"I will not be a party to this," he said stubbornly.
"Fine," Siuan spat. Fool man! "Go take care of your men. I think I know someone who will help me." She stalked away, heading toward a tent just inside the palisade.
Egwene steadied herself against the wall of the hallway as the entire Tower shook again. The very stones quivered. Flakes of mortar crumbled down from the ceiling, and a loose tile fell from the wall and shattered into a dozen shards on the floor. Nicola screamed, and clutched at Egwene.
"The Dark One!" Nicola wailed. "The Last Battle! It's come!"
"Nicola!" Egwene snapped, straightening up. "Control yourself. This isn't the Last Battle. It's the Seanchan."
"Seanchan?" Nicola said. "But I thought they were just a rumor!"
Fool girl, Egwene thought, hurrying down a side hallway. Nicola scuttled after her, carrying her lamp. Egwene's memory served her correctly, and the next hallway was at the edge of the Tower, giving her a window to the outside. She waved Nicola to the side, then risked a glance out into the darkness.
Sure enough, dark, winged forms flapped in the sky. Those were too big to be raken. To'raken, then. They swooped, weaves spinning around many of them, glowing and vibrant to Egwene's eyes. Blasts of fire sprang into existence, lighting pairs of women riding on the backs of the to'raken. Damane and sul'dam.
Portions of the Tower's wings below were alight with flames, and to her horror, Egwene saw several gaping holes directly in the sides of the Tower. To'raken clutched the side of the Tower, climbing up like bats clinging to a wall, unloading soldiers and damane into the building. As Egwene watched, a to'raken leapt free of the side of the Tower, the height allowing it to forgo its normal running start. The creature wasn't as graceful as one of the smaller raken, but its handler did a masterful job of directing it back into the air. The creature flew right by Egwene's window, the wind of its passing blowing back her hair. Egwene faintly heard screaming as the to'raken swept past. Terrified screaming.
It wasn't a full-scale attack—it was a raid! A raid to capture marath'damane\ Egwene pulled to the side as a blast of fire shot by the window and hit the wall a short distance away. She could hear rock crumble, and the Tower shook violently. Dust and smoke exploded down a side passage off the hallway.
Soldiers would soon follow. Soldiers and sul'dam. With those leashes. Egwene shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself. The cool, seamless metal. The nausea, the degradation, the panic, despair, and— shamefully—guilt at not serving her mistress to the best of her abilities. She remembered the haunted look of an Aes Sedai as she was broken. Most of all, she remembered her own terror.
The terror of realizing that she would be like the others, eventually. Just another slave, happy to serve.
The Tower shook. Fire flashed in the distant hallways accompanied by shouts and wails of despair. She could smell smoke. Oh, Light! Could this really be? She wouldn't go back. She wouldn't let them leash her again. She had to run! She had to hide, flee, escape . . .
No!
She pushed herself upright.
No, she would not flee. She was Amyrlin.
Nicola huddled beside the wall, whimpering. "They're coming for us," the girl whispered. "Oh Light, they're coming!"
"Let them come!" Egwene roared, opening herself to the Source. Blessedly, enough time had passed to dull the forkroot slightly, and she was able to grab a faint trickle of the Power. It was tiny, perhaps the least amount of the Power she'd ever channeled. She wouldn't be able to weave a tongue of Air to shift a piece of paper. But it would be enough. It had to be. "We will fight!"
Nicola just sniffed, looking up at her. "You can barely channel, Mother!" she wailed. "I can see it. We can't fight them!"
"We can and will," Egwene said firmly. "Stand, Nicola! You're an initiate of the Tower, not a frightened milkmaid."
The girl looked up.
"I will protect you," Egwene said. "I promise."
The girl seemed to take heart, rising. Egwene glanced toward the distant hallway where the blast had hit. It was dark, the wall lamps unlit, but she thought she spotted shadows. They'd be coming, and they'd be leashing any women they found.
Egwene turned in the other direction. She could still faintly hear screams that way. They were the ones she'd heard just after she'd awakened. She didn't know where the guard at her door had gone, and didn't really care.
"Come," she said, striding forward, holding to her tiny bit of the Power like a drowning woman clinging to a rescue rope. Nicola followed, still sniffling, but she followed. Several moments later, Egwene discovered what she'd hoped to find. The hallway was filled with girls, some in their white dresses, others wearing their shifts. The novices clumped together, many of them screaming at each blast that shook the Tower. Likely, they wished that they were down below, where the novices' quarters had once been.
"The Amyrlin!" several exclaimed as Egwene entered the hallway. They were a sorry bunch, lit by candles in terrified hands. Their questions sprouted like rotwood mushrooms in the spring.
"What's happening?"
"Are we under attack?"
"Is it the Dark One?"
Egwene raised her hands, and the girls fell mercifully silent. "The Tower is under attack from the Seanchan," she said in a calm voice. "They have come to capture women who can channel; they have ways of forcing those women to serve them. It is not the Last Battle, but we are in grave danger. I don't intend to let them take a single one of you. You are mine."
The hallway grew still. Girls glanced at her, hopeful, nervous. There were a good fifty of them, perhaps more. They would have to do.
"Nicola, Jasmen, Yeteri, Inala," Egwene said, naming off some of the more powerful of the novices. "Come forward. The rest of you pay close attention. I'm going to teach you something."
"What, Mother?" one of the girls asked.
This had better work, Egwene thought. "I'm going to teach you how to link."
There were gasps. This wasn't a thing taught to novices, but Egwene would see that sul'dam did not find easy pickings in the novices' quarters!
Teaching the method took a worrisome length of time, each moment torn by more blasts and more screams. The novices were frightened, and that made it difficult for some of them to embrace the Source, let alone learn a new technique. What had taken Egwene only a few tries to master took the novices a heart-pounding five minutes to begin.
Nicola was a help—she had been taught to link back in Salidar—and could help demonstrating. As they practiced, Egwene had Nicola join a circle with her. The young novice opened herself up to the Source, but stayed just on the cusp of surrender and let Egwene pull power through her. It worked, bless the Light! Egwene felt a rush of exhilaration as the One Power—too long denied her in meaningful quantities—flooded into her. How sweet it was! The world was more vibrant around her, sounds more sweet, colors more beautiful.
She smiled at the thrill of it. She could feel Nicola, sense her fear, her emotions bubbling over. Egwene had been part of enough circles to know how to separate herself from Nicola, but Egwene remembered that first time, how she had felt swept up into something far larger than herself.
There was a special skill to opening oneself to a circle. It wasn't terribly difficult to learn, but they didn't have much time. Fortunately, some of the girls soon picked it up. Yeteri, a petite blonde still in her nightgown, was first. Inala, a coppery and lanky Domani, followed soon after. Egwene eagerly formed a circle with Nicola, and the two other novices. Power flooded into her.
Next, she set about getting the others to practice. She had some inkling, from discussions with the novices during her stay in the Tower, which among them were the most skilled with weaves and the most levelheaded. Those weren't always the most powerful, but that wouldn't matter if they had a circle backing them up. Egwene hurriedly set them into groups, explaining how to accept the Source through a link. Hopefully, at least some of them would figure it out.
What mattered was that Egwene now had the Power. A fair measure of it, almost as much as she was accustomed to without forkroot. She smiled in anticipation, then began a weave, the complexity of it awing several of the novices. "What you are seeing," Egwene warned, "is something that you are not to try, even those of you leading circles. It is far too difficult and dangerous."
A line of light split the air at the end of the hallway, rotating upon itself. She hoped that the gateway would open in the right location; she was going on Siuan's instructions, which had been somewhat vague, though she also had Elayne's original description of the place.
"Also," Egwene said to the novices in a stern voice, "you are not to repeat this weave for anyone without my express permission, not even other Aes Sedai." She doubted that would be an issue; the weave was complex and few novices would have the skill yet to repeat it.
"Mother?" a hawk-nosed girl named Tamala squeaked. "Are you escaping?" Her voice was edged with fear, and not a little hope, as if Egwene might take her, too.
"No," Egwene said firmly. "I'll return in just a moment. When I come back, I want at least five good circles formed!"
And with Nicola and her two other attendants in tow, Egwene stepped through the gateway into a dark room. She wove a globe of light, and the illumination revealed a storeroom with shelves lining the walls. She let out a relieved sigh. She'd gotten the location right.
Those shelves, along with two short rows of shelves out on the floor, were filled with items of curious design. Crystal globes, small exotic statues, here a glass pendant which reflected blue in the light, there a large set of metal gauntlets lined at the cuffs with firedrops. Egwene strode into the room, leaving the three novices to stare in wonder. They could likely sense what Egwene knew—these were objects of the One Power. Ter'angreal, angreal, sa'angreal. Relics of the Age of Legends.
Egwene scanned the shelves. Items of the Power were infamously dangerous to use if you didn't know exactly what they did. Any one of these items could kill her. If only. . . .
She smiled broadly, stepping up to a shelf and sliding a fluted white wand as long as her forearm off the top shelf. She'd found it! She held it reverently for a moment, then reached and pulled the One Power through it. An awesome, almost overpowering, torrent of power flooded through her.
Yeteri gasped audibly at sensing it. Few women had ever held such power. It surged into Egwene, like a deep breath drawn in. It made her long to roar. She looked at the three novices, smiling broadly. "Now we're ready," she announced.
Let the sul'dam try and shield her while she was wielding one of the most powerful sa'angreal that the Aes Sedai possessed. The White Tower would not fall while she was Amyrlin! Not without a fight to rival the Last Battle itself.
Siuan found Gawyn's tent illuminated, shadows playing on the walls as the man moved about inside. His tent was suspiciously close to the guard post; he was allowed to stay within the palisade, perhaps so that Bryne— and the watching guards—could keep an eye on him.
Bryne, being the stubborn devilfish he was, had not gone to his guard post as she'd instructed. He'd followed behind her, cursing and calling for his attendants to come find him, rather than meet him at the post.
