“You killed who?” It could not be Moghedien; that woman’s death would surely not bring this grief. She was about to take Nynaeve in her arms to comfort her, when a pounding came at the door.

“Send them away,” Nynaeve mumbled, curling herself into a trembling ball in the middle of the bed.

Sighing, Elayne made her way to the door and pulled it open, but before she could say a word, Thom pushed past her out of the night, rumpled shirt bagging out of his breeches, carrying someone shrouded in his cloak in his arms. Only a woman’s bare feet showed.

“She was just there,” Juilin said behind him, as if he did not believe the words coming out of his own mouth. Both men were barefoot, and Juilin was stripped to the waist, lean and hairless-chested. “I woke for a moment, and suddenly she was standing there, naked as the day she was born, collapsing like a cut net.”

“She’s alive,” Thom said, laying the cloak-wrapped figure on Elayne’s bed, “but only barely. I could hardly hear her heart.”

Frowning, Elayne pulled aside the cloak’s hood—and found herself staring at Birgitte’s face, pale and wan.

Nynaeve scrambled stiffly from the other bed to kneel beside the unconscious woman. Her face glistened with tears, but her weeping had stopped. “She is alive,” she breathed. “She is alive.” Abruptly she seemed to realize that she was in her shift in front of the men, but she barely spared them a glance, and all she said was “Get them out of here, Elayne. I can do nothing with them gawking like sheep.”

Thom and Juilin rolled their eyes toward each other when Elayne made a herding motion at them, and shook their heads slightly, but they backed toward the door without complaint. “She is . . . a friend,” Elayne told them. She felt as if she were moving in a dream, floating, without feeling. How could this be? “We will take care of her.” How could it possibly have happened? “Now, don’t say a word to anyone.” The looks they gave her as she closed the door nearly made her blush. Of course they knew better than to talk. But men did have to be reminded of the simplest things sometimes, even Thom. “Nynaeve, how under the Light,” she began, turning, and cut off as the glow of saidar surrounded the kneeling woman.