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Suddenly the benches shifted, flowed, changed into facelessas the stone He had already learned the difficulty of changing so danced fro stone led to swiarden beyond Thereout Before he could channel, gold and red and white shapes were darting around hier than the fish in the pool had been And with teeth They ripped at him; blood curled up in red mist Instinctively he flailed at the fish with his hands, but the cold part of him, deep in the Void, channeled Balefire flared, at the barrier if there was one, at any place Rahvinhim around violently, as it rushed in to fill the eold and white and red darted at hi new threads of crimson to the water Tossed about, he could not see to aim his wild bolts; they flashed in every direction No breath left He tried to think of air, or the water being air

Suddenly it was He dropped hard to the paving stones a about, rolled over and pushed hiain; even his clothes were dry The stone ring flickered between standing untouched and lying in ruins with half the coluled atop their own stuain The palace behind hiilded doashes slashed across s, soe all flickered, vanishing and reappearing Not the slow, soe, then none, then so, he pressed his hand to his side, to the old, halfhealed wound It stung as if his exertions had nearly torn it open He stung all over, froed The bloody rips in his coat and breeches were still there! Had he e the water back to air? Or had one of his frenzied bolts of balefire driven Rahvin off, or even killed hi blood out of his eyes, he studied the s and balconies around the garden, the colonnade high on the far side Or rather, he started to, but soht his eye Below the colonnade, he could justreateway, but to see what kind and where it led, he had to be closer Leaping over a jumble of worked stone that vanished while he was above it, he darted across the garden, dodging around trees fallen on the ay That residue was alh before it vanished co his palht have tripped him He felt woozy, almost as if he had been hit on the head He tried to scramble to his feet, to reach that residue And realized his body rithing Long hair covered his hands; his fingers see back into his hands They were alateway had been a trap, and he had walked into it

Desperation clung to the Void as he struggled to cling to himself His hands They were hands Als see The True Source receded; the Void shrank Streaks of panic flared beyond the ee hi, thin even pulled through the angreal The surrounding balconies stared down at him, empty, and the colonnade Rahvin had to be at one of those stonescreened s, but which? He had no strength for a hundred lightning bolts this tie that If he did it quickly Which ? He fought to be hiht to draw saidin into him, welcomed every stain of the taint as evidence that he still held the Power Staggering in a crooked circle, searching vainly, he roared Rahvin’s nahedien behind her, Nynaeve rounded the corner Ahead of her, a , the sound of his boots echoing behind She did not kno long she had been following those boots Soone silent, and she had had to wait for theain a direction Sos happened; she had not seen any of it, but once the palace had rung like a struck bell, and another time the hair on her head had tried to stand up as the air seemed to crackle, and another It did not limpse of the man ore those boots She did not think it was Rand in that black coat The height was right, but he was too large, too heavy in the chest

She was running before she knew it Her stout shoes had long since become velvet slippers for silence If she could hear hi was louder than their footfalls

Nynaeve reached the turn and stopped, peeking cautiously around the corner She held saidar -- through Moghedien, but it was hers -- ready to channel There was no need The hallas empty A door stood far doith s filled with arabesquepierced stone, but she did not think he could have reached that Nearer, another corridor ran off to the right She hurried to that, looked warily again Empty But a staircase spiraled upward just beyond where the hallwayssomewhere This corridor led back the way they had co Moghedien behind her, she cli except the Forsaken’s nearly hysterical breath and the blood pounding in her own ears If she found herself face to face with him She kneas there already, somewhere ahead Surprise had to be on her side

At the first landing, she paused The hallways here mirrored those below They were just as eone on up?

The stair quivered faintly beneath her feet as if the palace had been struck by a huge battering rah the top of one of the stonescreened s, skeildly upward at an angle, then winked out as it started to slice into the ceiling

Nynaeve sed, blinking in a vain effort to rid herself of the pale violet fan that hung across her vision into strike at Rahvin If she was too close to hi like that -- it had had the look of flailing to her -- he could catch her an