“Leane and Nynaeve? Girl, if we knew where to find them, Sheriam and the rest would be dead before. . . .” She trailed off, staring at Elayne. “You don’t mean Leane and Nynaeve, do you? You mean Sheriam and. . . .” Elayne only nodded; she was too frightened to speak. “I don’t think they can hear us from here, or see us. Those Trollocs haven’t even glanced our way. That means we have to try from inside.” Elayne nodded again. “Girl,” Siuan said in a toneless voice, “you have a lion’s courage, and maybe a fisherbird’s sense.” With a heavy sigh, she added, “But I don’t see any other way myself.”

Elayne agreed with her about everything except the courage. If she had not had her knees locked, she would have been in a heap on the floor tiles, patterned in all the colors of the Ajahs. She realized she had a sword in her hand, a great gleaming length of steel, absolutely useless even had she known how to wield it. She let it fall, and it vanished before reaching the floor. “Waiting isn’t helping anything,” she muttered. Much longer, and the little courage she had managed to scrape together would surely evaporate.

Together she and Siuan stepped toward the boundary. Elayne’s foot touched that dividing line, and suddenly she felt herself being pulled in, sucked like water through a tube.

One instant she was standing in the hallway, staring at the horrors, the next she was lying on her belly on rough gray stone, wrists and ankles tightly tied in the small of her back, and the horrors were all around her. The cavern stretched endless in every direction; the Tower corridor no longer seemed to exist. Screams filled the air, echoing from rocky walls and a ceiling dripping stalactites. A few paces from her a huge black cauldron stood steaming over a roaring fire. A boar-snouted Trolloc, complete with tusks, was tossing in lumps that seemed to be unidentifiable roots. A cookpot. Trollocs ate anything. Including people. She thought of her hands and feet free, but the coarse rope still dug into her flesh. Even the pale shadow of saidar had vanished; the True Source no longer existed for her, not here. A nightmare in truth, and she was well and truly caught.

Siuan’s voice cut through the screams in a pained moan. “Sheriam, listen to me!” The Light alone knew what was being done to her; Elayne could not see any of the others. Only hear them. “This is a dream! Aah . . . aaaaaaah! Th-think how it should be!”