Rand stilled a grimace before it could begin. His skin felt no tingling, no goosebumps. They had masked their ability, and with it, shielded him from sensing the Power in them. Men had had few advantages over women when it came to channeling, but now they had lost those few while women retained all of theirs. Some of the Asha'-man were trying to puzzle out how to duplicate what Nacelle had created, to find a weave that would allow men to detect women's weaves, but so far without success. Well, it would have to be dealt with by someone else. He had all he could manage on his plate at the moment.
The farms continued, some alone in a clearing, others clustered three or four or five together. If they followed the road far enough they would reach the village of King's Crossing in a few miles, where a wooden bridge spanned a narrow river called the Reshalle, but well short of that the road passed by a large clearing marked by a pair of tall stone gateposts, though there were neither gates nor fence. A hundred paces or more beyond it, at the end of a mud-slicked clay lane, lay Lady Deidru's manor, two stories of thatch-roofed gray stone saved from looking a large farmhouse only by the gateposts and the tall twinned doors at the front. The stables and outbuildings had the same practical appearance, sturdy and unornamented. There was no one in sight, no stablemen, no servant on her way to fetch eggs, no men in the fields that flanked the lane. The house's tall chimneys stood smokeless. It did smell of a trap. But the countryside was quiet, the farmers unruffled. There was only one way to find out.
Rand turned Tai'daishar in through the gateposts, and the others followed. Min did not heed his warning. She pushed her gray in between Tai'daishar and Nynaeve's mare and grinned at him. The bond carried nervousness, but the woman grinned!
When he was halfway to the house, the doors opened, and two women came out, one in dark gray, the other in blue with red panels on her breast and ankle-length skirts. Sunlight glinted off the silvery leash connecting them. Two more appeared, and two more, until three pairs stood in a row to either side of the door. As he reached the three-quarter point, another woman stepped into the doorway, very dark and very small, dressed in pleated white, her head covered by a transparent scarf that fell over her face. The Daughter of the Nine Moons. She had been described to Bashere right down to her shaven head. A tension in his shoulders he had not been aware of melted. That she was actually he
re did away with the possibility of a trap. The Seanchan would not risk the heir to their throne in anything so dangerous. He drew rein and dismounted.
"One of them is channeling.'' Nynaeve said, just loudly enough for him to hear, as she climbed down from her saddle. "I can't see anything. so she's masked her ability and inverted the weave—and I wonder how the Seanchan learned that!—but she's channeling. Only one; there isn't enough for it to be two." Her ter'angreal could not tell whether it was saidin or saidar being channeled, but it was unlikely to be a man. I told you it was trap, Lews Therin groaned. I told you!
Rand pretended to check his saddle girth. "Can you tell which one?" he asked quietly. He still did not reach for saidin. There was no telling what Lews Therin might do in these circumstances if he managed to grab control again. Logain was fiddling with his girth, too, and Narishma was watching Sandomere check one of the dapple's hooves. They had heard. The small woman was waiting in the doorway, very still but no doubt impatient and likely offended by their apparent interest in their horses.
"No," Cadsuane replied grimly. "But I can do something about it. Once we're closer." Her golden hair ornaments swayed as she tossed her cloak back as though unmasking a sword.
"Stay behind me," he told Min, and to his relief, she nodded. Her face wore a small frown, and the bond carried worry. Not fear, though. She knew he would protect her.
Leaving the horses standing, he started toward the sul'dam and damane with Cadsuane and Nynaeve a little distance to either side of him. Logain, hand resting on his sword hilt as if that were his real weapon, strode along on the other side of Cadsuane, Narishma and Sandomere beyond Nynaeve. The small dark woman began walking toward them slowly, holding her pleated skirts up off the damp ground.
Abruptly, no more than ten paces away, she . . . flickered. For an instant, she was taller than most men, garbed all in black, surprise on her face, and though she still wore the veil, her head was covered with short-cut wavy black hair. Only an instant before the small woman returned, her step faltering as she let her white skirts fall, but another flicker, and the tall dark woman stood there, her face twisted in fury behind the veil. He recognized that face, though he had never seen it before. Lews Therin had, and that was enough.
"Semirhage," he said in shock before he could stop the word, and suddenly everything seemed to happen at once.
He reached for the Source and found Lews Therin clawing for it, too, each of them jostling the other aside from reaching it. Semirhage flicked her hand, and a small ball of fire streaked toward him from her fingertips. She might have shouted something, an order. He could not leap aside: Min stood right behind him. Frantically trying to seize saidin, he flung up the hand holding the Dragon Scepter in desperation. The world seemed to explode in fire.
His cheek was pressed against the damp ground, he realized. Black flecks shimmered in his vision, and everything seemed faintly hazy, as if seen through water. Where was he? What had happened? His head felt stuffed with wool. Something was prodding him in the ribs. His sword hilt. The old wounds were a hard knot of pain just above that. Slowly, he realized he was looking at the Dragon Scepter, or what was left of it. The spearpoint and a few inches of charred haft lay three paces away. Small, dancing flames were consuming the long tassel. The Crown of Swords lay beyond it.
Abruptly it came to him that he could feel saidin being channeled. His skin was goose bumps all over from saidar being wielded. The manor house. Semirhage! He tried to push himself up, and collapsed with a harsh cry. Slowly he pulled a left arm that seemed all pain up where he could see his hand. See where his hand had been. Only a mangled, blackened ruin remained. A stub sticking out of a cuff that gave off thin streamers of smoke. But the Power was still being channeled around him. His people were fighting for their lives. They might be dying. Min! He struggled to rise, and fell again.
As though thinking of her had summoned her, Min was crouching over him. Trying to shield him with her body, he realized. The bond was full of compassion and pain. Not physical pain. He would have known if she had the smallest injury. She was feeling pain for him. "Lie still," she said. "You've. . . . You've been hurt."
"I know," he said hoarsely. Again, he reached for saidin, and for a wonder, this time Lews Therin did not try to interfere. The Power filled him, and that gave him the strength to push himself to his feet one-handed, preparing several very nasty weaves as he did so. Careless of his muddy coat, Min gripped his good arm as though she were trying to hold him upright. But the fighting was over.
Semirhage was standing stiffly with her arms at her sides, her skirts pressed against her legs, doubtless wrapped up in flows of Air. The hilt of one of Min's knives stood out from her shoulder, and she must have been shielded, too, but her dark, beautiful face was contemptuous. She had been a prisoner before, briefly, during the War of the Shadow. She had escaped from high detention by frightening her jailers to the point that they actually smuggled her to freedom.
Others had been injured more seriously. A short dark sul'dam and tall pale-haired damane, linked by an a’dam, lay sprawled on the ground, staring up at the sun with already glazed eyes, and another pair were on their knees and clinging to one another, blood running down their faces and matting their hair. The other pairs stood as stiffly as Semirhage, and he could see the shields on three of the damane. They looked stunned. One of the sul'dam, a slender, dark-haired young woman, was weeping softly.
Narishma's face was bloodied, too, and his coat appeared singed. So did Sandomere's, and a bone jutted through his left coatsleeve, white smeared with red, until Nynaeve firmly pulled his arm straight and guided the bone back into place. Grimacing in pain, he gave a guttural groan. She cupped her hands around his arm over the break, and moments later he was flexing his arm and moving his fingers and murmuring thanks.
Logain appeared untouched, as did Nynaeve and Cadsuane, who was studying Semirhage the way a Brown might study an exotic animal never before seen.
Suddenly gateways began opening all around the manor house, spilling out mounted Asha'man and Aes Sedai and Warders, veiled Maidens and Bashere riding at the head of his horsemen. An Asha'man and Aes Sedai in a ring of two could make a gateway considerably larger than those Rand could alone. So someone had managed to give the signal, a red sunburst in the sky. Every Asha'man was full of saidin, and Rand assumed the Aes Sedai were equally full of saidar. The Maidens began spreading out into the trees.
"Aghan, Hamad, search the house!" Bashere shouted. "Matoun, form the lancers! They'll be on us as soon as they can!" Two soldiers thrust their lances into the ground and leapt down to run inside, drawing their swords, while the others began arraying themselves in two ranks.
Ayako flung herself from her saddle and rushed to Sandomere, not even bothering to hold her skirts out of the mud. Merise rode to Narishma before swinging down right in front of him and taking his head in her hands without a word. He jerked, his back arching and nearly pulling his head free, as she Healed him. She had little facility with Nynaeve's method of Healing.
Ignoring the turmoil, Nynaeve gathered her skirts in bloodied hands and hurried to Rand. "Oh, Rand," she said when she saw his arm, "I'm so sorry. I . . . I'll do what I can, but I can't fix it the way it was." Her eyes were filled with anguish.
Wordlessly, he held out his left arm. It throbbed with agony. Strangely, he could still feel his hand. It seemed he should be able to make a fist with the fingers that were no longer there. His goose bumps intensified as she drew more deeply on saidar, the tendrils of smoke vanished from his cuff, and she gripped his arm above the wrist. His entire arm began tingling, and the pain drained away. Slowly, blackened skin was replaced by smooth skin that seemed to ooze down until it covered the small lump that had been the base of his hand. It was a miraculous thing to see. The scarlet-and-gold scaled dragon grew back, too, as much as it could, ending in a bit of the golden mane. He could still feel the whole hand.
"I'm so sorry," Nynaeve said again. "Let me delve you for any other injuries." She asked, but did not wait, of course. She reached up to cup his head between her hands, and a chill ran through him. "There's something wrong with your eyes," she said with a frown. "I'm afraid to try fixing that without studying on it. The smallest mistake could blind you. How well can you see? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Two. I can see fine," he lied. The black flecks were gone, but everything still seemed seen through water, and he wanted to squint against a sun that appeared to glare ten times brighter than it had. The old wounds in his side were knotted with pain.
Bashere climbed down from his compact bay in front of him and frowned at the stump of his left arm. Unbuckling his helmet, he took it off and held it under his arm. "At least you're alive," he said gruffly. "I've seen men hurt worse."
"Me, too," Rand said. "I'll have to learn the sword all over again, though." Bashere nodded. Most forms required two hands. Rand bent to pick up the crown of Illian, but Min released his arm and hurriedly handed the crown to him. He settled it on his head. "I'll have to work out new ways to do everything."