As they circled, the Aiel drummed their spears against their small hide bucklers. ThrumthrumTHRUMthrum... thrumthrumTHRUMthrum... thrumthrumTHRUMthrum. The Myrddraal turned with them, and their eyeless faces seemed uncertain, uneasy that the fear their gaze struck into every human heart did not seem to touch these.
“Dance with me, Shadowman,” one of the Aiel called suddenly, tauntingly. He sounded like a young man.
“Dance with me, Eyeless.” That was a woman.
“Dance with me.”
“Dance with me.”
“I think,” Nynaeve said, straightening, “that it is time.” She threw open the door, and the three women wrapped in the glow of saidar stepped out.
It seemed as though, for the Myrddraal, the Aiel had ceased to exist, and for the Aiel, the Myrddraal. The Aiel stared at Egwene and the others above their veils as if not quite sure what they were seeing; she heard one of the women gasp loudly. The Myrddraal's eyeless stare was different. Egwene could almost feel the Halfmen's knowledge of their own deaths in it; Halfmen knew women embracing the True Source when they saw them. She was sure she could feel a desire for her death, too, if theirs could buy hers, and an even stronger desire to strip the soul out of her flesh and make both playthings for the Shadow, a desire to...
She had just stepped into the room, yet it seemed she had been meeting that stare for hours. “I'll take no more of this,” she growled, and unleashed a flow of Fire.
Flames burst out of all three Myrddraal, sprouting in every direction, and they shrieked like splintered bones jamming a meatgrinder. Yet she had forgotten she was not alone, that Elayne and Nynaeve were with her. Even as the flames consumed the Halfmen, the very air seemed suddenly to push them together in midair, crushing them into a ball of fire and blackness that grew smaller and smaller. Their screams dug at Egwene's spine, and something shot out from Nynaeve's hands — a thin bar of white light that made noonday sun seem dark, a bar of fire that made molten metal seem cold, connecting her hands to the Myrddraal. And they ceased to exist as if they had never been. Nynaeve gave a startled jump, and the glow around her vanished.
“What... what was that?” Elayne asked.
Nynaeve shook her head; she looked as stunned as Elayne sounded. “I don't know. I... I was so angry, so afraid, at what they wanted to... I do not know what it was.”
Balefire, Egwene thought. She did not know how she knew, but she was certain of it. Reluctantly, she made herself release saidar; made it release her. She did not know which was harder. And I did not see a thing of what she did!
The Aiel unveiled themselves, then. A trifle hastily, Egwene thought, as if to tell her and the other two they were no longer ready to fight. Three of the Aiel were male, one an older man with more than touches of gray in his dark red hair. They were tall, these Aielmen, and young or old, they had that calm sureness in their eyes, that dangerous grace of motion Egwene associated with Warders; death rode on their shoulders, and they knew it was there and were not afraid. One of the women was Aviendha. The screams and shouts outside were dying away.
Nynaeve started toward the fallen Aiel.
“There is no need, Aes Sedai,” the older man said. “They took Shadowman steel.”
Nynaeve still bent to check each, pulling their veils away so she could peel back eyelids and feel throats for a pulse. When she straightened from the second, her face was white. It was Dailin. “Burn you! Burn you!” It was not clear whether she meant Dailin, or the man with gray in his hair, or Aviendha, or all Aiel. “I did not Heal her so she could die like this!”
“Death comes to us all,” Aviendha began, but when Nynaeve rounded on her, she fell silent. The Aiel exchanged glances, as if not certain whether Nynaeve might do to them what had been done to the Myrddraal. It was not fear in their eyes, only awareness.
“Shadowman steel kills,” Aviendha said, “it does not wound.” The older man looked at her, a slight surprise in his eyes — Egwene decided that, like Lan, for this man that flicker of the eyelids was the equivalent of another man's open astonishment — and Aviendha said, “They know little of some things, Rhuarc.”
“I am sorry,” Elayne said in a clear voice, “that we interrupted your... dance. Perhaps we should not have interfered.”
Egwene gave her a startled look, then saw what she was doing. Put them at ease, and give Nynaeve a chance to cool down. “You were handling things quite well,” she said. “Perhaps we offended by putting our noses in.”
The graying man — Rhuarc — gave a deep chuckle. “Aes Sedai, I for one am glad of ... whatever it was you did.” For a moment he looked not entirely sure of that, but in the next he had his good temper back. He had a good smile, and a strong, square face; he was handsome, if a little old. “We could have killed them, but three Shadowmen... They would have killed two or three of us, certainly, perhaps all, and I cannot say we would have finished them all. For the young, death is an enemy they wish to try their strength against. For those of us a little older, she is an old friend, an old lover, but one we are not eager to meet again soon.”
Nynaeve seemed to relax with his speech, as if meeting an Aiel who did not seem anxious to die had leached the tension out of her. “I should thank you,” she said, “and I do. I will admit I am surprised to see you, though. Aviendha, did you expect to find us here? How?”
“I followed you.” The Aiel woman seemed unembarrassed. “To see what you would do. I saw the men take you, but I was too far back to help. I was sure you must see me if I came too close, so I stayed a hundred paces behind. By the time I saw you could not help yourselves, it was too late to try alone.”
“I am sure you did what you could,” Egwene said faintly. She was just a hundred paces behind us? Light, the brigands never saw anything.
Aviendha took her words as urging to tell more. “I knew where Corarn must be, and he knew where Dhael and Luaine were, and they knew...” She paused, frowning at the older man. “I did not expect to find any clan chief, much less my own, among those who came. Who leads the Taardad Aiel, Rhuarc, with you here?”
Rhuarc shrugged as if it were of no account. “The sept chiefs will take their turns, and try to decide if they truly wish to go Rhuidean when I die. I would not have come, except that Amys and Bair and Melaine and Seana stalked me like ridgecats after a wild goat. The dreams said I must go. They asked if I truly wanted to die ol
