She exchanged glances with Vandene, who said, “We might as well be about it.”
The four of them walked up Full Moon Street, slowly, as if out for a stroll, and slipped into the shadow-shrouded stableyard. Elayne opened the kitchen door slowly, but the hinges were well-oiled, emitting not a squeak. The brick-walled kitchen was lit only by a tiny fire in the wide stone fireplace where a kettle hung steaming, yet that was enough for them to cross the floor without bumping into the table or chairs. Someone sighed, and she pressed a warning finger to her lips. Vandene frowned at Careane, who looked embarrassed and spread her hands.
A short hall led to stairs at the front of the house. Gathering her skirts, Elayne started up, silent on slippered feet. She was careful to keep Sareitha where she could see her. Vandene was doing the same with Careane. They could do nothing with the Power, but that hardly meant they could do nothing. On the second flight of stairs, she began hearing the murmur of voices. Light spilled from an open door.
“. . . . don’t care what you think,” a woman said in that room. “You leave the thinking to me and do as you’re told.”
Elayne moved to the door. It was a sitting room, with gilded stand-lamps and rich carpets on the floor and a tall fireplace of blue marble, but she had eyes only for the three women in it. Only one, a sharp-faced woman, was seated. That must be Shiaine. The other two stood with their backs to the door, heads bowed like penitents. The sharp-faced woman’s eyes widened when she saw her in the doorway, but Elayne gave her no time to open her mouth. The two Black sisters cried out in alarm as shields went onto them, and flows of Air bound their arms to their sides, tightened their skirts around their legs. More flows of Air fastened Shiaine to her gilded armchair.
Elayne drew Sareitha into the room with her and moved to where she could see all of their faces. Sareitha tried to step back. She might only have been trying to give her the place of prominence, but Elayne caught her sleeve again, keeping her in view, too. Vandene and Careane joined them. Marillin’s narrow face held Aes Sedai calm, but Falion snarled silently.
“What is the meaning of this?” Shiaine demanded. “I recognize you. You’re Elayne Trakand, the Daughter-Heir. But that gives you no right to invade my home and assault me.”
“Falion Bhoda,” Elayne said calmly, “Marillin Gemalphin, Shiaine Avarhin, I arrest you as Darkfriends.” Well, her voice was calm. Inside, she wanted to skip with glee. And Birgitte thought this would be dangerous!
“That is ridiculous,” Shiaine said in icy tones. “I walk in the Light!”
“Not if you walk with these two,” Elayne told her. “To my certain knowledge they’ve proven themselves Black Ajah in Tar Valon, Tear and Tanchico. You don’t hear them denying it, do you? That’s because they know I—”
Suddenly sparks danced all over her from head to toe. She twitched helplessly, muscles spasming, saidar slipping from her grasp. She could see Vandene and Careane and Sareitha jerking as sparks flickered across them as well. Only a moment it lasted, but when the sparks vanished, Elayne felt as if she had been fed through a mangle. She had to hold on to Sareitha to stay on her feet, and Sareitha clung to her as hard. Vandene and Careane were supporting one another, swaying, each with her chin on the other’s shoulder. Falion and Marillin wore startled expressions, but the light of the Power enveloped them in heartbeats. Elayne felt the shield fasten on to her, saw them settle on the other three. There was no need for binding. Any of them would have fallen over without support. She would have shouted if she could have. If she thought that Birgitte and the others could do more than die.
Four women Elayne recognized entered the room. Asne Zeramene and Temaile Kinderode. Chesmal Emry and Eldrith Jhondar. Four Black sisters. She could have wept. Sareitha groaned softly.
“Why did you wait so long?” Asne demanded of Falion and Marillin. The Saldaean’s dark tilted eyes were angry. “I used this so they wouldn’t feel us embrace saidar, but why did you just stand there?” She waved a small, bent black rod, perhaps an inch in diameter, that had a strangely dull look. The thing seemed to fascinate her. “A ‘gift’ from Moghedien. A weapon from the Age of Legends. I can kill a man at a hundred paces with this, or just stun him if I want to put him to the question.”
“I can kill a man if I can see him,” Chesmal said scornfully. Tall and handsome, she was the image of icy arrogance.
Asne sniffed. “But my target could be surrounded by a hundred sisters, and not one would know what killed him.”
“I suppose it has its uses,” Chesmal admitted in grudging tones. “Why did you just stand there?”
“They had us shielded,” Falion said bitterly.
Eldrith’s breath caught, and she put a plump hand to a round cheek. “That’s impossible. Unless. . . .” Her dark eyes sharpened. “They’ve discovered a way to hide the glow, to hide their weaves. Now, that would be most useful.”
“You have my thanks for your timely rescue,” Shiaine said, rising, “but do you have a reason for coming here tonight? Did Moridin send you?”
Asne channeled a flow of Air that struck Shiaine’s cheek with a loud crack, staggering her. “Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, and perhaps we’ll let you leave with us. Or we can leave you behind dead.” Shiaine’s cheek was reddened, but her hands remained at her sides. Her face was expressionless.
“Elayne’s the only one we need,” Temaile said. She was pretty in a fox-faced way, almost a fragile child in appearance despite her ageless face, but her blue eyes held an unhealthy light. She touched her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’d enjoy playing with the others, but they’d be a burden we don’t need.”
“If you’re going to kill them,” Marillin said as though discussing the price of bread, “spare Careane. She is one of us.”
“A gift from Adeleas,” Vandene murmured, and Careane’s eyes went very wide. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. The two women sagged and fell to the carpet. Vandene began trying to push herself up, but Careane lay staring at the ceiling, the hilt of Vandene’s belt knife protruding from beneath her breastbone.
The glow surrounded Chesmal, and she touched Vandene with a complex weave of Fire, Earth and Water. The white-haired woman collapsed as if her bones had melted. The same weave touched Sareitha, and she pulled Elayne down atop her as she fell. Sareitha’s eyes were already glazing.
“Their Warders will be coming now,” Chesmal said. “A little more killing to do.”
Run, Birgitte, Elayne thought, wishing the bond could carry words. Run!
CHAPTER 32
To Keep the Bargain
Birgitte was leaning against the stone wall of the three-story house, thinking sadly of Gaidal, when the bundle of emotions and physical sensations in the back of her head, her awareness of Elayne, suddenly spasmed. That was the only word for it. Whatever it was lasted just a moment, but afterward, the bond was full of . . . limpness. Elayne was conscious, but unsteady. She was unafraid, however. Still, Birgitte threw back her cloak and moved to the corner to peer up Full Moon Street. Elayne could be too brave for her own good. The hardest thing about being Elayne’s Warder was keeping her from endangering herself beyond need. Nobody was indestructible, but the bloody woman thought she bloody well was. Her sigil should have been an iron lion rather than a golden lily. That light shone in the window, spilling a pale pool into the narrow street, and there was not a sound except for a cat yowling somewhere in the night.
“Sareitha feels . . . muzzy,” Ned Yarman muttered beside her. The tall young Warder’s boyish face was a grim shadowed mask inside the hood of his cloak. “She feels weak.”
Birgitte became aware of the other Warders crowding her close, stone-faced and hard-eyed. That was clear enough even by moonlight. Something had happened to all of the Aes Sedai, it seemed. But what? “The Lady Elayne said she’d shout if she needed us,” she told them, as much to reassure herself as anything else. Even if both Careane and Sareitha were Darkfriends, they would have been helpless to do anything linked, a
nd apparently whatever had happened had happened to them, as well. Burn her, she should have insisted that she and the other Warders go along.
“Careane won’t be pleased if we interfere needlessly,” Venr Kosaan said quietly. Blade slim and dark, with touches of white in his tightly curled black hair and short beard, he appeared completely at ease. “I say we wait. She feels confident, whatever’s going on.”
“More so than she did going in,” Cieryl Arjuna added, earning him a sharp glance from Venr. Still short of his middle years, Cieryl seemed all bones, though his shoulders were wide.
Birgitte nodded. Elayne was confident, too. But then, Elayne would feel self-assured walking an unraveling rope stretched over a pit full of sharp stakes. A dog began barking in the distance, and the yowling cat went silent, but other dogs answered the first in a spreading ripple that faded away as suddenly as it had begun.
They waited, with Birgitte fretting in silence. Suddenly, Venr growled an oath and shed his cloak. The next instant, his blade was in his hand and he was running up the street followed by Cieryl and Tavan, cloaks billowing behind, their blades bared, too. Before they had gone two steps, Jaem gave a wild cry. Unsheathing his sword, he threw his cloak down and raced after the other three at a speed that belied his age. Bellowing with rage, Ned ran, too, the steel in his fist glittering in the moonlight. Fury stabbed through the bond, like the battle fury that took some men. And sadness, too, but still no fear.
Birgitte heard the soft rasp of swords being unsheathed behind her and spun, cloak flaring. “Put those up! They’re no use here.”
“I know what the Warders running in means as well as you, my Lady,” Yurith said in courtly accents, obeying smoothly. And with clear reluctance. Lean and as tall as most men, the Saldaean denied being nobly born, but whenever the conversation came around to what she had done before swearing the oath as a Hunter for the Horn, she always gave one of her rare smiles and changed the subject. She was skilled with that sword, however. “If the Aes Sedai are dying—”
“Elayne is alive,” Birgitte cut in. Alive, and in trouble. “She’s our concern, now, but we’ll need a lot more swords to rescue her.” And more than swords. “Somebody collar that man!” Two Guardswomen seized Hark’s coat before he could slip away into the darkness. Apparently he had no wish to stay near where Aes Sedai had died. Neither did she. “Gather the . . . the extra horses and follow me,” she said, swinging into Arrow’s saddle. “And ride like fire!” She suited her words, digging her heels into the rangy gray gelding’s flanks without waiting.
It was a wild gallop through dark, twisting streets where people were just beginning to appear. She reined Arrow around the few carts and wagons out this early, but men and women had to leap from her path, often shaking fists and shouting curses. She only urged the gelding for more speed, her cloak flapping behind. Before she reached the Mondel Gate, Elayne was moving. She had been uncertain at first, but there could be no mistaking it now. Elayne was moving northeast at about walking speed. The bond said she was too wobbly to walk far, maybe to walk at all, but a wagon would make the same pace. The sky was turning gray. How long before she could gather what was needed? In the Inner City, the street spiraled inward, rising past towers glittering in a hundred colors toward the golden domes and pale spires of the Royal Palace, atop the highest of Caemlyn’s hills. As she galloped around the rim of the Queen’s Plaza, soldiers stared at her. They were being fed from black kettles atop pushbarrows, cooks ladling some sort of brown stew onto tin plates, and every man she could see wore his breastplate and had his helmet hanging from his sword hilt. Good. Every moment saved was a moment toward saving Elayne.
Two lines of Guardswomen were practicing the sword in the Queen’s Stableyard when she galloped in, but the lath blades stopped rattling when she flung herself out of the saddle, let Arrow’s reins drop and ran toward the colonnade. “Hadora, run tell the Windfinders to meet me in the Map Room right away!” she shouted without slowing. “All of them! Sanetre, you do the same for Captain Guybon! And have another horse saddled for me!” Arrow was played out for today. She was past the columns by that time, but she did not look back to see whether they were obeying. They would be.
She raced through tapestry-hung hallways and up sweeping marble stairs, got lost and shouted curses as she retraced her steps at a run. Liveried serving men and women gaped as they dodged out of her way. At last she reached the lion-carved doors of the Map Room, where she paused only long enough to tell the two burly Guardsmen on duty to admit the Windfinders as soon as they appeared, then went in. Guybon was already there, in his burnished breastplate with the three golden knots on his shoulder, and Dyelin, delicately holding her blue silk skirts up as she moved, the pair of them frowning at the huge mosaic map, where well over a dozen red discs marked the city’s northern wall. Never before had there been so many assaults at once, not even ten, but Birgitte spared the discs barely a glance.
“Guybon, I need every horse and halberd you can muster,” she said, unpinning her cloak and tossing it down on her long writing table. “The crossbowmen and archers will have to handle anything that crops up by themselves for a few hours. Elayne’s been captured by Darkfriend Aes Sedai, and they’re trying to carry her out of the city.” Some of the clerks and messengers began murmuring, but Mistress Anford silenced them with a sharp order to see to their work. Birgitte eyed the colorful map in the floor, measuring distances. Elayne seemed to be moving toward the Sunrise Gate and the road to the River Erinin, but even if they used one of the smaller gates, they had gone too far to be aiming at anything but the eastern wall. “They’ll probably have her through the gates by the time we’re ready to move. We’re going to Travel to just this side of the ridge east of the city.” And take what was going to happen out of the streets, away from people’s homes. It would be better out in the open in any case. In that tangle of streets, with horsemen and halberdmen jammed together, there would be too many people to get in the way, too much chance of accidents.
Guybon nodded, already issuing terse orders that brown-clad clerks copied down hastily for him to sign and pass to young messengers in red-and-white who went running as soon as the paper was in hand. The boys’ faces were frightened. Birgitte had no time for her own fear. Elayne felt none, and she was a prisoner. Sadness, yes, but no fear.
“We certainly need to rescue Elayne,” Dyelin said calmly, “but she’ll hardly thank you if you give Arymilla Caemlyn by doing it. Not counting the men in the towers and holding the gates, almost half the trained soldiers and armsmen in the city are on the northern wall. If you strip away the rest, one more attack will gain a stretch of the wall. Crossbows and bows alone won’t stop them. Once they have that, Arymilla’s forces will pour into the city, enough to overwhelm what you propose to leave. You will have neatly reversed our positions, and worsened yours. Arymilla will have Caemlyn, and Elayne will be outside without enough armsmen to get back in. Unless these Darkfriends have somehow smuggled an army inside Caemlyn, a few hundred men will do as well as thousands.”
Birgitte scowled at her. She had never been able to like Dyelin. She did not know why, exactly, but Dyelin had just made her bristle at first sight. She was fairly certain the other woman felt the same about her. She could never say “up” without Dyelin saying “down.” “You care about putting Elayne on the throne, Dyelin. I care about keeping her alive to mount that throne. Or not, so long as she’s alive. I owe her my life, and I won’t let hers trickle away in Darkfriend hands.” Dyelin sniffed and went back to studying the red discs as if she could see the soldiers fighting, her frown deepening the lines at the corners of her eyes.
Birgitte clasped her hands behind her back and forced herself to stand still. She wanted to pace with impatience. Elayne was still trundling toward the Sunrise Gate. “There’s something you need to know, Guybon. We’ll be facing at least two Aes Sedai, likely more, and they may have a weapon, a ter’angreal that makes balefire. Have you ever heard of that?”
&nbs
p; “Never. It sounds dangerous, though.”
“Oh, it is. Dangerous enough that it’s prohibited for Aes Sedai. In the War of the Shadow, even Darkfriends stopped using it.” She barked a bitter laugh. All she knew of balefire now was what Elayne had told her. It had come from her in the first place, yet that only made matters worse. Would all of her memories go? She did not think she had lost any recently, but how would she know if she had? She could remember bits of the founding of the White Tower, pieces of what she and Gaidal had done to help it be founded, but nothing before that. All of her earlier memories were yesterday’s smoke.
“Well, at least we’ll have Aes Sedai of our own,” Guybon said, signing another order.
“They’re all dead, except for Elayne,” she told him flatly. There was no way to gild that. Dyelin gasped, her face growing pale. One of the clerks clasped her hands to her mouth, and another knocked over his ink jar. The ink fanned across the tabletop in a black stream and began dripping onto the floor. Rather than reprimanding the man, Mistress Anford steadied herself with a hand on another clerk’s writing table. “I hope to make up for that,” Birgitte went on, “but I can’t promise anything except that we’re going to lose men today. Maybe a lot of men.”
Guybon straightened. His expression was thoughtful, his hazel eyes steady. “That will make for an interesting day,” he said finally. “But we’ll get the Daughter-Heir back, whatever the cost.” A solid man, Charlz Guybon, and brave. He had demonstrated that often enough on the walls. Too good-looking for her taste, of course.
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