The Great Hunt (77 page)

“The Dark One can have the Horn for all I care! What does finding the Horn count if I abandon Egwene to this? If I did that, the Horn couldn’t save me. The Creator couldn’t save me. I would damn myself.”

Ingtar stared at him, his face unreadable. “You mean that exactly, don’t you?”

“Something’s happening out here,” Hurin said urgently. “A man just came running up, and they’re all milling like fish in a bucket. Wait. The officer is coming inside!”

“Go!” Ingtar said. He tried to take the Horn, but Mat was already running. Rand hesitated, but Ingtar grabbed his arm and pulled him into the hall. The others were streaming after Mat; Perrin only gave Rand one pained look before he went. “You cannot save the girl if you stand here and die!”

He ran with them. Part of him hated himself for running, but another part whispered,
I’ll come back. I’ll free her somehow.

By the time they reached the bottom of the narrow, winding staircase, he could hear a man’s deep voice raised in the front part of the house, angrily demanding that someone stand up and speak. A serving girl in her nearly transparent robe knelt at the bottom of the stairs, and a gray-haired woman all in white wool, with a long floury apron, knelt by the kitchen door. They were both exactly as Mat had described, faces to the floor and arms wrapped around their heads, and they did not stir a hair as Rand and the others hurried by. He was relieved to see the motions of breathing.

They crossed the garden at a dead run, climbing over the back wall rapidly. Ingtar cursed when Mat tossed the Horn of Valere ahead of him, and tried again to take it when he dropped outside, but Mat snatched it up with a quick, “It isn’t even scratched,” and scampered up the alley.

More shouts rose from the house they had just left; a woman screamed, and someone began tolling a gong.

I will come back for her. Somehow.
Rand sped after the others as fast as he could.

CHAPTER
46

To Come Out of the Shadow

N
ynaeve and the others heard distant shouts as they approached the buildings where the
damane
were housed. The crowds were beginning to pick up, and there was a nervousness to the people in the street, an extra quickness to their step, an extra wariness in the way they glanced past Nynaeve, in her lightning-paneled dress, and the woman she held by a silver leash.

Shifting her bundle nervously, Elayne peered toward the noise of shouts, one street over, where the golden hawk clutching lightning rippled in the wind. “What is happening?”

“Nothing to do with us,” Nynaeve said firmly.

“You hope,” Min added. “And so do I.” She increased her pace, hurrying up the steps ahead of the others, and disappeared inside the tall stone house.

Nynaeve shortened her grip on the leash. “Remember, Seta, you want us to make it through this safely as much as we do.”

“I do,” the Seanchan woman said fervently. She kept her chin on her chest, to hide her face. “I will cause you no trouble, I swear.”

As they turned up the gray stone steps, a
sul’dam
and a
damane
appeared at the head of the stairs, coming down as they went up. After one glance to make sure the woman in the collar was not Egwene, Nynaeve did not look at them again. She used the
a’dam
to keep Seta close by her side, so if the
damane
sensed the ability to channel in one of them, she would think it was Seta. She felt sweat trickling down her spine, though, until she realized they were paying her no more attention than she gave them. All they saw was a dress with lightning panels and a gray dress, the women wearing them linked by the silver length of an
a’dam.
Just another Leash Holder with a Leashed One, and a local girl hurrying along behind with a bundle belonging to the
sul’dam.

Nynaeve pushed open the door, and they went in.

Whatever the excitement beneath Turak’s banner, it did not extend here, not yet. There were only women moving about in the entry hall, all easily placed by their dress. Three gray-dressed
damane,
with
sul’dam
wearing the bracelets. Two women in dresses paneled with forked lightning stood talking, and three crossed the hall alone. Four dressed like Min, in plain dark woolens, hurried on their way with trays.

Min stood waiting down the entry hall when they went in; she glanced at them once, then started deeper into the house. Nynaeve guided Seta down the hall after Min, with Elayne scurrying along in their wake. No one gave them a second glance, it seemed to Nynaeve, but she thought the trickle of sweat down her backbone might become a river soon. She kept Seta moving quickly so no one would have a chance for a good look—or worse, a question. With her eyes fixed on her toes, Seta needed so little urging that Nynaeve thought she would have been running if not for the physical restraint of the leash.

Near the back of the house, Min took a narrow stairs that spiraled upwards. Nynaeve pushed Seta up it ahead of her, all the way to the fourth floor. The ceilings were low, there, the halls empty and silent except for the soft sounds of weeping. Weeping seemed to fit the air of the chilly halls.

“This place . . .” Elayne began, then shook her head. “It feels. . . .”

“Yes, it does,” Nynaeve said grimly. She glared at Seta, who kept her face down. A pallor of fear made the Seanchan woman’s skin paler than it was normally.

Wordlessly, Min opened a door and went in, and they followed. The room beyond had been divided into smaller rooms by roughly made wooden walls, with a narrow hallway running to a window. Nynaeve crowded after Min as she hurried to the last door on the right and pushed in.

A slender, dark-haired girl in gray sat at a small table with her head resting on folded arms, but even before she looked up, Nynaeve knew it was Egwene. A ribbon of shining metal ran from the silver collar around Egwene’s neck to a bracelet hanging on a peg on the wall. Her eyes widened at the sight of them, her mouth working silently. As Elayne closed the door, Egwene gave a sudden giggle, and pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle it. The tiny room was more than crowded with all of them in it.

“I know I’m not dreaming,” she said in a quivering voice, “because if I was dreaming, you’d be Rand and Galad on tall stallions. I have been dreaming. I thought Rand was here. I couldn’t see him, but I thought. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“If you’d rather wait for them . . .” Min said dryly.

“Oh, no. No, you are all beautiful, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Where did you come from? How did you do it? That dress, Nynaeve, and the
a’dam
, and who is. . . .” She gave an abrupt squeak. “That’s Seta. How . . . ?” Her voice hardened so that Nynaeve barely recognized it. “I’d like to put
her
in a pot of boiling water.” Seta had her eyes squeezed shut, and her hands clutched her skirts; she was trembling.

“What have they done to you?” Elayne exclaimed. “What could they do to make you want something like that?”

Egwene never took her eyes off the Seanchan woman. “I’d like to make her feel it. That’s what she did to me, made me feel like I was neck deep in. . . .” She shuddered. “You do not know what it is like wearing one of these, Elayne. You don’t know what they can do to you. I can never decide whether Seta is worse than Renna, but they’re all hateful.”

“I think I know,” Nynaeve said quietly. She could feel the sweat soaking Seta’s skin, the cold tremors that shook her limbs. The yellow-haired Seanchan was terrified. It was all she could do not to make Seta’s terrors come true then and there.

“Can you take this off of me?” Egwene asked, touching the collar. “You must be able to if you could put that one on—”

Nynaeve channeled, a pinpoint trickle. The collar on Egwene’s neck provided anger enough, and if it had not, Seta’s fear, the knowledge of how deserved it truly was, and her own knowledge of what she wanted to do to the woman, would have done it. The collar sprang open and fell away from Egwene’s throat. With an expression of wonder, Egwene touched her neck.

“Put on my dress and coat,” Nynaeve told her. Elayne was already unbundling the clothes on the bed. “We will walk out of here, and no one will even notice you.” She considered holding her contact with
saidar
—she was certainly angry enough, and it felt so wonderful—but, reluctantly, she let it go. This was the one place in Falme where there was no chance of a
sul’dam
and
damane
coming to investigate if they sensed someone channeling, but they would certainly do so if a
damane
saw a woman she thought was a
sul’dam
with the glow of channeling around her. “I don’t know why you aren’t gone already. Alone here, even if you could not figure out how to get that thing off you, you could have just picked it up and run.”

As Min and Elayne hurriedly helped her change into Nynaeve’s old dress, Egwene explained about moving the bracelet from where a
sul’dam
left it, and how channeling made her sick unless a
sul’dam
wore the bracelet. Just that morning she had discovered how the collar could be opened without the Power—and found that touching the catch with the intention of opening it made her hand knot into uselessness. She could touch it as much as she wanted so long as she did not think of undoing the catch; the merest hint of that, though, and. . . .

Nynaeve felt sick herself. The bracelet on her wrist made her sick. It was too horrible. She wanted it off her wrist before she learned more about
a’dam
, before she perhaps learned something that would make her feel soiled forever for having worn it.

Unfastening the silver cuff, she pulled it loose, snapped it closed, and hung it on one of the pegs. “Don’t think that means you can shout for help now.” She shook a fist under Seta’s nose. “I can still make you wish you were never born if you open your mouth, and I do not need that bloody . . . thing.”

“You—you do not mean to leave me here with it,” Seta said in a whisper. “You cannot. Tie me. Gag me so I cannot give an alarm. Please!”

Egwene gave a mirthless laugh. “Leave it on her. She won’t call for help even without a gag. You had better hope whoever finds you will remove the
a’dam
and keep your little secret, Seta. Your dirty secret, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” Elayne said.

“I have thought about it a great deal,” Egwene said. “Thinking was all I could do when they left me alone up here.
Sul’dam
claim they develop an affinity after a few years. Most of them can tell when a woman is channeling whether they’re leashed to her or not. I wasn’t sure, but Seta proves it.”

“Proves what?” Elayne demanded, and then her eyes widened in sudden realization, but Egwene went on.

“Nynaeve,
a’dam
only work on women who can channel. Don’t you see?
Sul’dam
can channel the same as
damane.
” Seta groaned through her teeth, shaking her head in violent denial. “A
sul’dam
would die before admitting she could channel, even if she knew, and they never train the ability, so they cannot do anything with it, but they can channel.”

“I told you,” Min said. “That collar shouldn’t have worked on her.” She was doing up the last buttons down Egwene’s back. “Any woman who couldn’t channel would be able to beat you silly while you tried to control her with it.”

“How can that be?” Nynaeve said. “I thought the Seanchan put leashes on any woman who can channel.”

“All of those they find,” Egwene told her. “But those they can find are like you, and me, and Elayne. We were born with it, ready to channel whether anyone taught us or not. But what about Seanchan girls who aren’t born with the ability, but who could be taught? Not just any woman can become a—a Leash Holder. Renna thought she was being friendly telling me about it. It is apparently a feastday in Seanchan villages when the
sul’dam
come to test the girls. They want to find any like you and me, and leash them, but they let all the others put on a bracelet to see if they can feel what the poor woman in the collar feels. Those who can are taken away to be trained as
sul’dam.
They are the women who could be taught.”

Seta was moaning under her breath. “No. No. No.” Over and over again.

“I know she is horrible,” Elayne said, “but I feel as if I should help her somehow. She could be one of our sisters, only the Seanchan have twisted it all.”

Nynaeve opened her mouth to say they had better worry about helping themselves, and the door opened.

“What is going on here?” Renna demanded, stepping into the room. “An audience?” She stared at Nynaeve, hands on hips. “I never gave permission for anyone else to link with my pet, Tuli. I do not even know who you—” Her eyes fell on Egwene—Egwene wearing Nynaeve’s dress instead of
damane
gray. Egwene with no collar around her throat—and her eyes grew as big as saucers. She never had a chance to yell.

Before anyone else could move, Egwene snatched the pitcher from her washstand and smashed it into Renna’s midriff. The pitcher shattered, and the
sul’dam
lost all her breath in a gurgling gasp and doubled over. As she fell, Egwene leaped on her with a snarl, shoving her flat, grabbing for the collar she had worn where it still lay on the floor, snapping it around the other woman’s neck. With one jerk on the silver leash, Egwene pulled the bracelet from the peg and fitted it to her own wrist. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth, her eyes fixed on Renna’s face with a terrible concentration. Kneeling on the
sul’dam
’s shoulders, she pressed both hands over the woman’s mouth. Renna gave a tremendous convulsion, and her eyes bulged in her face; hoarse sounds came from her throat, screams held back by Egwene’s hands; her heels drummed on the floor.

“Stop it, Egwene!” Nynaeve grabbed Egwene’s shoulders, pulling her off of the other woman. “Egwene, stop it! That isn’t what you want!” Renna lay gray-faced and panting, staring wildly at the ceiling.

Suddenly Egwene threw herself against Nynaeve, sobbing raggedly at her breast. “She hurt me, Nynaeve. She hurt me. They all did. They hurt me, and hurt me, until I did what they wanted. I hate them. I hate them for hurting me, and I hate them because I couldn’t stop them from making me do what they wanted.”

“I know,” Nynaeve said gently. She smoothed Egwene’s hair. “It is all right to hate them, Egwene. It is. They deserve it. But it isn’t all right to let them make you like they are.”

Seta’s hands were pressed to her face. Renna touched the collar at her throat disbelievingly, with a shaking hand.

Egwene straightened, brushing her tears away quickly. “I’m not. I am not like them.” She almost clawed the bracelet off of her wrist and threw it down. “I’m not. But I wish I could kill them.”

“They deserve it.” Min was staring grimly at the two
sul’dam.

“Rand would kill someone who did a thing like that,” Elayne said. She seemed to be steeling herself. “I am sure he would.”

“Perhaps they do,” Nynaeve said, “and perhaps he would. But men often mistake revenge and killing for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice.” She had often sat in judgment with the Women’s Circle. Sometimes men came before them, thinking women might give them a better hearing than the men of the Village Council, but men always thought they could sway the decision with eloquence, or pleas for mercy. The Women’s Circle gave mercy where it was deserved, but justice always, and it was the Wisdom who pronounced it. She picked up the bracelet Egwene had discarded and closed it. “I would free every woman here, if I could, and destroy every last one of these. But since I cannot. . . .” She slipped the bracelet over the same peg that held the other one, then addressed herself to the
sul’dam. Not Leash Holders any longer
, she told herself. “Perhaps, if you are very quiet, you will be left alone here long enough to manage to remove the collars. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and it may be that you’ve done enough good to counterbalance the evil you have done, enough that you will be allowed to remove them. If not, you will be found, eventually. And I think whoever finds you will ask a great many questions before they remove those collars. I think perhaps you will learn at first hand the life you have given to other women. That is justice,” she added, to the others.