Galina stood in the middle of the grit-covered stone floor, in a small beam of light. Her face was all Aes Sedai calm, her agitation of the previous day completely subdued. "Where is it?" she said coolly. "Give it to me."
Faile set her basket down and shoved her hand deep inside. When she brought out the white rod, Galina's hands twitched. Faile extended the rod toward her, and she reached for it almost hesitantly. If she had not known better, Faile would have said she was afraid to touch it. Galina's fingers closed around the rod, and she exhaled heavily. She jerked the rod away before Faile could release it. The Aes Sedai seemed to be trembling, but her smile was . . . triumphant.
"How do you intend to get us away from the camp?" Faile asked. "Should we change our clothes now?"
Galina opened her mouth, then suddenly raised her free hand, palm out. Her head tilted toward the stairs as if listening. "It may be nothing," she said softly, "but it's best if I check. Wait here and be quiet. Be quiet," she hissed when Faile started to speak. Lifting the hem of her silk robes, the Aes Sedai scurried to the stairs and started up like a woman uneasy about what she might find at the top. Her feet passed out of sight behind the sagging boards and beams.
"Did any of you hear anything?" Faile whispered. They all shook their heads. "Maybe she's holding the Power. I've heard that can—"
"She wasn't," Maighdin interrupted. "I've never seen her embracing—"
Suddenly, wood groaned overhead, and with a thunderous crash charred beams and boards collapsed, sending out blinding billows of black dust and grit that sent Faile into paroxysms of coughing. The smell of charring suddenly was as thick in the air as it had been the day Maiden burned. Something falling from above hit her shoulder hard, and she crouched, trying to protect her head. Someone cried out. She heard other falling objects hit the basement's stone floor, boards or pieces of boards. Nothing made a loud enough noise to be a roof beam or a heavy joist.
Eventually—it seemed like hours; it might have been minutes— the rain of debris stopped. The dust began to thin. Quickly she looked around for her companions, and found them all huddling on the floor with their arms around their heads. There seemed to be more light than before. A little more. Some of the gaps overhead were wider, now. A trickle of blood ran down Alliandre's face from her scalp. Everyone was dusted with black from head to foot.
"Is anyone injured?" Faile asked, finishing with a cough. The dust had not cleared completely, and her throat and tongue felt coated with it. The stuff tasted like charcoal.
"No," Alliandre said, touching her scalp gingerly. "A scrape, that's all." The others denied injury as well, though Arrela seemed to be moving her right arm carefully. No doubt they had all suffered bruises, and Faile thought her left shoulder was going to be black and blue shortly, but she would not count that a real injury.
Then her eyes fell on the stairs, and she wanted to weep. Wreckage from above filled the whole space where the staircase had been. They might have been able to squeeze through some of the gaps overhead. Faile thought she could reach them standing on Arrela's shoulders, but she doubted she could pull herself through with one good arm. Or that Arrela could. And if either managed, she would be in the middle of a burned-out ruin and likely as not to make the rest of the thing fall in, too.
"No!" Alliandre moaned. "Not now! Not when we were so close!" Rising, she rushed as near to the rubble as she could get, almost pressing against it, and began to shout. "Galina! Help us! We're trapped! Channel and lift the boards away! Clear a path for us to get out! Galina! Galina! Galina!" She sagged against the tangle of timbers, shoulders shaking. "Galina,'' she wept. "Galina, help us."
"Galina's gone," Faile said bitterly. The woman would have answered if she was still above or had any intention of aiding them. "With us trapped down here, maybe dead, she has the perfect excuse for leaving us behind. Anyway, I don't know whether an Aes Sedai could move some of those timbers if she
tried." She did not want to mention the possibility that Galina had arranged that excuse herself. Light, she should never have slapped the woman. It was too late for self-recrimination, though.
"What are we going to do now?" Arrela asked.
"Dig ourselves out," Faile and Maighdin said at the same instant. Faile looked at the other woman in surprise. Her maid's dirty face wore a queen's resolve.
"Yes," Alliandre said, straightening. She turned around, and if runnels of tear-tracks marked the dust on her face, no new tears appeared. She really was a queen, and could not like being shamed by the courage of a lady's maid. "We'll dig ourselves out. And if we fail. ... If we fail, I will not die wearing this!" Unfastening her golden belt, she flung it contemptuously into a corner of the basement. Her golden collar followed.
"We'll need those to make our way through the Shaido camp," Faile said gently. "Galina may not be taking us out, but I intend leaving today." Dairaine made that imperative. Bain and Chiad could not keep her hidden long. "Or as soon we can dig out, anyway. We'll pretend we've been sent to pick berries." She did not want to step on her liege-woman's bold gesture, though. "However, we don't need to wear them now."
Removing her belt and collar, she righted her basket and set them atop the dirty gai'shain robes. The others emulated her. Alliandre retrieved her own belt and collar with a rueful laugh. At least she could laugh again. Faile wished she could.
The jumble of charred timbers and half-burned boards filling the staircase resembled one of those blacksmith's puzzles her Perrin enjoyed. Almost everything seemed to be propping up something else. Worse, the heavier timbers might be beyond all of them working together. But if they could clear enough for them to be able to crawl through, writhing between the thick beams. ... It would be dangerous, that crawl. But when a dangerous path was your only route to safety, you had to take it.
A few boards came away easily and were piled at the back of the basement, but after that everything had to be chosen with care, examined to see whether anything would fall if it were removed, hands feeling back as far as they could go into the tangle, groping for nails that might have caught, trying not to think about the whole pile shifting and trapping an arm, crushing it. Only then could they begin pulling, sometimes two of them together, tugging harder and harder until the piece suddenly gave. That work went slowly, with the great pile occasionally groaning, or shifting slightly. Everyone darted back, holding their breath, when that happened. Nobody moved again until they were sure the snarl of timbers was not going to collapse. The work became the focus of their world.
Once, Faile thought she heard wolves howling. Wolves generally made her think of Perrin, but not this time. The work was all.
Then Alliandre wrenched a charred board free, and with a great groan, the mass began to shift. Toward them. Everyone ran toward the back of the basement as the pile fell in with a deafening rumble, sending up more billows of dust.
When they stopped coughing and could see again, dimly, with dust still hanging in the air, perhaps a quarter of the basement was filled. All of their work undone, and worse, the jumble was leaning toward them precariously. Groaning, it sagged a little more toward them and stopped. Everything about it said the first board pulled free would bring the whole mass down on their heads.
Arrela began to cry softly. Tantalizing gaps admitted sunlight and allowed them to see the street, the sky, but nothing anyone could wriggle through, even Lacile. Faile could see the red scarf Galina had used to mark the building. It fluttered for a moment in the breeze.
Staring at the scarf, she seized Maighdin's shoulder. "I want you to try to make that scarf do something the wind wouldn't make it do."
"You want to attract attention?" Alliandre said hoarsely. "It's far more likely to be Shaido than anyone else.''
"Better that than dying down here of thirst," Faile replied, her voice harsher than she wanted. She would never see Perrin again, then. If Sevanna had her chained, she would at least be alive for him to rescue. He would rescue her; she knew it. Her duty now was to keep the women who followed her alive. And if that meant captivity, so be it. "Maighdin?"
"I might spend all day trying to embrace the Source and never succeed," the sun-haired woman said in dull tones. She stood slumped, staring at nothing. Her face suggested that she saw an abyss beneath her feet. "And if I do embrace it, I can almost never weave anything."
Faile loosened her grip on Maighdin and smoothed her hair instead. "I know it's difficult," she said soothingly. "Well, in truth, I don't know. I've never done it. But you have. And you can do it again. Our lives depend on you, Maighdin. I know the strength that's in you. I've seen it time and again. There is no surrender in you. I know you can do it, and so do you."