Anger welled up in Nynaeve. Sweat streamed down her face, and her legs shook as if they might give way, but anger gave her strength. Furious, she managed to push her weapon of Spirit a hair closer to severing Moghedien from the Source before the woman halted it again.
“So you discovered that little gem behind you,” Moghedien said in a moment of precarious balance. Surprisingly, her voice was almost conversational. “I wonder how you did that. It does not matter. Did you come to take it away? Perhaps to destroy it? You cannot destroy it. That is not metal, but a form of cuendillar. Even balefire cannot destroy cuendillar. And if you mean to use it, it does have... drawbacks, shall we say? Put the collar on a man who channels, and a woman wearing the bracelets can make him do whatever she wishes, true, but it will not stop him going mad, and there is a flow the other way, too. Eventually he will begin to be able to control you, too, so you end with a struggle at every hour. Not very palatable when he is going mad. Of course, you can pass the bracelets around, so no one has too much exposure, but that does mean trusting someone else with him. Men are always so good at violence; they make wonderful weapons. Or two women can each wear one bracelet, if you have someone you trust enough; that slows the seepage considerably, I understand, but it also lessens your control, even if you work in perfect unison. Eventually, you will find yourselves in a struggle for control with him, each of you needing him to remove your bracelet as surely as he needs you to remove the collar.” She tilted her head, lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “You are following this, I trust? Controlling Lews Therin — Rand al'Thor as he is called now — would be most useful, but is it worth the price? You can see why I have left the collar and bracelets where they are.”
Trembling to contain the Power, to hold her woven flows, Nynaeve frowned. Why was the woman telling her all of this? Did she think it did not matter because she was going to win? Why her sudden change from rage to talk? There was sweat on Moghedien's face, too. Quite a lot of sweat, beading on her broad forehead, running down her cheeks.
Suddenly everything changed in Nynaeve's mind. Moghedien's was not a voice tight with anger; it was a voice tight with strain. Moghedien was not suddenly going to hurl all of her strength at her; she already was. The woman was putting out as much effort as she. She was facing one of the Forsaken, and far from being plucked like a goose for supper, she had not lost a feather. She was meeting one of the Forsaken, strength for strength! Moghedien was trying to distract her, to gain an opening before her own strength gave out! If only she could do the same. Before her strength went.
“Do you wonder how I know all this? The collar and bracelets were made after I was... Well, we will not talk of that. Once I was free, the first thing I did was seek information about those last days. Last years, really. There are a good many fragments here and there that make no sense to anyone who does not have some idea to begin with. The Age of Legends. Such a quaint name you have given my time. Yet even your wildest tales no more than hint at the half. I had lived over two hundred years when the Bore was opened, and I was still young, for an Aes Sedai. Your 'legends' are but pale imitations of what we could do. Why...”
Nynaeve stopped listening. A way to distract the woman. Even if she could think of something to say, Moghedien would be on her guard against the method she herself was using. She could not spare effort for as much as a threadthin weave, any more than... any more than Moghedien could. A woman from the Age of Legends, a woman long used to wielding the One Power. Perhaps used to doing almost everything with the Power before she was imprisoned. In hiding since being freed, how used to doing things without the Power had she become?
Nynaeve let her legs sag. Dropping the feather duster, she caught hold of the pedestal to support herself. There was very little fakery needed.
Moghedien smiled and took a step nearer. “...travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are...” So sure, that smile. So triumphant.
Nynaeve seized the collar, ignoring the joltingly pained emotions that spilled into her, and hurled it, all in one motion.
The Forsaken had only begun to gape when the wide black circlet struck her between the eyes. Not a hard blow, certainly not enough to stun, but not expected, either. Moghedien's control over her woven flows faltered, just slightly, only for an instant. Yet for that instant the balance between them shifted. The shield of Spirit slid between Moghedien and the Source; the halo surrounding her winked out.
The woman's eyes bulged. Nynaeve expected her to leap for her throat; that was what she would have done. Instead, Moghedien jerked her skirts to her knees and ran.
With no need to defend herself, it took only a little effort for Nynaeve to weave Air around the fleeing woman. The Forsaken froze in midstride.
Hurriedly Nynaeve tied her weaving. She had done it. I faced one of the Forsaken and beat her, she thought incredulously. Looking at the woman held from the neck down by air with the consistency of stone, even seeing her leaning forward on one foot, it was hard to believe. Examining what she had done, she saw it had not been as complete a victory as she had wanted. The shield had blurred its sharp edge before it slid home. Moghedien was captured and shielded, but not stilled.
Trying not to totter, she walked around in front of the other woman. Moghedien still looked queenly, but like a very frightened queen, licking her lips, eyes darting wildly. “If... if you ffree me, we can ccome to ssome arrangement. There is mmuch I can tteach you —”
Ruthlessly Nynaeve cut her off, weaving a gag of Air that held the woman's jaws gaping. “A live mounting block. Wasn't that what you said? I think that is a very good idea. I like to ride.” She smiled at the woman, whose eyes looked to be coming out of her head.
Mounting block indeed! Once Moghedien had been put on trial in the Tower and stilled — there could be no doubt of the sentence for one of the Forsaken — she would surely be put to some useful work in kitchens or gardens or stables, except when she was brought out to show that even the Forsaken could not escape justice, and treated no differently from any other servant, beyond being watched. But let her think Nynaeve was as cruel as she. Let her think it until she was actually put on...
Nynaeve's mouth twisted. Moghedien was not going to be put on trial. Not now, anyway. Not unless she could figure out some way to get her out of the Panarch's. Palace. The woman seemed to believe the grimace portended something ill for her; tears leaked from her eyes, and her mouth worked, trying to force words past the gag.
Disgusted with herself, Nynaeve walked unsteadily back to where the black collar lay, stuffing it quickly into her belt pouch before the stark emotions in it could do more than touch her. The bracelets followed, with the same feelings of suffering and sorrow. I was ready to torture her by letting her think I would! She deserves it surely, but that is not me. Or is it? Am I no better than Egeanin?
She jerked around, furious that she could even consider such a question, and stalked past Moghedien to the glasswalled table. There had to be some way to bring the woman to justice.
There were seven figurines in the case. Seven, and no seal.
For a moment she could only stare. One of the figures, an odd animal shaped roughly like a pig but with a large round snout and feet as wide as its thick legs, stood where the seal had, in the center of the table. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. It was not really there; the thing was woven from Air and Fire, in flows so minute they made cobwebs seem cables. Even concentrating, she could barely see them. She doubted if Liandrin or any of the other Black sisters could have. A tiny, slicing flick of the Power, and the fat animal vanished, in its place the blackandwhite seal on its redlacquered stand. Moghedien, the hider, had hidden it in plain sight. Fire melted a hole in the glass, and the seal went into her pouch, too. It bulged now, and pulled her belt down.
Frowning at the woman poised on the toe of one slipper, she tried to think of some means of taking her as well. But Moghedien would not fit in her pouch, and she rather thought that even if she could pick the other woman up, the sight might raise a few eyebrows. Still, as she made her way to the nearest arched doorway, she could not help looking back every other step. If only there was some way. Pausing for one last, regretful look from the doorway, she turned to go.
This door opened onto a courtyard with a fountain full of lilypads. On the other side of the fountain, a slim, copperyskinned woman in a pale cream Taraboner dress that would have made Rendra blush was just raising a fluted black rod a pace in length. Nynaeve recognized Jeaine Caide. More, she recognized the rod.
Desperately she flung herself to one side, so hard that she slid along the smooth white floorstones until one of the thin columns stopped her with a jar. A legthick bar of white shot through where she had been standing, as if the air had turned to molten metal, slicing all the way across the exhibition hall; where it struck, pieces simply vanished out of columns, priceless artifacts ceased to exist. Hurling flows of Fire behind her blindly, hoping to strike something, anything, in the courtyard, Nynaeve scrambled away across the hall on hands and knees. Little more than waisthigh, the bar sawed sideways, carving a swathe through both walls; between, cases and cabinets and wired skeletons collapsed and crashed. Severed columns quivered; some fell, but what dropped onto that terrible sword did not survive to smash displays and pedestals to the floor. The glasswalled table fell before the molten shaft vanished, leaving a purplish bar that seemed burned into Nynaeve's vision; the cuendillar figures were all that dropped out of that molten white shaft, bouncing on the floor.
The figurines did not break, of course. It seemed Moghedien was right; not even balefire could destroy cuendillar. That black rod was one of the stolen ter'angreal. Nynaeve could remember the warning appended to their list in a firm hand. Produces balefire. Dangerous and almost impossible to control.
Moghedien seemed to be trying to scream through her invisible gag, head whipping back and forth in a frenzy as she fought her bonds of Air, but Nynaeve spared her no more than a glance. As soon as the balefire disappeared, she raised herself up enough to peer back across the hall, through the rent sawed along the chamber wall. Beside the fountain, Jeaine Caide was swaying, one hand to her head, the black rod almost falling from the other. But before Nynaeve could strike at her, she had clutched the fluted rod again; balefire burst from its end, destroying everything in its path through the chamber.
Dropping almost to her belly, Nynaeve crawled the other way as fast as she could, amid the crash and clatter of falling columns and masonry. Panting, she pulled herself into a corridor slashed through both walls. There was no telling how far the balefire had sliced; all the way out of the palace, perhaps. Twisting about on a carpet littered with bits of stone, she peeked cautiously around the side of the doorframe.
The balefire had gone again. Silence held in the ruined exhibition hall, except when a weakened piece of stonework gave way and smashed to the rubblestrewn floor. There was no sign of Jeaine Caide, though enough of the far wall had fallen to show the fountained courtyard clearly. She was not about to risk going to see if the ter'angreal had killed the woman in using it. Her breath came raggedly, and her arms and legs trembled enough that she was glad to lie there a moment. Channeling took energy the same as any other work; the more you did, the more energy. And the wearier you were, the less you could channel. She was not entirely certain she herself was up to facing even a weakene
