Capture

Her nerves screamed at her to shuffle backwards, even to turn and flee, but she was frozen on the spot as if held by iron shackles. Long, torturous moments passed before she heard movement again. Guydin and her companion were emerging from their hiding spot. The former appeared first, looking incredibly forbidding draped in shadows as she was. She had always been tall but now she made Rayel feel miniscule, seemingly towering over her as never before. The woman's black hair was pulled back with an ivory, diamond-studded hair clasp. She looked as elegant and strange as ever in her silken dress, gloves and slippers. If not for the rumpled appearance of the garments, and the few minor tears Rayel saw in various places, Guydin Raventhal would've looked as refined as ever.

Her companion followed soon after, a shorter woman of very slender build, with pale hair and shining blue eyes. Her garb was more intact and less expensive-looking than Guydin's, but neither woman looked less in control than the other. Both stared at Rayel expressionlessly, making it impossible for her to decide whether or not she should be worried.

"Guydin," she managed to say smoothly, clasping her hands before her measuredly. "It is…good to see you."

Guydin's gaze sharpened. "Rayel Markhin, in the flesh. I was under the impression you had left days ago."

Rayel nodded. "Indeed. I did intend it to seem that way."

She felt out of control, as if she couldn't judge when it would be best to stop talking and to start running instead. Even if she could trust Guydin not to betray her, she could never be sure about the woman who was with her. She and Rayel had never met face to face before, something she always insisted upon before trusting a person to any degree. Besides, even a trustworthy individual could still ruin everything for Rayel, accidentally. Rayel had seen it happen to others too often to risk it happening to her.

"Do you…know what is going on?" Rayel asked, praying she was not taking the wrong path. "Things have been so out of hand latey."

Guydin's eyes bored into her, and then she exchanged an apparently blank glance with her diminutive companion.

Rayel was surprised when the stranger, and not Guydin, spoke. "Everyone is confused. You can never be sure who is going to flee next. All discipline has dissolved. No one plays by the rules anymore."

What was Rayel supposed to make of that? She studied the petite woman closely while trying to appear as if she were not. There were no chinks in her Aes Sedai armour, no fine cracks appearing anywhere. Her bright blue gaze might have been full of fire on another occasion, but now it was intensely cold. It chilled Rayel to the bone, though she could not quite explain why.

"Rayel," Guydin said eventually, crossing her arms. "If I might ask…where were you heading just now, when you…stumbled upon us?"

The way she said the last three words made the fine hairs on the back of Rayel's neck stand up. The goose bumps returned in a fine wave and retreated just as quickly. She did not feel safe here, even in the presence of Guydin whom she had known for years.

"I was…I am…taking a look around the place." She'd changed her mind at the last moment about what she would say. Confiding in anyone was, plain and simply, a bad idea. That was a motto she planned to live and breathe from now on. "I am merely trying to judge where I stand in all of this."

Guydin nodded, eyes flickering briefly to the woman beside her. "Indeed. That is just what we were doing."

She wants to know how much I heard before they found me, Rayel realised, standing absolutely still. She is testing me, to see what my reaction will be. I must play my cards perfectly here.

"Well, then," she said a moment later, knowing that hesitating could well damn her. "I had better leave the two of you to it. I will be on my way now."

No one said anything for a long, drawn out moment, and Rayel decided to take that as a sign of their acceptance. She bowed her head slightly, showing common courtesy, and walked towards them. As she moved to Guydin's left, stepping around the imposing woman, she did not falter, moving with the grace of any experienced Aes Sedai. She resisted the overwhelming urge to look over her shoulder when she had passed Guydin, telling herself that the two behind her might be watching her even now, for signs of uncertainty. Then again, they might be doing as she was doing: resisting the urge to take a peek. For all Rayel knew, they felt exactly about her as she did about them: unsure, cautious, and necessarily suspicious.

She had gone perhaps twenty metres when she sensed channelling behind her. In an instant she had formed the flower bud in her mind and was opening herself to the Source, but she had reacted too late. She gasped in horror and jerked backwards as a shield slid between her and saidar, cutting off her ability to channel. Moments later thick bands of Air enclosed her, stopping her entirely in her tracks. The bands tightened around her, slowly crushing her. She whimpered as it became harder to breathe. I was too late, she wailed inwardly. Light, I was too late!

She stood in the middle of the walkway, unable even to shiver due to the bands of Air that restricted her, and unable to channel, or even embrace saidar. Behind her, measured footsteps sounded on the smooth marble, signifying the approach of her captors. All she could do was hang suspended in the moment, waiting for what would come.

The way back will come but once, a distant voice whispered in the back of her mind, and it seemed to Rayel that she were being cruelly mocked.

"I am sorry," Guydin spoke from close behind her, out of her line of vision, "that it has come to this."