Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

“Perhaps we can send a message to Egwene through the Aiel women?” Myrelle suggested in a doubtful tone.

Siuan gave a loud, and very phony, cough, but Elayne had had all she could stand. Warning Egwene was vital, of course — Elaida’s people would surely drag her back to the Tower if they discovered her in Cairhien, and not to a pleasant reception — but the rest . . .! “How can you think Rand would listen to anything Elaida says? Do you think he does not know she was Red Ajah, and what that means? They aren’t going to offer him support, and you know it. We have to warn him!” There was a contradiction in that, and she knew it, but worry had hold of her tongue. If anything happened to Rand, she would die.

“And how do you suggest that we do that, Accepted?” Sheriam asked coolly.

Elayne was afraid she must look like a fish, with her mouth hanging open. She had not a clue what answer to give. She was saved suddenly by distant screaming, followed by wordless shouts from the anteroom. She was closest to the door, but she ran through with the others on her heels.

The room was empty except for the Keeper’s writing table, with its piles of papers and stacks of scrolls and documents, and a row of chairs against one wall where Aes Sedai would sit while waiting to speak to Elaida. Anaiya, Morvrin and Carlinya were gone, but one of the tall outer doors was still swinging shut. A woman’s frantic screams rolled through the narrowing opening. Sheriam, Myrelle and Beonin almost knocked Elayne down in their haste to reach the hall. They might have appeared misty, but they felt solid enough.

“Be careful,” Elayne shouted, yet there was really nothing to do but gather her skirts and follow as quickly as possible with Siuan. They stepped into a scene from nightmare. Literally.

Some thirty paces to their right, the tapestry-hung corridor suddenly widened into a stony cavern that seemed to stretch forever, lit in dim patches by the red glow of scattered fires and braziers. There were Trollocs everywhere, great manlike shapes, their all-too-human faces distorted by bestial muzzles and snouts and beaks, sporting horns or tusks or feathered crests. Those in the distance appeared more indistinct than the nearest, only half-formed, while the nearest were giants twice as tall as a man, even larger than any real Trolloc, all clad in leather and black spiked mail, howling and capering around cookfires and cauldrons, racks and strange spiked frames and metal shapes.

It really was a nightmare, though larger than any Elayne had heard of from Egwene or the Wise Ones. Once freed of the mind that created them, such things sometimes drifted through the World of Dreams and sometimes latched on to a particular spot. Aiel dreamwalkers destroyed each as a matter of course whenever they found one, but they — and Egwene — had told her the best thing to do was avoid any she saw altogether. Unfortunately, Carlinya apparently had not listened when she and Nynaeve passed that on.

The White sister was bound and hanging by her ankles from a chain that disappeared into darkness overhead. To Elayne’s eyes the glow of saidar still surrounded her, but Carlinya writhed frantically and screamed as she was slowly lowered headfirst toward a great bubbling black kettle of boiling oil.

Even as Elayne ran into the corridor, Anaiya and Morvrin halted at the border where hallway abruptly became cavern. For all of a heartbeat, they halted, then suddenly their hazy forms seemed to elongate toward the boundary, like smoke drawn into a chimney. No sooner had they touched it than they were inside, Morvrin shouting as two Trollocs turned great iron wheels that stretched her out tighter and tighter, Anaiya dangling by her wrists as Trollocs danced about her, flogging her with metal-tipped whips that tore long rents in her dress.

“We must link,” Sheriam said, and the glow surrounding her merged with that around Myrelle and Beonin. Even so, it did not come near the brightness of that around a single woman in the waking world, a woman who was not a misty dream.

“No!” Elayne shouted urgently. “You mustn’t accept it as real. You must treat it as — ” She seized Sheriam’s arm, but the flow of Fire the three had woven, tenuous even with them linked, touched the dividing line between dream and nightmare. The weave vanished there as if the nightmare had absorbed it, and in the same instant the three Aes Sedai became drawn out, mist caught in a wind. They had time only for startled yells before they touched the boundary and vanished. Sheriam reappeared inside, her head sticking up from a dark metal bell shape. Trollocs turned handles and jerked levers on the outside, and Sheriam’s red hair flailed wildly as she shrieked in rising crescendos. Of the other two there was no sign, but Elayne thought she could hear more screaming in the distance, someone wailing “No!” over and over, another shrieking for help.

“Do you remember what we told you about dispelling nightmares?” Elayne asked.

Eyes fixed on the scene in front of her, Siuan nodded. “Deny its reality. Try to fix things in your mind as they would be without it.”

That had been Sheriam’s mistake, all the Aes Sedai’s mistake probably. By trying to channel against the nightmare they had accepted it as real, and that acceptance had pulled them into it as surely as walking in, leaving them helpless unless they remembered what they had forgotten. Which they showed no sign of doing. The climbing shrieks augured into Elayne’s ears.

“The corridor,” she muttered, trying to form in her head how it had been when she saw it last. “Think of the corridor the way you remember it.”

“I’m trying, girl,” Siuan growled. “It isn’t working.”

Elayne sighed. Siuan was right. Not a line of the scene before them so much as wavered. Sheriam’s head was almost vibrating above the metal shroud that enclosed the rest of her. Morvrin’s howls came in strained pants; Elayne almost thought she could hear the woman’s joints being pulled apart. Carlinya’s hair, hanging below her, was almost touching the roiling surface of the hot oil. Two women were not enough. The nightmare was too big.

“We need the others,” she said.

“Leane and Nynaeve? Girl, if we knew where to find them, Sheriam and the rest would be dead before . . . ” She trailed off, staring at Elayne. “You don’t mean Leane and Nynaeve, do you? You mean Sheriam and . . . ” Elayne only nodded; she was too frightened to speak. “I don’t think they can hear us from here, or see us. Those Trollocs haven’t even glanced our way. That means we have to try from inside.” Elayne nodded again. “Girl,” Siuan said in a toneless voice, “you have a lion’s courage, and maybe a fisherbird’s sense.” With a heavy sigh, she added, “But I don’t see any other way myself.”

Elayne agreed with her about everything except the courage. If she had not had her knees locked, she would have been in a heap on the floor tiles, patterned in all the colors of the Ajahs. She realized she had a sword in her hand, a great gleaming length of steel, absolutely useless even had she known how to wield it. She let it fall, and it vanished before reaching the floor. “Waiting isn’t helping anything,” she muttered. Much longer, and the little courage she had managed to scrape together would surely evaporate. Together she and Siuan stepped toward the boundary. Elayne’s foot touched that dividing line, and suddenly she felt herself being pulled in, s

ucked like water through a tube.

One instant she was standing in the hallway, staring at the horrors, the next she was lying on her belly on rough gray stone, wrists and ankles tightly tied in the small of her back, and the horrors were all around her. The cavern stretched endless in every direction; the Tower corridor no longer seemed to exist. Screams filled the air, echoing from rocky walls and a ceiling dripping stalactites. A few paces from her a huge black cauldron stood steaming over a roaring fire. A boar-snouted Trolloc, complete with tusks, was tossing in lumps that seemed to be unidentifiable roots. A cookpot. Trollocs ate anything. Including people. She thought of her hands and feet free, but the coarse rope still dug into her flesh. Even the pale shadow of. saidar had vanished; the True Source no longer existed for her, not here. A nightmare in truth, and she was well and truly caught.

Siuan’s voice cut through the screams in a pained moan. “Sheriam, listen to me!” The Light alone knew what was being done to her; Elayne could not see any of the others. Only hear them. “This is a dream! Aah . . . aaaaaaah! Th-think how it should be!”

Elayne took it up. “Sheriam, Anaiya, everybody, listen to me! You must think of the corridor as it was! As it really is! This is only real as long as you believe it!” She set the image of the corridor in her head firmly, colored tiles in ordered rows and gilded stand-lamps and brilliant woven tapestries. Nothing changed. The screams still echoed. “You must think of the corridor! Hold it in your minds, and it will be real! You can defeat this if you try!” The Trolloc looked at her; it had a thick sharp-pointed knife in its hand now. “Sheriam, Anaiya, you have to concentrate! Myrelle, Beonin, concentrate on the corridor!” The Trolloc heaved her on to her side. She tried to wriggle away, but a massive knee held her in place effortlessly while the thing began slicing at her clothes like a hunter skinning a deer carcass. Desperately she held on to the image of the hallway. “Carlinya, Morvrin, for the love of the Light, concentrate! Think of the corridor! The corridor! All of you! Think of it hard!” Grunting something in a harsh language never meant for a human tongue, the Trolloc flipped her facedown again and knelt on her, thick knees crushing her arms against her back. “The corridor!” she screamed. It tangled heavy fingers in her hair, yanked her head back. “The corridor! Think of the corridor!” The Trolloc’s blade touched her tight-stretched neck beneath her left ear. “The corridor! The corridor!” The blade began to slide.

Suddenly she was staring at colored floor tiles under her nose. Clapping hands to her throat, marveling that they were free to move, she felt wetness and brought her fingers up to stare at them. Blood, but only a tiny smear. A shudder rippled through her. If that Trolloc had succeeded in cutting her throat . . . No Healing could have cured that. Shuddering again, she pushed slowly to her feet. It was the Tower hallway outside the Amyrlin’s study, with no sign of Trollocs or caverns.

Siuan was there, looking a mass of bruises in a torn dress, and the Aes Sedai, misty forms of near ruin. Carlinya was in the best shape, and she stood wide-eyed and shaking, fingering dark hair that now ended frizzily a hand from her scalp. Sheriam and Anaiya seemed to be weeping heaps of bloody rags. Myrelle huddled in on herself, white-faced, naked and covered with long red scratches and welts. Morvrin moaned every time she moved, and she moved unnaturally, as though her joints did not work properly anymore. Beonin’s dress appeared to have been clawed to shreds, and she was panting on her knees, more wide-eyed than ever, holding on to the wall to keep from falling over.

Abruptly Elayne realized that her own dress and shift were hanging from her shoulders, neatly sliced open down the front. A hunter skinning a deer carcass. She shivered so hard she almost fell. Repairing the garments was a simple matter of thought, but she was not sure how long it would take to repair her memories.

“We must go back,” Morvrin said, kneeling awkwardly between Sheriam and Anaiya. Despite her stiffness and groans, she sounded as stolid as ever. “There is Healing to be done, and none here can manage it as we are.”

“Yes.” Carlinya touched her short hair again. “Yes, it might be best if we returned to Salidar.” Her voice was a decidedly unsteady version of its normal iciness.