Larissa Lyndel and Zenare Ghodar swooped down from opposite directions like hawks on either side of Nynaeve. Larissa was a bony woman whose plainness almost overcame Aes Sedai agelessness, Zenare slightly plump and haughty enough for two queens, but both wore faces of eager anticipation. They were Yellow Ajah, though neither had been in the room when she Healed Siuan and Leane.

“I want to see you go through everything step by step, Nynaeve,” Larissa said, laying hold of an arm.

“Nynaeve,” Zenare said, seizing the other arm, “I wager that I will find a hundred things you never thought of, if you repeat the weave often enough.”

Salita Toranes, Tairen and almost as dark as one of the Sea Folk, seemed to pop out of nowhere. “Others ahead of me, I see. Well, burn my soul if I’ll wait in line.”

“I was here first, Salita,” Zenare said firmly. And tightened her grip.

“I was first,” Larissa said, tightening hers.

Nynaeve shot a look of pure horror at Elayne, and got commiseration in return, and a shrug. This was what Elayne had meant about too late. She would not have a waking moment to herself after this.

“. . . angry?” Zenare was saying. “I know fifty ways at the front of my head to make her angry enough to chew rocks.”

“I can think of a hundred,” Larissa said. “I intend to break her block if it’s the last thing I do.”

Magla Daronos shouldered her way into the group, and she had the shoulders for it. She looked as if she worked the sword, or a blacksmith’s hammer. “You will break it, Larissa? Hah! I do have several ways in mind already to draw it out of her.”

Nynaeve just wanted to scream.

It was all Siuan could do not to embrace saidar and hold it, but she thought she might start crying again. That would never do. Besides, it would seem like some fool novice’s display to the women crowding around her in the waiting room. Every expression of wonder and delight, every warm welcome as if she had been away for years, came as balm, especially from those who had been friends before she became Amyrlin, before time and duty pulled them apart. Lelaine and Delana wrapped their arms around her as they had not in long years. Moiraine had been the only one closer, the only one beside Leane she had managed to keep after donning the stole, and duty had helped keep them together.

“It is so good to have you back,” Lelaine laughed.

“So very good,” Delana murmured warmly.

Siuan laughed, and had to scrub tears from her cheeks. Light, what was the matter with her? She had not wept this easily as a child!