A Memory of Light

She felt the ground tremble from someone falling. He’d tripped, hadn't he? Dizzy, she couldn’t see straight.

She sat up, aching all over, but clung to the threads of Air she’d woven as gags. Let those go, and Taim’s men would be able to scream. If they did that, she died. They all died. Or worse.

She blinked the tears of pain from her eyes to find Androl standing over the two Asha’man, cudgel in his hand. He’d knocked them both out, it appeared, not trusting in shields he couldn’t see. Good thing, too, as her second shield hadn’t gotten into place. She set it now.

Dobser still hung where she’d put him, his eyes wider now. Androl looked at Pevara. “Light!” he said. “Pevara, that was incredible. You brought down two Asha’man, practically by yourself!”

She smiled in satisfaction and woozily took Androl’s hand, letting him help her to her feet. “What did you think the Red Ajah does with its time, Androl? Sit around and complain about men? We train to fight other channeled.”

She felt Androl’s respect as he busied himself, pulling Welyn into the building and shutting the door, then checking at the windows to make certain they hadn’t been seen. He drew the shades quickly, then channeled to make a light.

Pevara took a breath, then raised a hand and steadied herself against the wall.

Androl looked up sharply. “We need to take you to one of the others for Healing.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just took a thump to the head and it has the room shaking. It will wear off.”

“Let me see,” Androl said, walking over-his light hovering beside him. Pevara allowed him to putter about for a moment, checking her eyes, feeling her head for lumps. He moved his light closer to her eyes. “Does it hurt to look at this?”

“Yes,” she admitted, glancing away.

“Nausea?”

“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

And 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 still 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 will have their souls. I hope their punishment is lengthy.”

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

“Of course we will 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 fell silent. Dobser hung in his bonds, facing the wall, his ears plugged by Pevara's weaves. The other two were still 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 usually 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 all of their eyes. If the lids cracked a tiny bit, he’d know. That would have to be enough.

Pevara was still thinking about her family. She had been telling the truth; she did hate the Darkfriends. All of them. It was a measured hate, not out of control, but it was still 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.”

“Ah. .”

“You asked me why I came to the Black Tower. You wanted to know why I asked to be tested. Well this thing that I am, it answers a question for me. It tells me who my father was, and why he did what he felt he needed to do.

“I can see the signs now. Our business did too well. Father could find quarries of stone and veins of metal when nobody else could. Men hired him to find valuable deposits for them. He was the best. Uncannily good. I could. . see it in him at the end, Pevara. I was only ten, but I remember.

The fear in his eyes. I know that fear now.” He hesitated. “My father jumped off