“Whoever is out there,” Nynaeve said, “screamed a few moments ago, but nothing else has happened. Did you find a way out?”
“We should be able to walk out,” Egwene said. “Help me to my feet, and I will get rid of the lock. Amico will not trouble us. That scream was her.”
Elayne shook her head. “I have been trying to embrace saidar ever since you left. It is different, now, but I am still cut off.”
Egwene formed the emptiness inside her, became the rosebud opening to saidar. The invisible wall was still there. It shimmered now. There were moments when she almost thought she could feel the True Source beginning to fill her with the Power. Almost. The shield wavered in and out of existence too fast for her to detect. It might as well have still been solid.
She stared at the other two women. “I bound her. I shielded her. She is a living thing, not lifeless iron. She must be shielded still.”
“Something has happened to the shield set on us,” Elayne said, “but Amico is still managing to hold it.”
Egwene let her head sag back against the wall. “I will have to try again.”
“Are you strong enough?” Elayne grimaced. “To be blunt, you sound even weaker than you did before. This try took something out of you, Egwene.”
“I am strong enough there.” She did feel more weary, less strong, but it was their only chance that she could see. She said as much, and their faces said they agreed with her, however reluctantly.
“Can you go to sleep again so soon?” Nynaeve asked finally.
“Sing to me.” Egwene managed a smile. “Like when I was a little girl. Please?” Holding Nynaeve’s hand with one of hers, the stone ring clasped in the other, she closed her eyes and tried to find sleep in the wordless humming tune.
The wide door of iron bars stood open, and the room beyond seemed empty of life, but Mat entered cautiously. Sandar was still out in the hall, trying to peer both ways at once, certain that a High Lord, or maybe a hundred Defenders or so, would appear at any moment.
There were no men in the room now—and by the looks of the half-eaten meals on a long table, they had left hurriedly; no doubt because of the fighting above—and from the looks of the things on the walls, he was just as glad he did not have to meet any of them. Whips in different sizes and lengths, different thicknesses, with different numbers of tails. Pincers, and tongs, and clamps, and irons. Things that looked like metal boots, and gauntlets, and helmets, with great screws all over them as if to tighten them down. Things he could not even begin to guess the use of. If he had met the men who used these things, he thought he would surely have checked that they were dead before he walked away.
“Sandar!” he hissed. “Are you going to stay out there all bloody night!” He hurried to the inner door—barred like the outer, but smaller—without waiting for an answer, and went through.
The hall beyond was lined by rough wooden doors, and lit by the same rush torches as the room he had just left. No more than twenty paces from him, a woman sat on a bench beside one of the doors, leaning back against the wall in a curiously stiff fashion. She turned her head slowly toward him at the sound of his boots grating on the stone. A pretty young woman. He wondered why she did not move more than her head, and why even that moved as if she were half-asleep.
Was she a prisoner? Out in the hall? But nobody with a face like that could be one of the people who uses the things on those walls. She did look almost asleep, with her eyes only partly open. And the suffering on that lovely face surely made her one of the tortured, not a torturer.
“Stop!” Sandar shouted behind him. “She is Aes Sedai! She is one of those who took the women you seek!”
Mat froze in the middle of a step, staring at the woman. He remembered Moiraine hurling balls of fire. He wondered if he could deflect a ball of fire with his quarterstaff. He wondered if his luck extended to outrunning Aes Sedai.
“Help me,” she said faintly. Her eyes still looked nearly asleep, but the pleading in her voice was fully awake. “Help me. Please!”
Mat blinked. She still had not moved a muscle below her neck. Cautiously, he stepped closer, waving to Sandar to stop his groaning about her being Aes Sedai. She moved her head to follow him. No more than that.
A large iron key hung at her belt. For a moment he hesitated. Aes Sedai, Sandar said. Why doesn’t she move? Swallowing, he eased the key free as carefully as if he were trying to take a piece of meat from a wolf’s jaws. She rolled her eyes toward the door beside her and made a sound like a cat that had just seen a huge dog come snarling into the room and knew there was no way out.
He did not understand it, but as long as she did not try to stop him opening that door, he did not care why she just sat there like a stuffed scarecrow. On the other hand, he wondered if there was something on the other side worth being afraid of. If she is one of those who took Egwene and the others, it stands to reason she’s guarding them. Tears leaked from the woman’s eyes. Only she looks like it’s a bloody Halfman in there. But there was only one way to find out. Propping his staff against the wall, he turned the key in the lock and flung open the door, ready to run if need be.
Nynaeve and Elayne were kneeling on the floor with Egwene apparently asleep between them. He gasped at the sight of Egwene’s swollen face, and changed his mind about her sleeping. The other two women turned toward him as he opened the door—they were almost as battered as Egwene; Burn me! Burn me!—looked at him, and gaped.
“Matrim Cauthon,” Nynaeve said, sounding shocked, “what under the Light are you doing here?”
“I came to bloody rescue you,” he said. “Burn me if I expected to be greeted as if I had come to steal a pie. You can tell me why you look as if you’d been fighting bears later, if you want. If Egwene cannot walk, I’ll carry her on my back. There are Aiel all over the Stone, or near enough, and either they are killing the bloody Defenders or the bloody Defenders are killing them, but whichever way it is, we had better get out of here while we bloody well can. If we can!”
“Mind your language,” Nynaeve told him, and Elayne gave him one of those disapproving stares women were so good at. Neither one seemed to have her full attention in it, though. They began shaking Egwene as if she were not covered with more bruises than he had ever seen in his life.
Egwene’s eyelids fluttered open, and she groaned. “Why did you wake me? I must understand it. If I loose the bonds on her, she will wake and I’ll never catch her again. But if I do not, she cannot go all the way to sleep, and—” Her eyes fell on him and widened. “Matrim Cauthon, what under the Light are you doing here?”
“You tell her,” he told Nynaeve. “I am too busy trying to rescue you to watch my langu—” They were all staring beyond him, glaring as if they wished they had knives in their hands.
He spun, but all he saw was Juilin Sandar, looking as if he had swallowed a rotten plum whole.
“They have cause,” he told Mat. “I. . . . I betrayed them. But I had to.” That was addressed past Mat to the women. “The one with many honey-colored braids spoke to me, and I. . . . I had to do it.” For a long moment the three continued to stare.
“Liandrin has vile tricks, Master Sandar,” Nynaeve said finally. “Perhaps you are not entirely to blame. We can apportion guilt later.”
“If that is all cleared up,” Mat said, “could we go now?” It was as clear as mud to him, but he was more interested in leaving right then.
The three women limped after him into the hall, but they stopped around the woman on the bench. She rolled her eyes at them and whimpered. “Please. I will come back to the Light. I will swear to obey you. With the Oath Rod in my hands I will swear. Please do not—”
Mat jumped as Nynaeve suddenly reared back and swung a fist, knocking the woman completely off the bench. She lay there, her eyes closed all the way finally, but even lying on her side she was still in exactly the same position she had been in on the bench.
“It is gone,” Elayne said excitedly.
Egwene bent to
rummage in the unconscious woman’s pouch, transferring something Mat could not make out to her own. “Yes. It feels wonderful. Something changed about her when you hit her, Nynaeve. I do not know what, but I felt it.”
Elayne nodded. “I felt it, too.”
“I would like to change every last thing about her,” Nynaeve said grimly. She took Egwene’s head in her hands; Egwene rose onto her toes, gasping. When Nynaeve took her hands away to put them on Elayne, Egwene’s bruises were gone. Elayne’s vanished as quickly.
“Blood and bloody ashes!” Mat growled. “What do you mean hitting a woman who was just sitting there? I don’t think she could even move!” They all three turned to look at him, and he made a strangled sound as the air seemed to turn to thick jelly around him. He lifted into the air, until his boots dangled a good pace above the floor. Oh, burn me, the Power! Here I was afraid that Aes Sedai would use the bloody Power on me, and now the bloody women I’m rescuing do it! Burn me!
“You do not understand anything, Matrim Cauthon,” Egwene said in a tight voice.
“Until you do understand,” Nynaeve said in an even tighter, “I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself.”
Elayne contented herself with a glare that made him think of his mother going out to cut a switch.
For some reason he found himself giving them the grin that had so often sent his mother after that switch. Burn me, if they can do this, I don’t see how anybody ever locked them in that cell in the first place! “What I understand is that I got you out of something you couldn’t get yourselves out of, and you all have as much gratitude as a bloody Taren Ferry man with a toothache!”
“You are right,” Nynaeve said, and his boots suddenly hit the floor so hard his teeth jarred. But he could move again. “As much as it pains me to say it, Mat, you are right.”
He was tempted to answer something sarcastic, but there was barely enough apology in her voice as it was. “Now can we go? With the fighting going on, Sandar thinks he and I can take you out by a small gate near the river.”
“I am not leaving just yet, Mat,” Nynaeve said.
“I mean to find Liandrin and skin her,” Egwene said, sounding almost as if she meant it literally.
“All I want to do,” Elayne said, “is pound Joiya Byir till she squeals, but I will settle for any of them.”
“Are you all deaf?” he growled. “There is a battle going on out there! I came here to rescue you, and I mean to rescue you.” Egwene patted his cheek as she walked by him, and so did Elayne. Nynaeve merely sniffed. He stared after them with his mouth hanging open. “Why didn’t you say something?” he growled at the thief-catcher.
“I saw what speaking earned you,” Sandar said simply. “I am no fool.”
“Well, I am not staying in the middle of a battle!” he shouted at the women. They were just disappearing through the small, barred door. “I am leaving, do you hear?” They did not even look back. Probably get themselves killed out there! Somebody will stick a sword in them while they’re looking the other way! With a snarl, he put his quarterstaff across his shoulder and started after. “Are you going to stand there?” he called to the thief-catcher. “I did not come this far to let them die now!”
Sandar caught up to him in the room with the whips. The three women were already gone, but Mat had a feeling they would not be too hard to find. Just find the men bloody hanging in midair! Bloody women! He quickened his pace to a trot.
Perrin strode down the halls of the Stone grimly, searching for some sign of Faile. He had rescued her twice more, now, breaking her out of an iron cage once, much like the one that had held the Aiel in Remen, and once breaking open a steel chest with a falcon worked on its side. Both times she had melted into air after saying his name. Hopper trotted by his side, sniffing the air. As sharp as Perrin’s nose was, the wolf’s was sharper; it had been Hopper who led them to the chest.
Perrin wondered whether he was ever going to free her in truth. There had not been any sign in a long time, it seemed. The halls of the Stone were empty, lamps burning, tapestries and weapons hanging on the walls, but nothing moved except himself and Hopper. Except I think that was Rand. It had only been a glimpse, a man running as if chasing someone. It could not be him. It couldn’t, but I think it was.
Hopper quickened his steps suddenly, heading for another set of tall doors, these clad in bronze. Perrin tried to match the pace, stumbled, and fell to his knees, throwing out a hand to catch himself short of dropping on his face. Weakness washed through him as if all his muscles had gone to water. Even after the feeling receded, it took some of his strength with it. It was an effort to struggle to his feet. Hopper had turned to look at him.
You are here too strongly, Young Bull. The flesh weakens. You do not care to hold on to it enough. Soon flesh and dream will die together.
“Find her,” Perrin said. “That is all I ask. Find Faile.”
Yellow eyes met yellow eyes. The wolf turned and trotted to the doors. Beyond here, Young Bull.
Perrin reached the doors and pushed. They did not budge. There seemed to be no way to open them, no handles, nothing to grip. There was a tiny pattern worked into the metal, so fine his eyes almost did not see it. Falcons. Thousands of tiny falcons.
She has to be here. I do not think I can last much longer. With a shout, he swung his hammer against the bronze. It rang like a great gong. Again he struck, and the peal deepened. A third blow, and the bronze doors shattered like glass.
Within, a hundred paces from the broken doors, a circle of light surrounded a falcon chained to a perch. Darkness filled all the rest of that vast chamber, darkness and faint rustlings as of hundreds of wings.
He took a step into the room, and a falcon stooped out of the murk, talons scoring his face as it passed. He threw an arm across his eyes—talons tore at his forearm—and staggered toward the perch. Again and again the birds came, falcons diving, striking him, tearing him, but he lumbered on with blood pouring down his arms and shoulders, that one arm protecting the eyes he had fixed on the falcon on the perch. He had lost the hammer; he did not know where, but he knew that if he went back to search, he would die before he found it.
As he reached the perch, the slicing talons drove him to his knees. He peered up under his arm at the falcon on the perch, and she stared back with dark, unblinking eyes. The chain that held her leg was fastened to the perch with a tiny lock shaped like a hedgehog. He seized the chain with both hands, careless of the other falcons that now became a whirlwind of cutting talons around him, and with his last strength snapped it. Pain and the falcons brought darkness.
He opened his eyes to stinging agony, as if his face and arms and shoulders had been sliced with a thousand knives. It did not matter. Faile was kneeling over him, those dark, tilted eyes filled with worry, wiping his face with a cloth already soaked in his blood.
“My poor Perrin,” she said softly. “My poor blacksmith. You are hurt so badly.”
With an effort that cost more pain, he turned his head. This was the private dining room in the Star, and near one leg of the table lay a wooden carving of a hedgehog, broken in half. “Faile,” he whispered to her. “My falcon.”
Rand was still in the Heart of the Stone, but it was different. There were no men fighting here, no dead men, no one at all but himself. Abruptly the sound of a great gong rang through the Stone, then again, and the very stones beneath his feet resonated. A third time the booming came, but cut off abruptly, as if the gong had shattered. All was still.
Where is this place? he wondered. More important, where is Ba’alzamon?
As if to answer him, a blazing shaft like the one Moiraine had made shot out of the shadows among the columns, straight toward his chest. His wrist twisted the sword instinctively; it was instinct as much as anything else that made him loose flows from saidin into Callandor, a flood of the Power that made the sword blaze brighter even than that bar streaking at him. His uncertain balance between existence and destruction wavered. Su
rely that torrent would consume him.
The shaft of light struck the blade of Callandor—and parted on its edge, forking to stream past on either side. He felt his coat singe from its near passage, smelled the wool beginning to burn. Behind him, the two prongs of frozen fire, of liquid light, struck huge redstone columns; where they struck, stone ceased to exist, and the burning bars bored through to other columns, severing those instantaneously as well. The Heart of the Stone rumbled as columns fell and shattered in clouds of dust, sprays of stone fragments. What fell into the light, however, simply—was not, anymore.
A snarl of rage came from the shadows, and the blazing shaft of pure white heat vanished.
Rand swung Callandor as if he were striking at something in front of him. The white light obscuring the blade extended, blazed ahead, and sheared through the redstone column that hid the snarl. The polished stone sliced like silk. The severed column trembled; part of it tore loose and dropped from the ceiling, smashing into huge, jagged chunks on the floor. As the rumbling faded, he heard beyond it the sound of boots on stone. Running.
Callandor at the ready, Rand hurried after Ba’alzamon.
The tall archway leading out of the Heart collapsed as he reached it, the entire wall falling in clouds of dust and rock as if to bury him, but he threw the Power at it, and all became dust floating in the air. He ran on. He was not sure what he had done, or how, but he had no time to think on it. He ran after Ba’alzamon’s retreating footsteps, echoing down the halls of the Stone.
Myrddraal and Trollocs leaped out of thin air, huge bestial shapes and eyeless faces distorted with a rage to kill, in hundreds, so they jammed the hall before him and behind, scythelike swords and blades of deadly black steel seeking his blood. Without knowing how, he turned them to vapor that parted before him—and vanished. The air around him suddenly became choking soot, clogging his nostrils, shutting off breath, but he made it fresh air again, a cool mist. Flames leaped from the floor beneath his feet, spurted from the walls, the ceiling, furious jets that flashed tapestries and rugs, tables and chests to wisps of ash, flung ornaments and lamps ahead of them as drops of molten, burning gold; he smashed the fires flat, hardened them into a red glaze on the rock.
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