The Gathering Storm - Sanderson, Brandon Page 0,212

away, steeling himself, and inched into the room. Light! Only lads, and now dead by this insanity.

Thom shook his head grimly, and the three of them crept forward. They found the cook in the next hallway, grunting as he beat on the head of what appeared to be the innkeeper. It was a man in a white apron, at least. He was already dead. The fat cook turned toward Mat and Talmanes the moment they entered the hallway, feral rage in his eyes. Mat reluctantly struck, silencing him before he could howl and bring more people against them.

"There's fighting on the stairs," Talmanes said, nodding forward.

"I'll bet there's a servants' stairwell," Thom noted. "This looks like a nice enough a place for it."

Sure enough, by cutting through two hallways in the back, they found a narrow, rickety stairwell leading up into darkness. Mat took a deep breath, then started up the stairs, holding his ashandarei at the ready. The inn was only two stories high, and the flashes had been coming from the second floor, near the front.

They entered the second floor, pushing open the door to the acrid scent of burned flesh. The hallways here were of wood, the grain obscured by thick white paint. The floor lay under a deep chestnut carpet. Mat nodded to Talmanes and Thom, and—weapons at the ready—they burst out of the stairwell and into the hallway.

Immediately, a ball of fire whooshed in their direction. Mat cursed, throwing himself backward and into Talmanes, narrowly avoiding the fire. Thom flattened himself with a gleeman's agility, getting under the fire. Mat and Talmanes almost tumbled back down the stairs.

"Bloody ashes!" Mat yelled into the hallway. "What do you think you're doing?"

There was silence. Followed, finally, by Joline's voice. "Cauthon?" she called.

"Who do you bloody think it is!" he shouted back.

"I don't know!" she said. "You came around so quickly, weapons out. Are you trying to get killed?"

"We're trying to rescue you!" Mat yelled.

"Do we look like we need rescuing?" came the response.

"Well, you're still here, aren't you?" Mat called back.

That was met with silence.

"Oh, for Light's sake," Joline finally called back. "Will you come out here?"

"You're not going to throw another fireball at me, are you?" Mat muttered, stepping out into the hallway as Thom climbed to his feet, Talmanes following. He found the three Aes Sedai standing at the head of the wide, handsome stairs at the other end of the hallway. Teslyn and Edesina continued to throw fireballs down at unseen villagers below, their hair wet, their dresses disheveled as if they'd been donned hastily. Joline wore only an enveloping white dressing robe, her pretty face calm, her dark hair slick and wet and hanging down over the front of her right shoulder. The robe was parted slightly at the top, giving a hint of what hid inside. Talmanes whistled softly.

"She's not a woman, Talmanes," Mat whispered warningly. "She's an Aes Sedai. Don't think of her as a woman."

"I'm trying, Mat," Talmanes said. "But it's hard." He hesitated, then added, "Burn me."

"Be careful or she will," Mat said, tugging his hat down slightly in the front. "In fact, she nearly did that just a moment ago."

Talmanes sighed, and the three of them crossed the hallway to the women. Joline's two Warders, who had their weapons out, stood just inside the bathing chamber. A dozen or so servants were tied up in the corner: a pair of young girls—probably bathing attendants—and several men in vests and trousers. Apparently Joline's dress had been cut to strips and used for bonds. The silk would work far better than wool towels. Near the top of the stairs, just below the Aes Sedai, Mat could barely make out a cluster of corpses that had fallen to swords, not fire.

Joline eyed Mat as he approached, a look implying that she considered all this to be his fault somehow. She folded her arms, closing up the top of the robe, though he wasn't sure if that was because of Talmanes' gawking or if the move was coincidental.

"We need to move," Mat told the women. "The whole city has gone mad."

"We can't go," Joline said. "Not and leave those servants to the mob. Besides, we need to find Master Tobrad and make certain he is safe."

"Master Tobrad is the innkeeper?" Mat asked. A fireball whooshed down the stairs.

"Yes," Joline said.

"Too late," Mat said. "His brains are already decorating the walls downstairs. Look, like I said, the entire village is crazy. Those servants