The Dragon Reborn

## Chapter 51

#### Bait for the Net

From the corner of her eye, Nynaeve thought she glimpsed a tall man with reddish hair, in a swirling brown cloak, well down the sunlit street, but as she turned to peer from under the wide brim of the blue straw hat Ailhuin had given her, an ox-drawn wagon was already lumbering between them. When it lurched on, the man was nowhere to be seen. She was almost certain that had been a wooden flute case on his back, and his clothes were certainly not Tairen. It couldn’t be Rand. Just because I keep dreaming about him does not mean he is going to come all the way from Almoth Plain.

One of the barefoot men hurrying past, with the sickle-shaped tails of a dozen large fish sticking up from the basket on his back, suddenly tripped, catapulting silver-scaled fish over his head as he fell. He landed on hands and knees in the mud, staring at the fish that had come out of his basket. Every one of the long, sleek shapes stood upright, stuck nose down in the mud, forming a neat circle. Even a few passersby gaped at that. Slowly the man got to his feet, apparently unaware of the mud on him. Unslinging his basket, he began gathering the fish back into it, shaking his head and muttering to himself.

Nynaeve blinked, but her business was with this cow-faced brigand, facing her in the doorway of his shop with bloody cuts of meat hanging from hooks behind him. She gave her braid a tug and fixed the fellow with her eye.

“Very well,” she said sharply, “I will take it, but if this is what you charge for so poor a cut, you’ll not have more business from me.”

He shrugged placidly as he took her coins, then wrapped the fatty mutton roast in a cloth she produced from the basket on her arm. She glared at him as she put the wrapped meat into the basket, but that did not affect him.

She whirled to stalk away—and nearly fell. She was still not used to these clogs; they kept sticking in the mud, and she could not see how the folk who wore them managed. She hoped this sunshine dried the ground soon, but she had a feeling that the mud was more or less permanent in the Maule.

Stepping gingerly, she started back toward Ailhuin’s house, muttering under her breath. The prices were outrageous for everything, the quality inevitably poor, and almost no one seemed to care, not the people buying or those selling. It was a relief to pass a woman shouting at a shopkeeper, waving a bruised reddish-yellow fruit—Nynaeve did not know what; they had a good many fruits and vegetables she had never heard of, here—in each hand and calling for everyone to see what refuse the man sold, but the shopkeeper only stared at her wearily, not even bothering to argue back.

There was some excuse for the prices, she knew—Elayne had explained all about the grain being eaten by rats in the granaries because no one in Cairhien could buy, and how big the Cairhienin grain trade had become since the Aiel War—but nothing excused the way everyone seemed ready to lie down and die. She had seen hail ruin food crops in the Two Rivers, and grasshoppers eat them and blacktongue kill the sheep and redspot wither the tabac so there was nothing to sell when the merchants came down from Baerlon. She could remember two years in a row when there had been little to eat except turnip soup and old barley, and hunters had been lucky to bring home a scrawny rabbit, but Two Rivers folk picked themselves up when they were knocked down and went back to work. These people had had only one bad year, and their fisheries and their other trade seemed to be flourishing. She had no patience with them. The trouble was, she knew she should have a little patience. They were odd people with odd ways, and things she took for cringing, they seemed to see as a matter of course, even Ailhuin and Sandar. She should be able to summon up just a little patience.

If for them, why not for Egwene? She put that aside. The child behaved wretchedly, snapping at the most obvious suggestions, objecting to the most sensible things. Even when it was plain what they should do, Egwene wanted to be convinced. Nynaeve was not used to having to convince people, especially not people she had changed swaddling clothes for. The fact that she was only a matter of seven years older than Egwene was of no account.

It is all those bad dreams, she told herself. I cannot understand what they mean, and now Elayne and I are having them, too, and I do not know what that means either, and Sandar won’t say anything except that he is still looking, and I am so frustrated I . . . I could just spit! She jerked her braid so hard it hurt. At least she had been able to convince Egwene not to use the ter’angreal again, to put the thing back in her pouch instead of wearing it next to her skin always. If the Black Ajah was in Tel’aran’rhiod . . . She did not want to think about that possibility. We will find them!

“I will bring them down,” she muttered. “Trying to sell me like a sheep! Hunting me like an animal! I am the hunter this time, not the rabbit! That Moiraine! If she had never come to Emond’s Field, I could have taught Egwene enough. And Rand . . . I could have . . . I could have done something.” That she knew neither was true did not help; it made it worse. She hated Moiraine almost as much as she hated Liandrin and the Black Ajah, maybe as much as she hated the Seanchan.

She rounded a corner, and Juilin Sandar had to leap out of her way to keep from being trampled. Even used to them as he was, he nearly tripped over his own clogs, only his staff saving him from falling on his face in the mud. That pale, ridged wood was called bamboo, she had learned, and it was stronger than it looked.

“Mistress—uh—Mistress Maryim,” Sandar said, regaining his balance. “I was . . . looking for you.” He flashed her a nervous smile. “Are you angry? Why are you frowning at me that way?”

She smoothed her forehead. “I was not frowning at you, Master Sandar. The butcher . . . It does not matter. Why are you looking for me?” Her breath caught. “Have you found them?”

He looked around as if he suspected the passersby of trying to listen. “Yes. Yes, you must come back with me. The others are waiting. The others. And Mother Guenna.”

“Why are you so nervous? You did not let them discover your interest?” she said sharply. “What has frightened you?”

“No! No, mistress. I—I did not reveal myself.” His eyes darted again, and he stepped closer, his voice dropping to a breathy, urgent whisper. “These women you seek, they are in the Stone! Guests of a High Lord! The High Lord Samon! Why did you call them thieves? The High Lord Samon!” he almost squeaked. There was sweat on his face.

Inside the Stone! With a High Lord! Light, how do we reach them now? She suppressed her impatience with an effort. “Be easy,” she said soothingly. “Be at ease, Master Sandar. We can explain everything to your satisfaction.” I hope we can. Light, if he goes running to the Stone to tell this High Lord we are searching for them . . . “Come with me to Mother Guenna’s house. Joslyn, Caryla, and I will explain it all to you. Truly. Come.”

He gave a short, uneasy nod, and walked alongside her, keeping his pace to what she could manage with the clogs. He looked as if he wanted to run.

At the Wise Woman’s house, she hurried around to the back. No one ever used the front door, that she had seen, not even Mother Guenna herself. The horses were tied to a bamboo hitching rail, now—well away from Ailhuin’s new figs as well as her vegetables—with their saddles and bridles stored inside. For once she did not stop to pat Gaidin’s nose and tell him he was a good boy, and more sensible than his namesake. Sandar halted to scrape mud from his clogs with the butt of his staff, but she hurried inside.

Ailhuin Guenna was sitting in one of her high-backed chairs pulled out into the room, her arms at her sides. The gray-haired woman’s eyes were bulging with anger and fear, and she struggled furiously without moving a muscle. Nynaeve did not need to sense the subtle weaving of Air to know what had happened. Light, they’ve found us! Burn you, Sandar!

Rage flooded her, washed away the walls inside that usually kept her from the Power, and as the basket fell from her hands, she was a white blossom on a blackthorn bush, opening to embrace saidar, opening . . . It was as if she had run into another wall, a wall of clear glass; she could feel the True Source, but the wall stopped everything except the ache to be filled with the One Power.

The basket hit the floor, and as it bounced, the door behind her opened and Liandrin stepped in, followed by a black-haired woman with a white streak above her left ear. They wore long, colorful silk dresses cut to bare their shoulders, and the glow of saidar surrounded them.

Liandrin smoothed her red dress and smiled with that pouting rosebud mouth. Her doll’s face was filled with amusement. “You see, do you not, wilder,” she began, “you have no—”

Nynaeve hit her in the mouth as hard as she could. Light, I have to get away. She backhanded Rianna so hard the black-haired woman fell on her silk-covered rump with a grunt. They must have the others, but if I can make it out the door, if I can get far enough away they can’t shield me, I can do something. She pushed Liandrin hard, shoving her away from the door. Just let me escape their shielding, and I’ll . . .

Blows hit her from every side, like fists and sticks, pummeling her. Neither Liandrin, blood trickling from a corner of her now-grim mouth, nor Rianna, her hair as disarrayed as her green dress, lifted a hand. Nynaeve could feel the flows of Air weaving about her as well as she could feel the blows themselves. She still struggled to reach the door, but she realized that she was on her knees, now, and the unseen blows would not stop, invisible sticks and fists striking at her back and her stomach, her head and her hips, her shoulders, her breasts, her legs, her head. Groaning, she fell into her side and curled into a ball, trying to protect herself. Oh, Light, I tried. Egwene! Elayne! I tried! I will not cry out! Burn you, you can beat me to death, but I won’t cry!

The blows stopped, but Nynaeve could not stop quivering. She felt bruised and battered from crown to toe.

Liandrin crouched beside her, arms around her knees, silk rustling against silk. She had wiped the blood away from her mouth. Her dark eyes were hard, and there was no amusement on her face now. “Perhaps you are too stupid to know when you are defeated, wilder. You fought almost as wildly as that other foolish girl, that Egwene. She almost went mad. You must all learn to submit. You will learn to submit.”

Nynaeve shivered and reached for saidar again. It was not that she had any real hope, but she had to do something. Forcing through her pain, she reached out . . . and struck that invisible shield. Liandrin did have amusement back in her eyes, now, the grim mirth of a nasty child who pulls the wings off flies.

“We have no use for this one, at least,” Rianna said, standing beside Ailhuin. “I will stop her heart.” Ailhuin’s eyes nearly came out of her head.

“No!” Liandrin’s short, honey-colored braids swung as her head snapped around. “Always you kill too quickly, and only the Great Lord can make use of the dead.” She smiled at the woman held to the chair by invisible bonds. “You saw the soldiers who came with us, old woman. You know who waits for us in the Stone. The High Lord Samon, he will not be pleased if you speak of what happened inside your house today. If you hold your tongue, you will live, perhaps to serve him again one day. If you speak, you will serve only the Great Lord of the Dark, from beyond the grave. Which do you choose?”

Suddenly Ailhuin could move her head. She shook her gray curls, working her mouth. “I . . . I will hold my tongue,” she said dejectedly, then gave Nynaeve an embarrassed, shamed look. “If I speak, what good will it do? A High Lord could have my head by raising an eyebrow. What good can I do you, girl? What good?”

“It is all right,” Nynaeve said wearily. Who could she tell? All she could do is die. “I know you would help if you could.” Rianna threw back her head and laughed. Ailhuin slumped, released completely, but she only sat there, staring at her hands in her lap.

Between them, Liandrin and Rianna pulled Nynaeve to her feet and pushed her toward the front of the house. “You give us any trouble,” the black-haired woman said in a hard voice, “and I will make you peel off your own skin and dance in your bones.”

Nynaeve almost laughed. What trouble could I give? She was shielded from the True Source. Her bruises ached so much she could barely stand. Anything she might do, they could handle like a child’s tantrum. But my bruises will heal, burn you, and you’ll make a slip yet! And when you do . . .

There were others in the front room of the house. Two big soldiers in rimmed, round helmets and shiny breastplates over those puffy-sleeved red coats. The two men had sweat on their faces, and their dark eyes rolled as if they were as afraid as she. Amico Nagoyin was there, slender and pretty with her long neck and pale skin, locking as innocent as a girl gathering flowers. Joiya Byir had a friendly face despite that smooth-cheeked calm of a woman who had worked long with the Power, almost a grandmother’s face in its welcoming appearance, though her age had put no touch of gray in her dark hair, any more than it had wrinkled her skin. Her gray eyes looked more like those of the stepmother in the stories, the one who murdered the children of her husband’s first wife. Both women shone with the Power.

Elayne stood between the two Black sisters, with a bruised eye and a swollen cheek and a split lip, one sleeve of her dress torn halfway off. “I am sorry, Nynaeve,” she said thickly, as if her jaw hurt. “We never saw them until it was too late.”

Egwene lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, her face swollen with bruises, almost unrecognizable. As Nynaeve and her escort came in, one of the big soldiers hoisted Egwene over his shoulder. She dangled there as limply as a half-empty barley sack.

“What did you do to her?” Nynaeve demanded. “Burn you, what—!” Something unseen struck her across the mouth hard enough to make her eyes go blank for a moment.

“Now, now,” Joiya Byir said with a smile that her eyes belied. “I will not stand for demands, or bad language.” She sounded like a grandmother, too. “You speak when you are spoken to.”

“I told you the girl, she would not stop fighting, yes?” Liandrin said. “Let it be a lesson to you. If you try to cause any trouble, you will be treated no more gently.”

Nynaeve ached to do something for Egwene, but she let herself be pushed out into the street. She made them push her; it was a small way of fighting back, refusing to cooperate, but it was all she had at the moment.

There were few people in the muddy street, as if everyone had decided it was much better to be somewhere else, and those few scurried by on the other side without a glance at the shiny, black-lacquered coach standing behind a team of six matched whites with tall white plumes on their bridles. A coachman dressed like the soldiers, but without armor or sword, sat on the seat, and another opened the door as they appeared from the house. Before he did, Nynaeve saw the sigil painted there. A silver-gauntleted fist clutching jagged lightning bolts.

She supposed it was High Lord Samon’s sign—A Darkfriend, he must be, if he deals with the Black Ajah. The Light burn him!—but she was more interested in the man who dropped to his knees in the mud at their appearance. “Burn you, Sandar, why—?” She jumped as something that felt like a stick of wood struck her across the shoulders.

Joiya Byir smiled chidingly and waggled a finger. “You will be respectful, child. Or you might lose that tongue.”

Liandrin laughed. Tangling a hand in Sandar’s black hair, she wrenched his head back. He stared up at her with the eyes of a faithful hound—or of a cur expecting a kick. “Do not be too hard on this man.” She even made “man” sound like “dog.” “He had to be . . . persuaded . . . to serve. But I am very good at persuading, no?” She laughed again.

Sandar turned a confused stare on Nynaeve. “I had to do it, Mistress Maryim. I . . . had to.” Liandrin twisted his hair, and his eyes went back to her, the anxious hound’s once more.

Light! Nynaeve thought. What did they do to him? What are they going to do to us?

She and Elayne were bundled roughly into the coach, with Egwene slumped between them, her head lolling, and Liandrin and Rianna climbed in and took the seat facing forward. The glow of saidar still surrounded them. Where the others went, Nynaeve did not much care at that moment. She wanted to reach Egwene, to touch her, to comfort her hurts, but she could not move a muscle below her neck except to writhe. Flows of Air bound the three of them like layers of tightly wrapped blankets. The coach lurched into motion, swaying hard in the mud despite its leather springs.

“If you have hurt her . . . ” Light, I can see they’ve hurt her. Why don’t I say what I mean? But it was almost as hard to force the words out as it would have been to lift a hand. “If you have killed her, I won’t rest till you are all hunted down like wild dogs.”

Rianna glared, but Liandrin only sniffed. “Do not be a complete fool, wilder. You are wanted alive. Dead bait will catch nothing.”

Bait? For what? For who? “You are the fool, Liandrin! Do you think we are here alone? Only three of us, and not even full Aes Sedai? We are bait, Liandrin. And you have walked into the trap like a fat grouse.”

“Do not tell her that!” Elayne said sharply, and Nynaeve blinked before she realized Elayne was helping her fabrication. “If you let your anger get the best of you, you will tell them what they must not hear. They must take us inside the Stone. They must—”

“Be quiet!” Nynaeve snapped. “You are letting your tongue run away with you!” Elayne managed to look abashed behind her bruises. Let them chew on that, Nynaeve thought.

But Liandrin only smiled. “Once your time as bait is done, you will tell us everything. You will want to. They say you will be very strong one day, but I will make sure you will always obey me, even before the Great Master Be’lal works his plans for you. He is sending for Myrddraal. Thirteen of them.” Those rosebud lips laughed the final words.

Nynaeve felt her stomach twist. One of the Forsaken! Her brain numbed with shock. The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul, bound by the Creator in the moment of creation. But the catechism did not help; she knew too well how much of it was false. Then the rest of it came home to her. Thirteen Myrddraal. And thirteen sisters of the Black Ajah. She heard Elayne screaming before she realized she was screaming herself, jerking uselessly in those invisible bonds of Air. It was impossible to say which was louder, their despairing screams, or the laughter from Liandrin and Rianna.