Rand did not care very much about them, but he did not want to leave the damane behind. At the least he could give them a chance to escape. They might be staring at him as they would a wild animal with bared fangs, but they had not chosen to be prisoners, treated little better than domestic animals themselves. He put a hand to th

e collar of the nearest, and felt a jolt that nearly numbed his arm; for an instant the Void shifted, and saidin raged through him like the snowstorm a thousandfold. The damane’s short yellow hair flailed as she convulsed at his touch, screaming, and the sul’dam connected to her gasped, face going white. Both would have fallen if not held by bonds of Air.

“You try it,” he told Aviendha, working his hand. “A woman must be able to touch the thing safely. I don’t know how it unfastens.” It looked of a piece, linked somehow, just like bracelet and leash. “But it went on, so it must be able to come off.” A few moments could not make any difference to whatever had happened to the gateway. Was it Asmodean?

Aviendha shook her head, but began fumbling at the other woman’s collar. “Hold still,” she growled as the damane, a pale-faced girl of sixteen or seventeen, tried to flinch back. If the leashed women had looked on Rand as a wild beast, they stared at Aviendha like a nightmare made flesh.

“She is marath’damane,” the pale girl wailed. “Save Seri, mistress! Please, mistress! Save Seri!” The other damane, older, almost motherly, began weeping uncontrollably. Aviendha glared at Rand as hard as she did the girl for some reason, muttering angrily under her breath as she worked at the collar.

“It is he, Lady Morsa,” the other damane’s sul’dam said suddenly in a soft drawl that Rand could barely understand. “I have borne the bracelet long, and I could tell if the marath’damane had done more than block Jini.”

Morsa did not look surprised. In fact, there seemed to be a light of horrified recognition in her blue eyes as she gazed at Rand. There was only one way that could be.

“You were at Falme,” he said. If he went through first, it meant leaving Aviendha behind, although only for a moment.

“I was.” The noblewoman looked faint, but her slow, slurring voice was coolly imperious. “I saw you, and what you did.”

“Take a care I don’t do the same here. Give me no trouble, and I will leave you in peace.” He could not send Aviendha first, into the Light knew what. If emotion had not been so distant, he would have grimaced the way she was grimacing over that collar. They had to go through together, and be ready to face anything.

“Much has been kept secret about what happened in the lands of the great Hawkwing, Lady Morsa,” the severe-faced woman said. Her dark eyes were as hard on Morsa as they had been on him. “Rumors fly that the Ever Victorious Army has tasted defeat.”

“Do you now seek truth in rumor, Jalindin?” Morsa asked in a cutting tone. “A Seeker above all should know when to keep silent. The Empress herself has forbidden speech of the Corenne until she calls it again. If you—or I—speak so much as the name of the city where that expedition landed, our tongues will be removed. Perhaps you would enjoy being tongueless, in the Tower of Ravens? Not even the Listeners would hear you scream for mercy, or pay heed.”

Rand understood no more than two words in three, and it was not the odd accents. He wished he had time to listen. Corenne. The Return. That was what the Seanchan in Falme had called their attempt to seize the lands beyond the Aryth Ocean—the lands where he lived—that they considered their birthright. The rest—Seeker, Listeners, the Tower of Ravens—were a mystery. But apparently the Return had been called off, for the time being at least. That was worth knowing.

The gateway was narrower. Maybe as much as a finger width narrower than moments before. Only his block held it open; it had tried to close as soon as Aviendha released her weave, and it was still trying to.

“Hurry,” he told Aviendha, and she gave him a look so patient it could as well have been a stone between his eyes.

“I am trying, Rand al’Thor,” she said, still working at the collar. Tears trickled down Seri’s cheeks; a continuous low moan came from her throat, as if the Aiel woman intended to slit it. “You nearly killed the other two, and maybe yourself. I could feel the Power rushing into both of them wildly when you touched the other collar. So leave me to it, and if I can do it, I will.” Muttering a curse, she tried at the side.

Rand thought about making the sul’dam remove the collars—if anyone knew how the things came off, they would—but from the set frowns on their faces, he knew he would have to force them to it. If he could not kill a woman, he could not very well torture one.

With a sigh he glanced at the gray blankness filling the gateway again. The flows appeared to be woven into his; he could not slice one without the other. Passing through might trigger the trap, but cutting away the grayness, even if that act did not trip it, would allow the gateway to snap shut before they had a chance to leap through. It would have to be a blind jump into the Light knew what.

Morsa had listened carefully to every word he and Aviendha said, and now she was gazing thoughtfully at the two sul’dam, but Jalindin had never taken her eyes from the noblewoman’s face. “Much has been kept secret that should not be held from the Seekers, Lady Morsa,” the stern woman said. “The Seekers must know all.”

“You forget yourself, Jalindin,” Morsa snapped, her gloved hands jerking; had her arms not been bound to her sides, she would have sawed the reins. As it was, she tilted her head to stare down her nose at the other woman. “You were sent to me because Sarek looks above himself and has designs on Serengada Dai and Tuel, not to ask of what the Empress has—”

Jalindin broke in harshly. “It is you who forgets herself, Lady Morsa, if you think that you are proof against the Seekers for Truth. I myself have put both a daughter and a son of the Empress, may the Light bless her, to the question, and in gratitude for the confessions I wrenched from them she allowed me to gaze upon her. Think you that your minor House stands higher than the Empress’s own children?”

Morsa remained upright, not that she had much choice, but her face went gray, and she licked her lips. “The Empress, may the Light illumine her forever, already knows far more than I can tell. I did not mean to imply—”

The Seeker cut her off again, twisting her head to speak to the soldiers as if Morsa did not exist. “The woman Morsa is in the custody of the Seekers for Truth. She will be put to the question as soon as we return to Merinloe. And the sul’dam and damane, as well. It seems they, too, have hidden what they should not.” Horror painted the faces of the named women, but Morsa could have stood for any of them. Eyes wide and suddenly haggard, she slumped as much as her invisible bonds would allow, voicing not a word of protest. She looked as if she wanted to scream, yet she—accepted. Jalindin’s gaze turned to Rand. “She named you Rand al’Thor. You will be well treated if you surrender to me, Rand al’Thor. However you came here, you cannot think to escape even if you kill us. There is a wide search for a marath’damane who channeled in the night.” Her eyes flickered to Aviendha. “It will find you as well, inevitably, and you might be slain by accident. There is sedition in this district. I do not know how men like you are treated in your lands, but in Seanchan your sufferings can be eased. Here, you can find great honor in the use of your power.”

He laughed at her, and she looked offended. “I cannot kill you, but I vow I should stripe your hide at least for that.” He certainly would not have to worry about being gentled in Seanchan hands. In Seanchan, men who could channel were killed. Not executed. Hunted and shot down on sight.

The gray-filled gateway was another finger narrower, barely wide enough now for both of them to pass through together. “Leave her, Aviendha. We have to go now.”

She released Seri’s collar and gave him an exasperated look, but her eyes went past him to the gateway, and she hoisted her skirts to stump through the snow to him, muttering to herself about frozen water.

“Be ready for anything,” he told her, putting an arm around her shoulders. He told himself they had to be close together to fit. Not because she felt good. “I don’t know what, but be ready.” She nodded, and he said, “Jump!”

Together they leaped into the grayness, Rand releasing the weave that had held the Seanchan in order to fill himself to bursting with saidin . . .

/> . . . and landed stumbling in his bedchamber in Eianrod, lamplit, with darkness outside the windows.

Asmodean sat against the wall beside the door with his legs crossed. He was not embracing the Source, but Rand slammed a block between the man and saidin anyway. Whirling with his arm still around Aviendha, he found the gateway gone. No, not gone—he could still see his weaving, and what he knew must be Asmodean’s—but there seemed to be nothing there at all. Without pause he slashed his weave, and suddenly the gateway appeared, a rapidly narrowing view of Seanchan, the Lady Morsa slumped in her saddle, Jalindin shouting orders. A green-and-white tasseled spear lanced through the opening, just before it snapped shut. Instinctively, Rand channeled Air to snatch the suddenly wobbling two-foot length of spear. The shaft ended as smoothly as any craftsman could have worked it. Shivering, he was glad that he had not tried removing the gray barrier—whatever it had been—before jumping through.

Tags: Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net