A Memory of Light

“Slight.”


He grunted, then took a handkerchief out of his pocket and poured some water on it from his flask. He adopted a look of concentration, and his light winked out. The handkerchief crackled softly, and when he handed it to her, it was frozen. “Hold this to the wound,” he said. “Tell me if you start to feel drowsy. It could grow worse if you fall asleep.”

“Are you worried for me?” she asked, amused, doing as he said.

“Just . . . what was it you told me earlier? Keeping watch over our assets?” “I’m sure,” she said, pressing the iced bandanna to her head. “So you know field medicine as well?”

“I apprenticed with a town’s Wise Woman once,” he said absently as he knelt to bind the fallen men. Pevara was glad to release the weaves of Air on them, though she did keep the shields up.

“A Wise Woman took on a male apprentice?”

“Not at first,” Androl said. “It’s .. a long story.”

“Excellent; a long story will keep me from falling asleep until the others come for us.”

Emarin and the others had been instructed to go and be seen, establishing an alibi for the group, in case Dobser’s disappearance was noted.

Androl eyed her, replacing his light. Then he shrugged, continuing his work. “It started when I lost a friend to the fevers during a silverpike run out of Mayene. When I came back to the mainland, I started thinking that we could have saved Sayer if any of us had known what to do. So I went looking for someone who could teach me . . ”





CHAPTER


4


Advantages to a Bond



nd that was the end of it,” Pevara said, sitting against the wall.

Androl could feel her emotions. They sat in the store room where they’d fought Taim’s men, waiting for Emarin—who claimed he could make Dobser talk. Androl himself had little skill in interrogation. The scent of grain had changed to a rancid stench. It spoiled suddenly, sometimes.

Pevara had grown quiet, both outside and in, as she’d spoken of the murder of her family by longtime friends.

“I stil hate them,” she said. “I can think about my family without pain, but the Darkfriends ...

I hate them. At least I have some vengeance, as the Dark One certainly didn’t defend them.

They spent all their lives following him, hoping for a place in his new world, only to have the Last Battle come long after their deaths. I suppose the ones living now won’t be any better off. Once we win the Last Battle, he wil have their souls. I hope their punishment is lengthy.”

“You’re so certain we will win?” Androl asked.

“Of course we wil win. It’s not a question, Androl. We can’t afford to make it one.”

He nodded. “You’re right. Continue.”

“There’s no more to say. Odd, to tell the story after all these years. For a long while, I couldn’t speak of it.”

The room fel silent. Dobser hung in his bonds, facing the wal , his ears plugged by Pevaras weaves. The other two were stil unconscious. Androl had hit them hard, and he intended to see that they didn’t awaken anytime soon.

Pevara had shielded them, but she couldn’t possibly maintain three shields at once if the men tried to break free. Aes Sedai usual y used more than one sister to hold one man. Three would be impossible for any single channeler, strong or not. She could tie off those shields, but Taim had set the Asha’man at practicing how to escape a tied-off shield.

Yes, best to make certain the other two didn’t wake. Useful though it would be just to cut their throats, he didn’t have the stomach for it. Instead he sent a tiny thread of Spirit and Air to touch each of their eyelids. He had to use a single weave, and a weak one, but he managed to touch al of their eyes. If the lids cracked a tiny bit, he’d know. That would have to be enough.

Pevara was stil thinking about her family. She had been tel ing the truth; she did hate the Darkfriends. All of them. It was a measured hate, not out of control, but it was stil strong after all of these years.

He would not have suspected that in this woman who seemed so often to smile. He could sense that she hurt. And, oddly, that she felt . . . lonely.

“My father killed himself,” Androl said, without really intending to.

She looked at him.

“My mother pretended it was an accident for years,” Androl continued. “He did it out in the woods, leaped from a cliff. He’d sat down with her the night before and explained what he was going to do.”

“She didn’t try to stop him?” Pevara asked, aghast.

“No,” Androl said. “Only a few years before she found the mother’s last embrace, I was able to pry some answers out of her. She was frightened of him. That was shocking to me; he’d always been so gentle. What had changed, in those last few years, to make her fear him?”

Androl turned to Pevara. “She said that he saw things in the shadows. That he’d started to go mad.”