Nynaeve glowered at the robe in her hands. Well they might be dizzy, spun about like tops. Light, but she was useless. Rushing in like a fool to take charge. Without the Power, she was just useless.

“Nynaeve, could you give me a hand?” Elayne held a swaying Emara upright, while Satina was more than half-carrying Ronelle to the door. “I think Emara’s going to sick up, and it better be outside. I think the chamber pots are broken.” The smell said she was right. Pottery grated against the floor, trying to slither out from under the overturned bed.

Nynaeve thrust her arms angrily into her robe. She could sense the Source now, a warm glow just out of sight, but she deliberately ignored it. She had done without the Power for years. She could do without it now. Lifting Emara’s free arm over her shoulder, she helped guide the moaning woman toward the street. They almost made it.

When they got outside after wiping Emara’s mouth, everyone else was already huddled together in front of the house in robes or whatever they had slept in. The still full moon, hanging in a clear sky, gave a bright light. People were spilling out of the other houses in a bedlam of bellows and shrieks. One board in a fence rattled, then another. A bucket suddenly went bouncing down the street. A cart loaded with firewood abruptly rolled forward, shafts plowing shallow furrows in the hard ground. Smoke began to rise a house down the way, and voices began shouting for water.

The dark shape of someone lying in the street drew Nynaeve. One of the nightwatchmen, by the flickering lantern near his outstretched hand. She could see his staring eyes glittering in the moonlight, the blood covering his face, the dent in the side of his head where something had struck him like an axe. She felt his throat for a pulse anyway. She wanted to howl with fury. People should die after a long life, in their own beds, surrounded by family and friends. Anything else was waste. Pure miserable waste!

“So you’ve found saidar tonight, Nynaeve. Good.”

Nynaeve jumped, and stared up at Anaiya. She did hold saidar, she realized. And useless even with it. Rising, she wearily dusted her knees and tried not to look at the dead man. If she had been quicker, could it have made a difference?

The glow of the Power surrounded Anaiya, but not only her; the single light enveloped as well two more fully clothed Aes Sedai, an Accepted in a robe, and three novices, two in their shifts. One of those in her shift was Nicola. Nynaeve could see other glowing groups, dozens and dozens of them, moving in the street. Some seemed all Aes Sedai, but most not.