, just for a few moments but hard, as she moved closer. The jolt widened Cabriana’s eyes as far as they would go; she gasped and shook. Plucking a handkerchief from her sleeve, Semirhage lifted the woman’s wondering face and tenderly dabbed away sweat. "I know this is very hard on you, Cabriana," she said warmly. "You must try not to make it more difficult." With a soft touch she smoothed damp hair away from the woman’s face. "Would you like something to drink?" Not waiting for an answer, she channeled; a battered metal flask floated from the small table in the corner to her hand. The Aes Sedai never took her eyes from Semirhage, but she drank thirstily. After a few swallows, Semirhage took the flask away and returned it to the table. "Yes, that’s better, isn’t it? Remember, try not to make it difficult for yourself." As she turned away, the woman spoke again, in a rasping voice.
"I spit in the milk of your mother, Darkfriend! Do you hear me? I…"
Semirhage stopped listening. Any other time there would have been a spreading glow of pleasure that the patient’s defiance had not been crushed yet. The purest exhilaration came from shaving away defiance and dignity in minute slices, watching the patient finally realize that they were going and struggle vainly to cling to what remained. No time for that now. Carefully she once more set the web on the pain centers of Cabriana’s brain and knotted it. Normally she liked to be in personal control, but some haste was necessary. Triggering the net, she channeled to extinguish the lights and left, closing the door behind her. Darkness would work its part, too. Alone, in the dark, with the pain.
Despite herself Semirhage made a vexed sound. There was no finesse in this. She did not like having to hurry. And to be called away from her charge; the girl was willful and obdurate, the circumstances difficult.
The corridor came close to matching the chamber for bleakness, a broad shadowy shaft through stone, with crossing passageways that she had no desire to explore nearly lost in the murk. Only two other doors were in sight, one leading to her present quarters. They were comfortable enough rooms if she had to be here, but she made no move toward them. Shaidar Haran stood in front of that door, black-clad and wreathed in dimness like smoke, so still that it was almost a shock when it spoke, a sound of bone dust being ground.
"What have you learned?"
The summons to Shayol Ghul had resulted in a warning from the Great Lord. WHEN YOU OBEY SHAIDAR HARAN, YOU OBEY ME. WHEN YOU DISOBEY SHAIDAR HARAN… However much the warning nettled, there had been no need for more. "Her name. Cabriana Mecandes. I could hardly learn more so quickly."
It flowed across the hallway in that eye-wrenching way, ebon cloak hanging in denial of motion. One moment it was a statue ten paces away, the next it loomed over her so she had the choice of backing away or craning her neck to look up at that dead-white, eyeless face. Backing away was out of the question. "You will drain her completely, Semirhage. You will squeeze her dry, without delay, and tell me every scrap that you learn."
"I promised the Great Lord that I would," she told it coldly.
Bloodless lips twisted in a smile. That was its only reply. Turning sharply, it strode away through patches of shadow — and abruptly was gone.
Semirhage wished she knew how Myrddraal did that. It had nothing to do with the Power, but on the edges of shadow, where light was becoming dark, a Myrddraal could suddenly be elsewhere, in another shadow far away. Long ago Aginor had tested over a hundred of them to destruction in a vain effort to learn how it was done. The Myrddraal themselves did not know; she herself had proved that.
Abruptly she realized that her hands were pressed hard against her stomach, which seemed a ball of ice. It had been many years since she had felt fear anywhere except facing the Great Lord in the Pit of Doom. The frozen lump began to melt as she moved to the other prison door. Later she would analyze the emotion dispassionately; Shaidar Haran might be different from any other Myrddraal she had ever seen, but it was still a Myrddraal.
Her second patient, hanging like the first in midair, was a blocky, square-faced man in a green coat and breeches suitable for fading into a forest. A full half of the glowbulbs here shimmered on the edge of failure — that any had survived so long was a miracle — but Cabriana’s Warder was unimportant, really. What was needed, for whatever purpose, rested in the Aes Sedai’s mind, yet the Myrddraal apparently had been told to capture an Aes Sedai, and in their minds for some reason Aes Sedai and Warders seemed inseparable. As well they had, though. She had not before had an opportunity to break one of these storied fighters.
His dark eyes tried to bore holes through her head as she removed his clothing and boots and destroyed them as she had Cabriana’s. He was hairy, a mass of large hard muscles and scars. He never flinched. He said nothing. His defiance was different from the woman’s. Hers was bold, flung in your face, his a quiet refusal to bend. He might be harder to crack than his mistress. Normally he would have been much the more interesting.
Pausing, Semirhage studied him. There was something… A tightness around the mouth and eyes. As if he already fought pain. Of course. That peculiar bond between Aes Sedai and Warder. Strange that these primitives should have come up with something that none of the Chosen understood, yet it was so. From the little she knew, this fellow quite possibly felt at least some of what the other patient was undergoing. Another time that would present interesting possibilities. Now, it only meant that he thought he knew what he was facing.
"Your owner does not take very good care of you," she said. "If she was more than a savage, there would be no need for you to be marred with all those scars." His expression changed only slightly. To a tinge of contempt. "So."
This time she set the net on the pleasure centers and began the slowly increasing stimulation. He was intelligent. He frowned, shook his head, then his eyes narrowed, fixed on her like chips of dark ice. He knew he should not be feeling that rising bliss, and though he could not see her net, he knew it had to be her work, so he set himself to fight it. Semirhage almost smiled. No doubt he thought pleasure easier to fight than pain. On rare occasions she had broken patients with no more than this. It gave her little enjoyment, and afterward they could not think coherently, simply wanting more of the ecstasy that bloomed in their heads, but it was quick, and they would do absolutely anything for more. That lack of coherence was why she had not used it on the other patient; she needed answers there. This fellow would learn the difference soon enough.
Difference. She put a finger to her lips in thought. Why was Shaidar Haran different from every other Myrddraal? She did not like discovering an oddity just when everything seemed to be going in their favor, and a Myrddraal set above the Chosen, even occasionally, was more than a mere oddity. Al’Thor was blinded, his attention all on Sammael, and Graendal was letting Sammael know enough to keep him from ruining everything with his pride. Of course, Graendal and Sammael were certainly scheming for advantage, together or separately. Sammael was a hot so-far with warped steering planes, and Graendal not much easier to predict. They had never learned that power came only from the Great Lord, handed out as he chose, for his own reasons. At his whims; she could think that in the safety of her head.
More troubling were the Chosen who had vanished. Demandred insisted they must be dead, but she and Mesaana were not so sure. Lanfear. If there was any justice,
time would give her Lanfear. The woman was always there when least expected, always behaving as if she had the right to dabble her fingers in others’ plans, always flitting to safety if her dabbling brought ruin. Moghedien. She skulked out of sight, but she had never gone so long before without making herself known, just to remind the rest of them that she, too, was Chosen. Asmodean. A traitor, and so doomed, but he really had vanished, and Shaidar Haran’s existence and her own orders here combined to remind her that the Great Lord worked in his own ways toward his own goals.
The Chosen were no more than pieces on the board; they might be Counselors and Spires, but they were still pieces. If the Great Lord moved her here secretly, might he not be moving Moghedien or Lanfear, or even Asmodean? Might Shaidar Haran not be sent to deliver covert commands to Graendal or Sammael? Or for that matter, to Demandred or Mesaana? Their uneasy alliance — if it could be called by so strong a name — had lasted a long time, but neither would tell her if they received secret orders from the Great Lord, any more than she would ever let them learn of the orders that had brought her here, or those that had had her send Myrddraal and Trollocs to the Stone of Tear to battle those sent by Sammael.
If the Great Lord meant to make al’Thor Nae’blis, she herself would kneel to him — and wait for a slip to deliver him into her hands. Immortality meant infinite time to wait. There would always be other patients to amuse her in the meantime. What troubled her was Shaidar Haran. She had never been more than an indifferent tcheran player, but Shaidar Haran was a new piece on the board, one of unknown strength and purpose. And one daring way to capture your opponent’s High Counselor and turn it to your side was to sacrifice your Spires in a false attack. She would kneel if need be, for as long as need be, but she would not be sacrificed.
An odd feel to the net pulled her out of her thoughts. She took one look at the patient and clicked her tongue in exasperation. His head hung to one side, chin dark with blood where he had chewed his tongue, eyes staring and already filmed over. Inattention and she had let the stimulation grow too fast, too far. With an irritation that never touched her face, she stopped channeling. There was no point trying to stimulate the brain of a corpse.
A sudden thought occurred to her. If the Warder could feel what the Aes Sedai felt, was the reverse true? Eyeing the scars that decorated the man’s body, she was sure it was impossible; even these simple fools would have altered the bond if it meant sharing the feel of that. Still, she abandoned the cadaver and stepped across the corridor with some haste.
Screams heard before she opened the iron-bound door onto darkness brought a deep breath of relief. Killing the woman before draining her of everything she knew would probably have meant remaining here until another Aes Sedai was captured. At the least.
There were barely intelligible words among the throat-shredding howls, words that seemed to have all the force of the patient’s soul behind them. "Pleeeeaaaase! Oh Light PLEEEEAAAASE!"
Semirhage smiled faintly. There was a little fun in this after all.
Chapter 7
(Dream Ring)
A Matter of Thought
Seated on her mattress, Elayne finished the one hundred strokes with her left hand, then put the hairbrush away in her small leather traveling case and pushed it back under the narrow bed. A dull ache rested behind her eyes from a day spent channeling, making ter’angreal. Too often trying to make ter’angreal. Nynaeve, balanced atop their loose-jointed stool, had long since completed brushing her waist-length hair and was nearly done replaiting her braid loosely for sleep. Sweat made her face glisten.
Even with the one window open, the small room was stifling. The moon hung fat in a star-filled black sky. Their stub of candle provided a fitful glow. Candles and lamp oil were in short supply in Salidar; no one got more than a scrap of light at night unless they had to work with pen and ink. The room truly was cramped, with little space to move around the two short beds. Most of what they owned was packed away in a pair of battered brass-bound chests. Accepted’s dresses and cloaks they certainly had no need of now hung from pegs in the walls, where ragged holes in the crazed yellowing plaster showed the lathing beneath. A tiny table with a tilt was shoved between the beds, and a rickety washstand in the corner held a white pitcher and basin with an amazing number of chips between them. Even Accepted who had their heads patted at every turn were not indulged.
A handful of bedraggled blue and white wildflowers — fooled by the weather into blooming late, and not very well — stuck out of a yellow vase with a broken neck between a pair of brown pottery cups on the table. The only other spot of color was a green-striped song sparrow in a wicker cage. Elayne was nursing it for a broken wing. She had tried her small skill with Healing on another bird, but songbirds at least were too small to survive the shock.
No complaining, she told herself firmly. Aes Sedai lived a little better, novices and servants a little worse, and Gareth Bryne’s soldiers slept on the ground most often. What can’t be changed must be endured. Lini used to say that all the time. Well, Salidar held small enough comfort, and no luxury. And no coolness, either.
Pulling her shift away from her body, she blew down her front. "We want to be there ahead of them, Nynaeve. You know how they go on if they have to wait."
Not a breath of breeze stirred, and the parched air seemed to pull perspiration from every pore. There must be something that could be done about the weather. Of course, if there was, Sea Folk Windfinders would probably already have done it, but she still might think of something, if only the Aes Sedai would give her time enough away from ter’angreal. As Accepted, she supposedly could take her studies where she wanted, but… If they thought I could eat and show them how to make ter’angreal at the same time, I wouldn’t have a minute to myself. At least there would be a break in that tomorrow.
Shifting to her bed; Nynaeve frowned and fiddled with the a’dam bracelet on her wrist. She always insisted one of them wear it even when they slept, though it produced decidedly odd and unpleasant dreams. There was hardly need; the a’dam would hold Moghedien just as well hanging on a peg, and on top of that, she shared a truly tiny cubbyhole with Birgitte. Birgitte was as good a guard as could be, and besides, Moghedien almost wept any time Birgitte so much as frowned. She had the least reason to want Moghedien alive, the most to want her dead, which the woman knew very well. Tonight the bracelet would be less use than usual.
"Nynaeve, they’ll be waiting."
Nynaeve sniffed loudly — she did not do well being at anyone’s beck and call — but she took one of two flattened stone rings from the table between the beds. Both too large for a finger, one was striped and flecked blue and brown, the other blue and red, and each was twisted so it had only one edge. Unfastening the leather thong hanging around her neck, Nynaeve threaded the blue-and-brown ring alongside another, heavy and gold. Lan’s signet. She touched the thick gold band tenderly before tucking both inside her shift.
Elayne picked up the blue-and-red ring, frowning at it.
The rings were ter’angreal she had made in imitation of one now in Siuan’s possession, and despite their simple appearance, they were complex beyond belief. Sleeping with one next to your skin would take you into Tel’aran’rhiod, the World of Dreams, a reflection of the real world. Perhaps of all worlds; some Aes Sedai claimed that there were many worlds, as if all variations of the Pattern had to exist, and that all those worlds together made up a still larger Pattern. The important thing was that Tel’aran’rhiod reflected this world, and had properties that were extremely useful. Especially since the Tower knew nothing of entering it, so far as they could discover.
Neither of these rings worked quite as well as the original, though they did work. Elayne was getting a little better at that; of four attempts to produce a copy, only one had been a failure. A much better average than with the things she made from scratch. But what if one of her failures did worse than simply not work, or not work very well? Aes Sedai had been stilled studying ter’an
greal. Burned out, it was called when it happened by accident, yet it was just as final. Nynaeve did not think so, of course, but Nynaeve would not be satisfied till she Healed somebody three days dead.
Elayne turned the ring in her fingers. What it did was simple enough to understand, but the "how" still escaped her. "How?" and "why?" were the keys. With the rings she thought the pattern of colors had as much to do with it as the shape — anything other than the twisted ring did nothing, and the one that had turned out solid blue just gave you horrific nightmares — but she was not sure how to reproduce the original’s red, blue and brown. Yet the fine structure of her copies was the same, the way the tiniest bits of them, too small to see or even detect without the One Power, were arranged. Why should the colors matter? There seemed to be one common thread in those tiny structures for ter’angreal that required channeling to work, and another for those that simply made use of the Power — stumbling on that was what allowed her to even attempt to make original ter’angreal — but there was so much she did not know, so much she was guessing at.
"Are you going to sit there all night?" Nynaeve asked dryly, and Elayne gave a start. Setting one of the pottery cups back on the table, Nynaeve arranged herself on her bed, hands folded across her middle. "You were the one who mentioned not keeping them waiting. For myself, I don’t mean to give those biddies an excuse to chew my tail-feathers."
Hastily Elayne slipped the speckled ring — it was not really stone anymore, though it had started out that way — onto a cord that she tied around her own neck. The second pottery cup also held a tincture of herbs that Nynaeve had prepared, slightly sweetened with honey to negate a bitter taste. Elayne drank about half, from past experience enough to help her sleep even with a headache. Tonight was one of those nights she could not afford to dally.
Stretching out on the cramped bed, she channeled briefly to extinguish the candle, then flapped her shift to produce a little cool. Well, a stir in the air, anyway. "I wish Egwene would get better. I am tired of the scraps Sheriam and the rest of them toss us. I want to know what is happening!"
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