Instead of answering, Elayne put one hand on Birgitte’s forehead. Physical contact was as necessary for this as for Healing, and the two times she had watched it done in the Tower, the Aes Sedai had touched the man’s forehead. The flows of Spirit she wove were complex, if not so intricate as Nynaeve’s of a moment before. She barely understood some of what she was doing, and none at all of other parts, yet she had paid close attention, from her hiding place, to how the weave was shaped. Watched closely because she had built up a stock of stories in her head, made silly romances where there so seldom were any. After a moment, she sat down on the other bed and let saidar go.

Nynaeve frowned at her, then bent to examine Birgitte. The unconscious woman’s color was perhaps a little better, her breathing a little stronger. “What did you do, Elayne?” Nynaeve did not take her eyes from Birgitte, but the glow around her faded away slowly. “It wasn’t Healing. I think I could do it myself, now, but it was not Healing.”

“Will she live?” Elayne asked faintly. There was no visible link between her and Birgitte, no flows, but she could sense the woman’s weakness. A terrible weakness. She would know the moment Birgitte died, even if she was sleeping, or hundreds of miles away.

“I do not know. She isn’t fading anymore, but I do not know.” Weariness made Nynaeve’s voice soft, and pain touched it strongly, as if she shared Birgitte’s injury. Wincing, she rose and unfolded a red-striped blanket to spread over the woman lying there. “What did you do?”

Silence held Elayne long enough for Nynaeve to join her, lowering herself awkwardly onto the bed. “Bonding,” Elayne said finally. “I . . . bonded her. As a Warder.” The incredulous stare on the other woman’s face made her rush on. “Healing was doing no good. I had to do something. You know the gifts a Warder gets from being bonded. One is strength, energy. He can keep going when other men would collapse and die, survive wounds that would kill anyone else. It was the only thing I could think of.”

Nynaeve drew a deep breath. “Well, it is working better than what I did, at least. A woman Warder. I wonder what Lan will think of that? No reason why she shouldn’t be. If any woman can, it would be her.” Wincing, she curled her legs up beneath her; her gaze kept returning to Birgitte. “You will have to keep this secret. If anyone learns that an Accepted has bonded a Warder, whatever the circumstances . . .”

Elayne shivered. “I know,” she said simply, and quite fervently. It was not quite a stilling offense, but any Aes Sedai would very likely make her wish she had been stilled. “Nynaeve, what happened?”