Androl fell to his knees, hand sweeping across his table as he threw his head back, brushing tools and scraps of leather to the floor. He gasped. "What have you done?"
"Taim said we could pick any of you", Pevara muttered as she realized what she had done. She’d bonded him. The reverse, after a fashion, of what he’d done to her. She tried to calm her thundering heart. An awareness of him blossomed in the back of her mind, like what they’d known in the circle, but somehow more personal. Intimate.
"Taim is a monster!" Androl growled. "You know that. You take his word on what you can do, and you do it without my permission?"
"I . . . I . . ".
Androl clenched his jaw, and Pevara immediately felt something. Something alien, something strange. It felt like looking at herself. Feeling her emotions circled back on her endlessly.
Her self melded with his for a seeming eternity. She knew what it was like to be him, think his thoughts. She saw his life in the blink of an eye, was absorbed by his memories. She gasped and fell to her knees in front of him.
It faded. Not completely, but it faded. It felt like swimming a hundred leagues through boiling water, and only now emerging, having forgotten what it was like to have normal sensations.
"Light . ". she whispered. "What was that?"
He lay on his back. When had he fallen? He blinked, looking up at the ceiling. "I saw one of the others do it. Some of the Asha’man bond their wives".
"You bonded me?" she said, horrified.
He groaned, rolling over. "You did it to me first".
She realized, with horror, that she could still feel his emotions. His self. She could even understand some of what he was thinking. Not the actual thoughts, but some impressions of them.
He was confused, worried and . . . curious. He was curious about the new experience. Foolish man!
She’d hoped that the two bonds would have somehow canceled one another out. They did not. "We have to stop this", she said. "I’ll release you. I vow it. Just . . . just release me".
"I don’t know how", he said, standing up and breathing in deeply. "I’m sorry".
He was telling the truth. "That circle was a bad idea", she said. He offered a hand to help her to her feet. She stood on her own without accepting it.
"I believe it was your bad idea before it was mine".
"So it was", she admitted. "It isn’t my first one, but it might be one of my worst". She sat down. "We need to think through this. Find a way to—"
The door to his shop slammed open.
Androl spun, and Pevara embraced the Source. Androl had grabbed his stitching groover in one hand like a weapon. He’d also seized the One Power. She could sense that molten force within him—weak because of his lack of talent, like a single small jet of magma, but still burning and hot. She could feel his awe. So it was the same for him as it was for her. Holding the One Power felt like opening your eyes for the first time, the world coming to life.
Fortunately, neither weapon nor the One Power was needed. Young Evin stood in the doorway, raindrops dribbling down the sides of his face. He shut the door and hurried to Androl’s workbench.
"Androl, it—" He froze, seeing Pevara.
"Evin", Androl said. "You’re alone".
"I left Nalaam to watch", he said, breathing in and out. "It was important, Androl".
"We are never to be alone, Evin", Androl said. "Never. Always in pairs. No matter the emergency".
"I know, I know", Evin said. "I’m sorry. It’s just—the news, Androl". He glanced at Pevara.
"Speak", Androl said.
"Welyn and his Aes Sedai are back", Ewan said.
Pevara could feel Androl’s sudden tension. "Is he . . . one of us, still?"
Evin shook his head, sick. "He’s one of them. Probably Jenare Sedai is, too. I don’t know her well enough to tell for sure. Welyn, though . . . his eyes aren’t his own any longer, and he now serves Taim".
Androl groaned. Welyn had been with Logain. Androl and the others had been holding to the hope that although Mezar had been taken, Logain and Welyn were still free.
"Logain?" Androl whispered.
"He isn’t here", Evin said, "but Androl, Welyn says Logain will come back soon—and that he’s met with Taim, and they have reconciled their differences. Welyn is promising that Logain will come tomorrow to prove it. Androl . . . that’s it. We have to admit it now. They have him".
Pevara could feel Androl’s agreement, and his horror. It mirrored her own.
Aviendha moved through the darkened camps silently.
So many groups. There had to be at least a hundred thousand people gathered here at the Field of Merrilor. All waiting. Like a breath taken in and held before a great leap.
The Aiel saw her, but she did not approach them. The wetlanders didn’t notice her, save for a Warder who spotted her as she skirted the Aes Sedai camp. That camp was a place of motion and activity. Something had happened, though she caught only fragments. A Trolloc attack somewhere?
She listened enough to determine that the attack was in Andor, in the city of Caemlyn. There was worry the Trollocs would leave the city and rampage across the land.
She needed to know more; would the spears be danced tonight? Perhaps Elayne would share news with her. Aviendha moved silently out of the Aes Sedai camp. Stepping softly in these wet lands, with their lush plants, presented different challenges than the Three-fold Land did. There, the dry ground was often dusty, which could muffle footsteps. Here, a dry twig could inexplicably be buried beneath wet grass.
She tried not to think about how dead that grass seemed. Once, she’d have considered those browns lush. Now, she knew these wetland plants should not look so wan and . . . and hollow.
Hollow plants. What was she thinking? She shook her head and crept through the shadows out of the Aes Sedai camp. She briefly contemplated sneaking back to surprise that Warder—he’d been hiding in a moss-worn cleft in the rubble of an old, fallen building and watching the Aes Sedai perimeter—but discarded the idea. She wanted to get to Elayne and ask her for details on the attack.
Aviendha approached another busy camp, ducked beneath the leafless branches of a tree—she didn’t know what type, but its limbs spread wide and high—and slipped inside the guard perimeter. A pair of wetlanders in white and red stood on "watch" near a fire. They didn’t come close to spotting her, though they did jump up and level polearms toward a thicket a good thirty feet away when
