Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time #13)

Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time #13) Page 103

She had to continue. She heard the weeping children. Tears in her eyes, heart breaking, she walked to the door.

It grew worse. She left people to be drowned, beheaded and buried alive. One of the worst was when she had to form a weave while villagers were consumed by enormous spiders with bright red fur and crystalline eyes. She hated spiders.

Sometimes she would appear naked. That stopped bothering her. Though she couldn’t remember anything specific but the number of the weave she was on, she understood—somehow—that nudity was nothing compared to the terrors she’d seen.

She stumbled through a stone archway, memories of a house on fire fading from her mind. This was the eighty-first weave. She remembered that. That and her fury.

She wore a singed dress of sackcloth. How had she burned it? She stood up straight, holding her head, arms throbbing, back feeling whipped, legs and toes bearing cuts and scratches. She was in the Two Rivers. Except, it wasn’t the Two Rivers. Not as she remembered it. Some of the buildings smoldered, still burning.

“They’re coming again!” a voice yelled. Master al’Vere. Why was he holding a sword? People she knew, people dear to her—Perrin, Master al’Vere, Mistress al’Donel, Aeric Botteger—stood beside a low wall, all holding weapons. Some waved to her.

“Nynaeve!” Perrin called. “Shadowspawn! We need your help!”

Enormous shadows moved on the other side of the wall. Shadowspawn of terrible size—not Trollocs, but something far worse. She could hear roars.

She had to help! She moved toward Perrin, but froze as she saw—across the Green in the other direction—a six-pointed star painted on a hillside.

“Nynaeve!” Perrin sounded desperate. He began striking at something that reached over the wall, tentacles of midnight black. Perrin chopped at them with an axe as one snatched up Aeric and pulled him—screaming—into the darkness.

Nynaeve began to walk toward the star. Calm. Measured.

That was stupid. An Aes Sedai had to be calm. She knew that. But an Aes Sedai also needed to be able to act, to do what was needed to help those who needed it. It didn’t matter what it cost her personally. These people needed her.

So she started to run.

Even that didn’t feel like enough. She ran to get to the star, but still she left people she loved to fight alone. She knew she couldn’t channel until she reached the six-pointed star. That made absolutely no sense. Shadowspawn were attacking. She had to channel!

She embraced the Source, and something seemed to try to stop her. Something like a shield. She pushed it aside with difficulty and Power flooded her. She began flinging fire at the monster, burning off a tentacle as it grabbed for Perrin.

Nynaeve continued throwing fire until she reached the six-pointed star. There, she wove the eighty-first weave, which created three rings of Fire in the air.

She worked furiously, attacking at the same time. She didn’t know the point of creating this weave, but she knew she had to finish it. So she increased the strength of the weave, making the burning rings extremely large. Then she began hurling them at the creatures. Massive halos of flame crashed into the dark things, killing them.

There was a six-pointed star on the roof of Master al’Vere’s inn. Had it been burned there? Nynaeve ignored it, venting her anger at the things with tentacles.

No. This is important. More important than the Two Rivers. I must go on.

Feeling like an utter coward—but knowing it was the right thing to do—she ran to the inn, passing through the doorway.

Nynaeve lay weeping on the ground beside a broken archway. She was on the last of the hundred weaves.

She could barely move. Her face was streaked with tears. She had hollow memories of fleeing battles, of leaving children to die. Of never being able to do enough.

Her shoulder bled. A wolf’s bite. Her legs were flayed, as if she’d walked through a long patch of thorns. All across her body were burns and blisters. She was naked.

She rose to her knees, which were scraped and bleeding. Her braid ended in a smoldering stump about a handspan below her shoulders. She retched to the side, shivering.

So sick, so weak. How could she continue?

No. They will not beat me.

She slowly raised herself to her feet. She was in a small room, harsh sunlight leaking through cracks between the wallboards. A bundle of white cloth lay on the ground. She picked it up, unfolding it. It was a white dress with the colors of the Ajahs banded at the bottom. The clothing of an Accepted in the White Tower.

She dropped it. “I am Aes Sedai,” she said, stepping over the robe and pushing open the door. Better to go naked than to give in to that lie.

Outside the door, she found another dress, this time yellow. That was more proper. She allowed herself the time to put it on, though she couldn’t stop trembling, and her fingers were so tired she could barely make them work. Her blood stained the cloth.

Dress on, she inspected her surroundings. She was on a hillside in the Blight, the ground covered in weeds that bore the distinctive dark marks. Why was there a shack in the Blight, and why had she been inside of it?

She felt so tired. She wanted to go back into the shack and sleep.

No. She would continue. She trudged up the hill. At its top, she looked down on a land covered in broken rubble and pockets of darkness. Lakes, if they could be called that. The liquid looked thick and oily. Dark shapes moved within them. Malkier, she thought, stunned that she recognized the place. The Seven Towers, only rubble now. The Thousand Lakes corrupted. The place of Lan’s heritage.

She stepped forward, but her toe hit something. A stone beneath her feet had been carved with a small symbol. The six-pointed star.

She sighed in relief. It was almost through. She began the final weave.

Below, a man stumbled out from behind a mound of rubble, swinging expertly with his sword. She knew him even at a distance. That strong figure, square face, color-shifting cloak and dangerous way of walking.

“Lan!” she screamed.

He was surrounded by beasts that looked like wolves, but too large. They had dark fur, and their teeth flashed as they lunged toward Lan. Darkhounds, an entire pack.

Nynaeve finished the hundredth weave with a start; she hadn’t realized she’d continued it. A shower of colorful specks burst into the air around her. She watched them fall, feeling used. She heard a sound over her shoulder, but when she glanced, there was nothing there. Just the shack.

The six-pointed star hung over a door there, the symbol made of bits of gemstones. That door hadn’t been there before. She took a step toward the