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 goldenhaired 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 straw 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.
Deadblack 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.
“They are the ones I seek,” another of them rasped. “You will be well rewarded, human.”
“We must take them by surprise,” Nynaeve said softly. “What kind of lock holds this door?”
Egwene could just see the lock on the outside of the door, an iron thing on a chain heavy enough to hold an enraged bull. “Be ready,” she said.
She thinned one flow of Earth to finer than a hair, hoping the Halfmen could not sense so small a channeling, and wove it into the iron chain, into the tiniest bits of it.
One of the Myrddraal lifted its head. Another leaned across the table toward Adden. “I itch, human. Are you sure they sleep?” Adden swallowed hard and nodded his head.
The third Myrddraal turned to stare at the door to the room where Egwene and the others crouched.
The chain fell to the floor, the Myrddraal staring at it snarled, and the outer door swung open, blackveiled death flowing in from the night.
The room erupted in screams and shouts as men clawed for their swords to fight stabbing Aiel spears. The Myrddraal drew blades blacker than their garb and fought for their lives, too. Egwene had once seen six cats all fighting each other; this was that a hundredfold. And yet in seconds, silence reigned. Or almost silence.
Every human not wearing a black veil lay dead with a spear through him; one pinned Adden to the wall. Two Aiel lay still, as well, amid the jumble of overturned furniture and dead. The three Myrddraal stood backtoback in the center of the room, black swords in their hands. One was clutching his side as if wounded, though he gave no other sign of it. Another had a long gash down its pale face; it did not bleed. Around them circled the five veiled Aiel still alive, crouching. From outside came screams and clashes of metal that said more Aiel still fought in the night, but in th
