The great hunt - By Robert Jordan Page 0,326

it. “I’d like to put her in a pot of boiling water.” Seta had her eyes squeezed shut, and her hands clutched her skirts; she was trembling.

“What have they done to you?” Elayne exclaimed. “What could they do to make you want something like that?”

Egwene never took her eyes off the Seanchan woman. “I’d like to make her feel it. That’s what she did to me, made me feel like I was neck deep in. . . .” She shuddered. “You do not know what it is like wearing one of these, Elayne. You don’t know what they can do to you. I can never decide whether Seta is worse than Renna, but they’re all hateful.”

“I think I know,” Nynaeve said quietly. She could feel the sweat soaking Seta’s skin, the cold tremors that shook her limbs. The yellow-haired Seanchan was terrified. It was all she could do not to make Seta’s terrors come true then and there.

“Can you take this off of me?” Egwene asked, touching the collar. “You must be able to if you could put that one on—”

Nynaeve channeled, a pinpoint trickle. The collar on Egwene’s neck provided anger enough, and if it had not, Seta’s fear, the knowledge of how deserved it truly was, and her own knowledge of what she wanted to do to the woman, would have done it. The collar sprang open and fell away from Egwene’s throat. With an expression of wonder, Egwene touched her neck.

“Put on my dress and coat,” Nynaeve told her. Elayne was already unbundling the clothes on the bed. “We will walk out of here, and no one will even notice you.” She considered holding her contact with saidar—she was certainly angry enough, and it felt so wonderful—but, reluctantly, she let it go. This was the one place in Falme where there was no chance of a sul’dam and damane coming to investigate if they sensed someone channeling, but they would certainly do so if a damane saw a woman she thought was a sul’dam with the glow of channeling around her. “I don’t know why you aren’t gone already. Alone here, even if you could not figure out how to get that thing off you, you could have just picked it up and run.”

As Min and Elayne hurriedly helped her change into Nynaeve’s old dress, Egwene explained about moving the bracelet from where a sul’dam left it, and how channeling made her sick unless a sul’dam wore the bracelet. Just that morning she had discovered how the collar could be opened without the Power—and found that touching the catch with the intention of opening it made her hand knot into uselessness. She could touch it as much as she wanted so long as she did not think of undoing the catch; the merest hint of that, though, and. . . .

Nynaeve felt sick herself. The bracelet on her wrist made her sick. It was too horrible. She wanted it off her wrist before she learned more about a’dam, before she perhaps learned something that would make her feel soiled forever for having worn it.

Unfastening the silver cuff, she pulled it loose, snapped it closed, and hung it on one of the pegs. “Don’t think that means you can shout for help now.” She shook a fist under Seta’s nose. “I can still make you wish you were never born if you open your mouth, and I do not need that bloody . . . thing.”

“You—you do not mean to leave me here with it,” Seta said in a whisper. “You cannot. Tie me. Gag me so I cannot give an alarm. Please!”

Egwene gave a mirthless laugh. “Leave it on her. She won’t call for help even without a gag. You had better hope whoever finds you will remove the a’dam and keep your little secret, Seta. Your dirty secret, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” Elayne said.

“I have thought about it a great deal,” Egwene said. “Thinking was all I could do when they left me alone up here. Sul’dam claim they develop an affinity after a few years. Most of them can tell when a woman is channeling whether they’re leashed to her or not. I wasn’t sure, but Seta proves it.”

“Proves what?” Elayne demanded, and then her eyes widened in sudden realization, but Egwene went on.

“Nynaeve, a’dam only work on women who can channel. Don’t you see? Sul’dam can channel the same as damane.” Seta groaned through her teeth, shaking her head in violent denial.