Cadsuane leaned forward, releasing the weaves that hung the lights before the Forsaken's eyes, but not removing the shield of Air that kept her from hearing. Semirhage's eyes snapped open, then quickly found Cadsuane. Yes, she knew who was in charge. The two locked eyes.

Merise continued to question, asking about Graendal. Al'Thor thought the other Forsaken might be somewhere in Arad Doman. Cadsuane was far more interested in other questions, but Graendal made an acceptable starting point.

Semirhage responded to Merise's questions with silence this time, and Cadsuane found herself thinking about al'Thor. The boy had resisted her teaching as stubbornly as Semirhage resisted questioning. Oh, true, he had learned some minor things—how to treat her with a measure of respect, how to at least feign civility. But nothing more.

Cadsuane hated admitting failure. And this was not a failure, not yet, but she was close. That boy was destined to destroy the world. And maybe save it, too. The first was inevitable; the second conditional. She could wish the two were reversed, but wishes were about as useful as coins carved from wood. You could paint them however you wanted, but they remained wood.

She gritted her teeth, putting the boy out of her mind. She needed to watch Semirhage. Each time the woman spoke, it could be a clue. Semirhage returned her stare, ignoring Merise.

How did you break one of the most powerful women who had ever lived? A woman who had perpetrated countless atrocities during the days of wonder before, even, the Dark One's release? Meeting those black, onyx eyes, Cadsuane realized something. AlThor's prohibition on hurting Semirhage was meaningless. They could not break this woman with pain. Semirhage was the great torturer of the Forsaken, a woman intrigued by death and agony.

. No, she would not break that way, even if the means had been allowed them. With a chill, looking into those eyes, Cadsuane thought she saw something of herself in the creature. Age, craftiness and unwillingness to budge.

That, then, left a question for her. If given the task, how would Cadsuane go about breaking herself?

The concept was so disturbing that she was relieved when Corele interrupted the interrogation a few moments later. The slender, cheerful Murandian was loyal to Cadsuane and had been on duty watching over al'Thor this afternoon. Corele's word that al'Thor would be meeting soon with his Aiel chiefs brought an end to the interrogation, and the three sisters maintaining the shield entered and towed Semirhage off to the room where they would set her bound and gagged with flows of Air.

Cadsuane watched the Forsaken go, carried on weaves of Air, then shook her head. Semirhage had been only the day's opening scene. It was time to deal with the boy.

CHAPTER 6

When Iron Melts

Rodel Ituralde had seen a lot of battlefields. Some things were always the same. Dead men like piles of rags, lying in heaps. Ravens eager to dine. Groans, cries, whimpers and mumbles from those unlucky enough to need a long time to die.

Each battlefield also had its own individual print. You could read a battle like the trail of passing game. Corpses lying in rows that were disturbingly straight indicated a charge of footmen who had been pressed against volleys of arrows. Scattered and trampled bodies were the result of infantry breaking before heavy cavalry. This battle had seen large numbers of Seanchan crushed up against the walls of Darluna, where they had fought with desperation. Hammered against the stone. One section of wall was completely torn away where some damane had tried to escape into the city. Fighting in streets and among homes would have favored the Seanchan. They hadn't made it in time.

Ituralde rode his roan gelding through the mess. Battle was always a mess. The only neat battles were the ones in stories or history books. Those had been cleansed and scoured by the abrasive hands of scholars looking for conciseness. "Aggressor won, fifty-three thousand killed" or "Defender stood, twenty thousand fallen."

What would be written of this battle? It would depend on who was writing. They would neglect to include the blood, pounded into the earth to make mud. The bodies, broken, pierced and mangled. The ground torn in swaths by enraged damane. Perhaps they would remember the numbers; those often seemed important to scribes. Half of Ituralde's hundred thousand, dead. On any other battlefield, fifty thousand casualties would have shamed and angered him. But he'd faced down a force three times his size, and one with damane at that.

He followed the young messenger who had fetched him, a boy of perhaps twelve, wearing a Seanchan uniform of red and green. They passed a fallen standard, hanging from a broken pole with the tip driven into mud. It bore the sign of a sun being crossed by six gulls. Ituralde hated not knowing the houses and names of the men he was fighting, but there was no way to tell with the foreign Seanchan.

The shadows cast by a dying evening sun striped the field. Soon a blanket of darkness would cradle the bodies, and the survivors could pretend for a time that the grassland was a grave for their friends. And for the people their friends had killed. He rounded a small hillock, coming to a scattered pattern of fallen Seanchan elite. Most of these dead wore those insectlike helms. Bent, cracked, or dented. Dead eyes stared blankly from openings behind twisted mandibles.

The Seanchan general was alive, if just barely. His helmet was off, and there was blood on his lips. He leaned against a large, moss-covered boulder, back supported by a bundled cloak, as if he were waiting for a meal to be delivered. Of course, that image was marred by his twisted leg and the broken haft of a spear punching through the front of his stomach.

Ituralde dismounted. Like most of his men, Ituralde wore worker's clothing—simple brown trousers and coat, borrowed off of the man who had taken Ituralde's uniform as part of the trap.

It felt odd to be out of uniform. A man like this General Turan did not deserve a soldier in drab. Ituralde waved the messenger boy to stand back, out of earshot, then approached the Seanchan alone.

"You're him, then," Turan said, looking up at Ituralde, speaking with that slow Seanchan drawl. He was a stout man, far from tall, with a peaked nose. His close-cropped black hair was shaved two finger widths up each side of his head, and his helm lay beside him on the ground, bearing three white plumes. He reached up with an unsteady black-gloved hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.

"I am," Ituralde said.

"They call you a 'Great Captain' in Tarabon."

"They do."

"It's deserved," Turan said, coughing. "How did you do it? Our scouts. . . ." His cough consumed him.

"Raken," Ituralde said once the cough subsided. He squatted down beside his foe. The sun was still a sliver in the west, lighting the battlefield with a glimmer of golden red light. "Your scouts see from the air, and truth is easy to hide from a distance."

"The army behind us?"

"Women and youths, mostly," Ituralde said. "A fair number of farmers as well. Wearing uniforms taken from my troops here."

"And if we'd turned and attacked?"

"You wouldn't have. Your raken told you that you were outnumbered. Better to chase after the smaller force ahead of you. Better than that to head for the city your scouts say is barely defended, even if it means marching your men near to exhaustion."

Turan coughed again, nodding. "Yes. Yes, but the city was empty. How did you get troops into it?"