A Memory of Light

words that their entire nation followed him. This was as bad as the Seanchan. Worse. The Seanchan captured and used Aes Sedai, but they didn’t slaughter the common people with such recklessness.
    Egwene had to survive to escape. She needed to bring this information to the White Tower. The Aes Sedai would have to face Demandred. Light send that enough of their number had escaped the battle earlier to do so.
    Why had Demandred sent for Rand? Everyone knew where to find the Dragon Reborn.
    Egwene reached the mess tent, then crept around it. Guards chatted in the near distance. That Sharan accent was oddly monotone, as if the people had no emotions at all. It was as if. . . the music was gone from their speech. Music that Egwene hadn’t realized was normally there.
    The ones speaking were men, so she probably didn’t need to worry that they would sense her ability to channel. Still, Demandred had done it with Leane; perhaps he had a ter’angreal for the purpose. Such things existed.
    She gave the men a wide berth anyway and continued on into the darkness of what had once been her camp. She moved past fallen tents, the scent of smoldering fires still lingering in the air, and crossed a path that she had taken most evenings while collecting troop reports. It was disturbing, how quickly one could go from being in a position of power to slinking through camp like a rat. Being suddenly unable to channel changed so many things.
    My authority is not drawn from my power to channel, she told herself. My strength is in control, understanding, and care. I will escape this camp, and I will continue the fight.
    She repeated those words, fighting off a creeping sense of powerlessness— the feeling of despair at so many dead, the tingling between her shoulder blades, as if someone were watching her in the darkness. Light, poor Leane.
    Something hit the bare earth near her. It was followed by two more pebbles dropping to the ground. Gawyn apparently didn’t trust in just one. She moved quickly to the remnants of a nearby tent, half-burned, the other half of the canvas hanging from the poles.
    She crouched down. At that moment she realized a half-burned body was lying on the ground mere inches from her. He was Shienaran, she saw in a flash of lightning from the rumbling clouds above, though he wore the symbol of the White Tower on his shirt. He lay with one eye up toward the sky, silent, the other side of his head burned down to the skull.
    A light appeared from the direction she’d been heading. She waited, tense, as two Sharan guards approached, bearing a lantern. They didn’t speak. As they turned to walk southward along their route, she could see that their armor had symbols etched across the back that mimicked the tattoos she’d seen on men earlier. These marks were quite extravagant, and so—by her best guess—the men were actually of low rank.
    The system disturbed her. You could always add to a person’s tattoo, but she knew of no way to remove one. Having the tattoos grow more intricate the lower one was in society implied something: people could fall from grace, but they could not rise once fallen—or born—to a lowly position.
    She sensed the channeler behind her mere moments before a shield slammed between Egwene and the Source.
    Egwene reacted immediately. She didn’t give terror time to gain purchase; she grabbed her belt knife and spun toward the woman she could sense approaching from behind. Egwene lunged, but a weave of Air snatched her arm and held it tightly; another one filled her mouth, gagging her.
    Egwene thrashed, but other weaves grabbed her and hauled her into the air. The knife dropped from her twitching fingers.
    A globe of light appeared nearby, a soft blue aura, much dimmer than that of a lantern. It had been created by a woman with dark skin and very refined features. Delicate. A small nose, a slender frame. She stood up from her crouch, and Egwene found her to be quite tall, nearly as tall as a man.
    “You are a dangerous little rabbit,” the woman said, her thick, toneless accent making her difficult to understand. She emphasized words in the wrong places, and pronounced many sounds in a just-off way. She had the tattoos on her face, like delicate branches, reaching from the back of her neck forward onto her cheeks. She also wore one of those dresses shaped like a cow’s bell, black, with strands of white tied a handspan below the neck.
    The woman touched her arm, where Egwene’s knife