Robert Jordan - The Dragon Reborn

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."