Even as she lashed out, the light of saidar surrounded the other woman, and pain enveloped Liandrin. She crumpled to the carpet, trying to howl, but agony beyond anything she had ever known silenced her gaping mouth. Her eyes were going to burst from her head; her skin was going to peel away in strips. For an eternity she thrashed, and when it vanished as suddenly as it had begun, all she could do was lie there, shuddering and weeping open-mouthed.

“Do you begin to see?” Moghedien said calmly, handing the empty cup to Temaile with, “That was very good. But next time a little stronger.” Temaile looked as though she might faint. “You are not quick enough, Liandrin, you are not strong enough, and you do not know enough. That pitiful little thing you tried against me. Would you like to see what it is really like?” She channeled.

Liandrin gazed up at her adoringly. Crawling across the floor, she pushed words through the sobs she still could not stop. “Forgive me, Great Mistress.” This magnificent woman, like a star in the heavens, a comet, above all kings and queens in wonder. “Forgive, please,” she begged, pressing kisses against the hem of Moghedien’s skirt as she babbled. “Forgive. I am a dog, a worm.” It shamed her to her core that she had not meant those things before. They were true. Before this woman, they were all true. “Let me serve you, Great Mistress. Allow me to serve. Please. Please.”

“I am not Graendal,” Moghedien said, pushing her away roughly with one velvet-slippered foot.

Suddenly the sense of worship was gone. Lying there in a heap, weeping, Liandrin could remember it clearly, though. She stared at the Forsaken in horror.

“Are you convinced yet, Liandrin?”

“Yes, Great Mistress,” she managed. She was. Convinced that she dared not even think of trying again until she was certain of success. Her trick was only the palest shadow of what Moghedien had done. Could she but learn that . . .

“We shall see. I think you may be one of those who needs a second lesson. Pray it is not so, Liandrin; I make second lessons exceedingly sharp. Now take your place with the others. You will find that I have taken some of the objects of power that you had in your room, but you may keep the trinkets that remain. Am I not kind?”

“The Great Mistress is kind,” Liandrin agreed around hiccoughs and occasional sobs that she could not stifle.