Elayne joined much more easily, first slipping the silver bracelet into her robe’s pocket. Cold sweat broke out on Nynaeve’s face. What might have happened had Elayne entered the link already linked to Moghedien by the a’dam? She had no notion, which only made the question worse. Nicola frowned from Nynaeve to Elayne. Surely she could not separate out which emotions were which, not when Nynaeve could not tell her own. The final two were brought into the circle just as easily, Shimoku, a pretty dark-eyed Kandori who had become Accepted just before the Tower divided, and Calindin, a Taraboner with her black hair in a multitude of thin braids who had been Accepted for a good ten years. A woman little more than a novice and another who struggled for every scrap she learned, but they had no trouble linking.

Suddenly Nicola spoke, sounding half-asleep. “The lion sword, the dedicated spear, she who sees beyond. Three on the boat, and he who is dead yet lives. The great battle done, but the world not done with battle. The land divided by the return, and the guardians balance the servants. The future teeters on the edge of a blade.”

Anaiya stared at her. “What was that, child?”

Nicola blinked. “Did I say something, Aes Sedai?” she asked weakly. “I feel . . . peculiar.”

“Well, if you’re going to be sick,” Anaiya said briskly, “get it over with. Linking takes some women funny the first time. We have no time to coddle your stomach.” As if to prove it, she gathered her skirts and started down the street. “Stay close, now, all of you. And sing out if you see something that needs dealing with.”

That was hardly a problem. People milled about in the streets, crying out to know what was happening or just crying out, and things moved. Doors slammed and windows banged open with no one touching them. Crashes and splinterings came from inside the houses. Pots, tools, stones, anything loose, might leap or dart at any moment. A stout cook in her shift snagged a hurtling bucket out of the air with a nearly hysterical laugh, but when a pale lean fellow in his smallclothes tried to knock away a stick of firewood, the result was the crack of his arm breaking. Ropes writhed their way about legs and arms, and even people’s clothes began to crawl. They found a hairy man with his shirt wrapped around his head, flailing about so hard he kept at bay those who were trying to peel it away before it smothered him. A woman who had managed to pull on a dress if not fasten it up clung to the thatch on the edge of a roof, shrieking at the top of her lungs as the dress tried to haul her across the house, or maybe into the sky.