The Aiel women were looking at one another, Jolien frozen in the act of closing Dailin's gray-brown coat. "Tear?" Aviendha said in a cautious tone. "Three Aes Sedai walking through a troubled land on their way to Tear. This is a strange thing. Why do you go to Tear, Aes Sedai?"
Egwene glanced at Nynaeve. Light, a moment ago they were laughing, and now they're as tense as they ever were.
"We hunt some evil women," Nynaeve said carefully. "Darkfriends."
"Shadowrunners." Jolien twisted her mouth around the word as if she had bitten into a rotten apple.
"Shadowrunners in Tear," Bain said, and as if part of the same sentence Chiad added, "And three Aes Sedai seeking the Heart of the Stone."
"I did not say we were going to the Heart of the Stone," Nynaeve said sharply. "I merely said I did not want to stay here till it falls to dust. Egwene, Elayne, are you ready?" She started out of the thicket without waiting for an answer, walking staff thumping the ground and long strides carrying her south.
Egwene and Elayne made hasty goodbyes before following after her. The four Aiel on their feet stood watching them go.
When the two of them were a little way beyond the trees, Egwene said, "My heart almost stopped when you named yourself. Weren't you afraid they might try to kill you, or to take you prisoner? The Aiel War was not that long ago, and whatever they said about not harming women who don't carry spears, they looked ready enough to use those spears on anything, to me."
Elayne shook her head ruefully. "I have just learned how much I do not know about the Aiel, but I was taught that they do not think of the Aiel War as a war at all. From the way they behaved toward me, I think maybe that much of what I learned is truth. Or maybe it was because they think I am Aes Sedai."
"I know they are strange, Elayne, but no one can call three years of battles anything but a war. I do not care how much they fight among themselves, a war is a war."
"Not to them. Thousands of Aiel crossed the Spine of the World, but apparently they saw themselves more like thief-takers, or headsmen, come after King Laman of Cairhien for the crime of cutting down Avendoraldera. To the Aiel, it was not a war; it was an execution."
Avendoraldera, according to one of Verin's lectures, had been an offshoot of the Tree of Life itself, brought to Cairhien some four hundred years ago as an unprecedented offer of peace from the Aiel, given along with the right to cross the Waste, a right otherwise given to none but peddlers, gleemen, and the Tuatha'an. Much of Cairhien's wealth had been built on the trade in ivory and perfumes and spices and, most of all, silk, from the lands beyond the Waste. Not even Verin had any idea of how the Aiel had come by a sapling of Avendesora — for one thing, the old books were clear that it made no seed; for another, no one knew where the Tree of Life was, except for a few stories that were clearly wrong, but surely the Tree of Life could have nothing to do with the Aiel — or of why the Aiel had called the Cairhienin the Watersharers, or insisted their trains of merchant wagons fly a banner bearing the trefoil leaf of Avendesora.
Egwene supposed, grudgingly, that she could understand why they had started a war — even if they did not think it was one — after King Laman cut down their gift to make a throne unlike any other in the world. Laman's Sin, she had heard it called. According to Verin, not only had Cairhien's trade across the Waste ended with the war, but those Cairhienin who ventured into the Waste now vanished. Verin claimed they were said to be "sold as animals" in the lands beyond the Waste, but not even she understood how a man or a woman could be sold.
"Egwene," Elayne said, "you know who He Who Comes With the Dawn must be, don't you?"
Staring at Nynaeve's back still well ahead of them, Egwene shook her head — Does she mean to race us to Jurene? — then almost stopped walking. "You do not mean —?"
Elayne nodded. "I think so. I do not know much of the Prophecies of the Dragon, but I have heard a few lines. One I remember is, 'On the slopes of Dragonmount shall he be born, born of a maiden wedded to no man.' Egwene, Rand does look like an Aiel. Well, he looks like the pictures I have seen of Tigraine, too, but she vanished before he was born, and I hardly think she could have been his mother anyway. I think Rand's mother was a Maiden of the Spear."
Egwene frowned in thought as she hurried along, running everything she knew of Rand's birth through her head. He had been raised by Tam al'Thor after Kari al'Thor died, but if what Moiraine said was true, they could not be his real mother and father. Nynaeve had sometimes seemed to know some secret about Rand's birth. But I will bet I couldn't pry it out of her with a fork!
They caught up to Nynaeve, Egwene glowering as she thought, Nynaeve staring straight ahead toward Jurene and that ship, and Elayne frowning at the pair of them as if they were two children sulking over who should have the larger piece of cake.
After a time of silent strides, Elayne said, "You handled that very well, Nynaeve. The Healing, and the rest, too. I do not think they ever doubted you were Aes Sedai. Or that we all were, because of the way you bore yourself."
"You did do a good job," Egwene said after a minute. "That was the first time I have ever really watched what is done during a Healing. It makes making lightning look like mixing oatcake."
A surprised smile appeared on Nynaeve's face. "Thank you," she murmured, and reached over to give Egwene's hair a little tug the way she had when Egwene was a little girl.
I am not a little girl any longer. The moment passed as quickly as it had come, and they went on in silence once more. Elayne sighed loudly.
They covered another mile, or a little more, swiftly, despite swinging in from the river to go around the thickets along the bank. Nynaeve insisted on staying well clear of the trees. Egwene thought it was silly to think more Aiel would be hiding in the copses, but the swing inland did not add much distance to what they had to cover; none of the growths were very big.
Elayne watched the trees, though, and she was the one who suddenly screamed, "Look out!"
Egwene jerked her head around; men were stepping out from among the trees, slings whirling 'round their heads. She reached for saidar, and something struck her head, and darkness drank everything.
Egwene could feel herself swaying, feel something moving under her. Her head seemed to be nothing but pain. She tried to raise a hand to her temples, but something dug into her wrists, and her hands did not move.
"— better than lying there all day waiting for dark," a man's rough voice said. "Who knows if another ship would come by close in? And I don't trust that boat. It leaks."
"You do better hope Adden does believe you did see those rings before you did decide," another man said. "He does want fat cargoes, not women, I think." the first man muttered something coarse about what Adden could do with his leaky boat, and the cargoes, too.
Her eyes opened. Silver-flecked spots danced across her vision; she thought she might be going to throw up on the ground swaying past under her head. She was tied across the back of a horse, her wrists and ankles joined by a rope running under its belly, her hair hanging down.
It was still daylight. She craned her neck to look around. So many rough-dressed men on horses surrounded her that she could not see whether Nynaeve and Elayne had been captured, as well. Some of the men wore bits of armor — a battered helmet, or a dented breastplate, or a jerkin sewn all over with metal scales — but most wore only coats that had not been cleaned in months, if ever. From the smell, the men had not cleaned themselves in months, either. They all wore swords, at their waists or on their backs.
Rage hit her, and fear, but most of all white-hot anger. I won't be a prisoner. I won't be bound! I won't! She reached for saidar and the pain nearly lifted the top of her head; she barely stifled a moan.
The horse paused for a moment of shouts and the creak of rusty hinges, then went ahead a little further, and the men began to dismount. As they moved apart, she could see something of where they were. A log palisade surrounded them, built atop a large, round earthen mound, and men with bows stood guard on a wooden walk
built just high enough for them to see over the rough-hewn ends of the logs. One low, windowless log house seemed to be built into the mounded dirt under the wall. There was no other structure beyond a few lean-to sheds. Aside from the men and horses that had just entered, the rest of the open space was filled with cook fires, and tethered horses, and more unwashed men. There must have been at least a hundred. Caged goats and pigs and chickens filled the air with squeals and grunts and clucks that blended with coarse shouts and laughter to make a din that pierced her head.
Her eyes found Nynaeve and Elayne, bound head down across saddleless horses as she was. Neither seemed to be stirring; the very end of Nynaeve's braid dragged across the dirt as her horse stirred. A small hope faded; that one of them might be free, to help whoever was held escape. Light, I cannot stand to be a prisoner again. Not again. Gingerly, she tried reaching for saidar again. The pain was not so bad this time — merely as if someone had dropped a rock on her head — but it shattered the emptiness before she could even think of a rose.
"One of them's awake!" a man's panicked voice shouted.
Egwene tried to hang limp and look unthreatening. How in the Light could I look threatening tied up like a sack of meal! Burn me, I have to buy time. I have to! "I will not harm you," she told the sweaty-faced fellow who came running toward her. Or she tried to tell him. She was not sure how much she had actually said before something crashed into her head again and darkness rolled over her in a wave of nausea.
Waking was easier the next time. Her head still hurt, but not as much as it had, though her thoughts did seem to spin dizzily. At least my stomach isn't… Light, I'd better not think of that. There was a taste of sour wine and something bitter in her mouth. Strips of lamplight showed through horizontal cracks in a crudely made wall, but she lay in darkness, on her back. On dirt, she thought. The door did not seem to fit well either, but it looked all too sturdy.
She pushed herself to her hands and knees, and was surprised to find she was not tied in any way. Except for that one wall of unpeeled logs, the others all seemed to be of rough stone. The light through the cracks was enough to show her Nynaeve and Elayne lying sprawled on the dirt. There was blood on the Daughter-Heir's face. Neither of them moved except for the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed. Egwene hesitated between trying to wake them immediately and seeing what lay on the other side of that wall. Just a peek, she told herself. I might as well see what we have guarding us before I wake them.
She told herself it was not because she was afraid she might be unable to waken them. As she put her eye to one of the cracks near the door, she thought of the blood on Elayne's face and tried to remember exactly what it was Nynaeve had done for Dailin.
The next room was large — it had to be all the rest of the log building she had seen — and windowless, but brightly lit with gold and silver lamps hanging from spikes driven into the walls and the logs that made the high ceiling. There was no fireplace. On the packed dirt floor farm-house tables and chairs mingled with chests covered in gilt-work and inlaid with ivory. A carpet woven in peacocks lay beside a huge canopied bed, piled deep with filthy blankets and comforters, with elaborately carved and gilded posts.
A dozen men stood or sat around the room, but all eyes were on one large, fair-haired man who might have been handsome if his face were cleaner. He stood staring down at the top of a table with fluted legs and gilded scrollwork, one hand on his sword hilt, a finger of the other pushing something she could not make out in small circles on the tabletop.
The outer door opened, revealing night outside, and a lanky man with his left ear gone came in. "He has no come, yet," he said roughly. He was missing two fingers on his left hand, too. "I do no like dealing with that kind."
The big, fair-haired man paid him no mind, only kept moving whatever it was on the table. "Three Aes Sedai," he murmured, then laughed. "Good prices for Aes Sedai, if you have the belly to deal with the right buyer. If you're ready to risk having your belly ripped out through your mouth should you try selling him a pig in a sack. Not so safe as slitting the crew's throats on a trader's ship, eh, Coke? Not so easy, wouldn't you say?"
There was a nervous stir among the other men, and the one addressed, a stocky fellow with shifty eyes, leaned forward anxiously. "They are Aes Sedai, Adden." She recognized that voice; the man who had made the coarse suggestions. "They must be, Adden. The rings prove it, I tell you!" Adden picked up something from the table, a small circle that glinted gold in the lamplight.
Egwene gasped and felt at her fingers. They took my ring!
"I do no like it," muttered the lanky man with the missing ear. "Aes Sedai. Any one of them could kill us all. Fortune prick me! You do be a stone-carved fool, Coke, and I ought to carve your throat. What if one of them do wake before he does come?"
"They'll not wake for hours." That was a fat man with hoarse voice and a gap-toothed sneer. "My granny taught me of that stuff we fed them. They'll sleep till sunrise, and he'll come long afore then."
Egwene worked her mouth around the sour wine taste and the bitterness. Whatever it was, your granny lied to you. She should have strangled you in your cradle! Before this "he" came, this man who thought he could buy Aes Sedai — like a bloody Seanchan! — she would have Nynaeve and Elayne on their feet. She crawled to Nynaeve.
As near as she could tell, Nynaeve seemed to be sleeping, so she began with the simple expedient of shaking her. To her surprise, Nynaeve's eyes shot open.
"Wha —?"
She got a hand over Nynaeve's mouth in time to stop the word. "We are being held prisoner," she whispered. "There are a dozen men on the other side of that wall, and more outside. A great many more. They gave us something to make us sleep, but it wasn't very successful. Do you remember, yet?"
Nynaeve pulled Egwene's hand aside. "I remember." Her voice was soft and grim. She grimaced and twisted her mouth, then suddenly barked a nearly silent laugh. "Sleepwell root. The fools gave us sleepwell root mixed in wine. Wine near gone to vinegar, it tastes like. Quick, do you remember anything of what I taught you? What does sleepwell root do?"
"It clears headaches so you can sleep," Egwene said just as softly. And nearly as grimly, until she heard what she was saying. "It makes you a little drowsy, but that is all." The fat man had not listened well to what his granny told him. "All they did was help clear the pain of being hit in the head."
"Exactly," Nynaeve said. "And once we wake Elayne, we'll give them a thanking they won't forget." She rose, only to crouch beside the golden-haired woman.
"I think I saw more than a hundred of them outside when they brought us in," Egwene whispered to Nynaeve's back. "I am sure you won't mind if I use the Power as a weapon this time. And someone is apparently coming to buy us. I mean to do something to that fellow that will make him walk in the Light till the day he dies!" Nynaeve was still crouched over Elayne, but neither of them was moving. "What is the matter?"
"She is hurt badly, Egwene. I think her skull is broken, and she is barely breathing. Egwene, she is dying as surely as Dailin was."
"Can't you do something?" Egwene tried to remember all the flows Nynaeve had woven to Heal the Aiel woman, but she could recall no more than every third thread. "You have to!"
"They took my herbs," Nynaeve muttered fiercely, her voice trembling. "I can't! Not without the herbs!" Egwene was shocked to realize Nynaeve was on the point of tears. "Burn them all, I can't do it without —!" Suddenly she seized Elayne's shoulders as if she meant to lift the unconscious woman and shake her. "Burn you, girl," she rasped, "I did not bring you all this way to die! I should have left you scrubbing pots! I should have tied you up in a sack for Mat to carry to your mother! I will not let you die on me! Do you hear me? I won't allow it!" Saidar suddenly shone around her, and Elayne's eyes and mouth opened wide together.
Egwene got her hands over Elayne's mouth just in time to muffle any sound, she thought, but as she touched her, the eddies of Nynaeve's Healing caught her like a stra
w on the edge of a whirlpool. Cold froze her to the bone, meeting heat that seared outward as if it meant to crisp her flesh; the world vanished in a sensation of rushing, falling, flying, spinning.
When it finally ended, she was breathing hard and staring down at Elayne, who stared back over the hands she still had pressed over her woman's mouth. The last of Egwene's headache was gone. Even the backwash of what Nynaeve had done had apparently been enough for that. The murmur of voices from the other room was no louder; if Elayne had made any noise — or if she had — Adden and the others had not noticed.
Nynaeve was on her hands and knees, head down and shaking. "Light!" she muttered. "Doing it that way… was like peeling off… my own skin. Oh, Light!" She peered at Elayne. "How do you feel, girl?" Egwene pulled her hands away.
"Tired," Elayne murmured. "And hungry. Where are we? There were some men with slings…"
Hastily Egwene told her what had happened. Elayne's face began to darken a long way before she was done.
"And now," Nynaeve added in a voice like iron, "we are going to show these louts what it means to meddle with us." Saidar shone around her once more.
Elayne was unsteady getting to her feet, but the glow surrounded her, as well. Egwene reached out to the True Source almost gleefully.
When they looked through the cracks again, to see exactly what they had to deal with, there were three Myrddraal in the room.
Dead-black garb hanging unnaturally still, they stood by the table, and every man but Adden had moved as far from them as he could, till they all had their backs against the walls and their eyes on the dirt floor. Across the table from the Myrddraal, Adden faced those eyeless stares, but sweat made runnels in the dirt on his face.
The Fade picked up a ring from the table. Egwene saw now that it was a much heavier circle of gold than the Great Serpent rings.
Face pressed against the crack between two logs, Nynaeve gasped softly and fumbled at the neck of her dress.
"Three Aes Sedai," the Halfman hissed, its amusement sounding like dead things powdering to dust, "and one carried this." The ring made a heavy thud as the Myrddraal tossed it back on the table.
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