The Great Hunt

  “I did not say I wouldn’t come,” Elayne said, but she gave the shadowed woods a lingering look.

  “If we are going to do this,” Min said hoarsely, “then let’s do it.” She was staring at the Waygate, and Egwene thought she heard her mutter, “The Light burn you, Rand al’Thor.”

  “I must go last,” Liandrin said. “All of you, in. I will follow.” She was eyeing the woods now, too, as if she thought someone might be following them. “Quickly! Quickly!”

  Egwene did not know what Liandrin expected to see, but if anyone at all came they would probably stop them from using the Waygate. Rand, you wool-headed idiot, she thought, why can’t you just once get yourself into some kind of trouble that doesn’t force me to act like the heroine in a story?

  She dug her heels into Bela’s flanks, and the shaggy mare, restive from too much time in a stable, leaped forward.

  “Slowly!” Nynaeve shouted, but it was too late.

  Egwene and Bela surged toward their own dull reflections; two shaggy horses touched noses, appeared to flow into each other. Then Egwene was merging into her own image with an icy shock. Time seemed to stretch out, as if the cold crept over her by the width of one hair at a time, and every hair took minutes.

  Suddenly Bela was stumbling in pitch-blackness, moving so fast the mare almost pitched over on her head. She caught herself and stood trembling as Egwene dismounted hurriedly, feeling the mare’s legs in the dark to see if she had been hurt. She was almost glad of the dark, to hide her crimson face. She knew that time as well as distance were different the other side of a Waygate; she had moved before thinking.

  There was only the blackness around her in every direction, except for the rectangle of the open Waygate, like a window of smoked glass when seen from this side. It let no light in—the black seemed to press right up against it—but through it Egwene could see the others, moving by the slowest increments, like figures in a nightmare. Nynaeve was insisting on handing around the pole-lanterns and lighting them; Liandrin was acceding with a bad grace, apparently insisting on speed.

  When Nynaeve came though the Waygate—leading her gray mare slowly, ever so slowly—Egwene almost ran to hug her, and at least half of her feeling was for the lantern Nynaeve carried. The lantern made a smaller pool of light than it should have—the darkness pressed against the light, trying to force it back into the lantern—but Egwene had begun to feel that darkness pressing against her, as if it had weight. Instead, she contented herself with saying, “Bela’s all right, and I did not break my neck the way I deserved to.”

  Once there had been light along the Ways, before the taint on the Power with which they had first been made, the taint of the Dark One on saidin, had begun to corrupt them.

  Nynaeve thrust the pole of the lantern into her hands and turned to pull another from under her saddle girth. “As long as you know you deserved to,” she murmured, “then you didn’t deserve to.” Suddenly she chuckled. “Sometimes I think it was sayings like that more than anything else that created the title of Wisdom. Well, here’s another. You break your neck, and I’ll see it mended just so I can break it again.”

  It was said lightly, and Egwene found herself laughing, too—until she recalled where she was. Nynaeve’s amusement did not last long either.

  Min and Elayne came though the Waygate hesitantly, leading their horses and carrying lanterns, obviously expecting to find monsters waiting at the least. They looked relieved, at first, to find nothing but darkness, but the oppressiveness of it soon had them shifting nervously from foot to foot. Liandrin replaced the Avendesora leaf and rode through the closing Waygate leading the pack horse.

  Liandrin did not wait for the gate to finish closing, but tossed the lead line of the pack horse to Min without a word and started along a white line, dimly made out by the light of her lantern, leading into the Ways. The floor seemed to be stone, eaten and pitted by acid. Egwene scrambled hurriedly onto Bela’s back, but she was no quicker to follow the Aes Sedai than anyone else. There seemed to be nothing in the world except the rough floor under the horses’ hooves.

  Straight as an arrow the white line led through the dark to a large stone slab covered with Ogier script inlaid in silver. The same pocking that marked the floor also broke the script in places.

  “A Guiding,” Elayne murmured, twisting in her saddle to look around uneasily. “Elaida taught me a little about the Ways. She would not say much. Not enough,” she added glumly. “Or maybe too much.”

  Calmly Liandrin compared the Guiding with a parchment, then stuffed it back into a pocket of her cloak before Egwene could get a look.

  Their lanterns’ light stopped abruptly rather than fading out at the edges, but it was enough for Egwene to see a thick stone balustrade, eaten away in places, as the Aes Sedai led them away from the Guiding. An Island, Elayne called it; the darkness made judging the Island’s size difficult, but Egwene thought it might be a hundred paces across.

  Stone bridges and ramps pierced the balustrade, each with a stone post beside it marked with