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Standing beside the window, Iliana smoothed the white satin of her shawl with no small sense of wonder. Around the silver-laden tables and outside the immense double doors of the Amyrlin's ballroom, in quiet little clumps, stood Sitters, Ajah heads, leaders among the Gaidin and Guard. These were men and women of influence in the Tower. Soon, Iliana would not be one of them. Every month after this, men and women would gather in the ballroom and Iliana would not be invited, would not even know about it.

It was a thought that frightened her. To step away and let others run the Tower as they wished, after being in control for so long. They would do some things differently from Iliana's way; that was the most alarming part. There would be mistakes. Iliana had always been afraid of making mistakes, and she did not easily forgive when others blundered.

A tap on her shoulder drew her attention to the woman who had just walked up. Kyira Distari was Domani, with green eyes and deep auburn hair, slender with a strikingly beautiful grace. Funny, Iliana thought, both Amyrlin and Keeper would be Domani. Perhaps it would help them get along. "Where will you be going?" Kyira asked softly.

Iliana shook her head earnestly. "I don't know. Wherever the Creator sends, I suppose." She gazed out the enormous window to the city far below, and the upright spire of Dragonmount rising in the skyline beyond. The ship was already in the harbor. It was a glorious Sea Folk raker, with a young Sailmistress and no Windfinder as yet, awaiting the direction of its passengers. Where would they go?

Kyira's green eyes swept over the scattering of Aes Sedai and Warders standing around the room. "They look so much like they're waiting for something."

Iliana smiled and affectionately smoothed the Yellow-striped Keeper's stole her friend now wore. "They are only anticipating change." Pride surged as she glanced at the matching Yellow fringe on her shawl. They had been raised Accepted on the same day. They had stood together in the Yellows' dark library, surrounded by dusty scrolls and papers spilling out of order, hands gloved in canvas and trembling as they brought their knives down to the pale Whitecloak's corpse lain messily before them. Now it was Kyira who wore the stole, and Iliana who wore the shawl.

Iliana shifted her shoulders. The shawl was light in comparison, simple, a set of numbered instructions in place of a detailed map. She turned back to observe the reception. "That's odd. I don't know half the people here." The Tower must be quickening toward change indeed.

"Neither do I," said Kyira.

Iliana blinked. "Did you not write the guest list?"

"I did, then I gave it to…," Kyira frowned. "A Green. Her name is on the tip of my tongue."

"Well," Iliana said idly. "Perhaps the sisters thought to invite others-"

Across the hall, a china plate dropped to the floor.

"Watch out!" Kyira shrieked and abruptly dove at Iliana, knocking her hard to the floor and landing atop her. A spinning dagger flew harmlessly into the window where the women had been standing and fell skittering across the tiles.

"For the Great Lord!" an unfamiliar man in a Warder's cloak cried.

The room erupted into chaos.

"Mingar, I hate being late. You know that." Qirien yanked the laces on her black thigh-high boots and tied them violently. "Especially when it's my own fault." She adjusted her purple blouse self-consciously, shoulders empty of stole seeming lighter than they ought to. She ran a wide-toothed comb through her long, golden-brown hair, winked at herself in the mirror, and then strode out the door, a half-smiling Mingar trailing behind.

She continued, "How was I supposed to know my only good belt would spontaneously combust when it came into contact with my ter--". Qirien was stopped by Mingar stepping in front of her protectively. The oily sensation from her earring, a ter'angreal to detect male channeling, notified her of the danger just as Mingar's thought came through the bond. Strong male channeling, downstairs.

Grimly, Qirien reached back in her room and retrieved her staff. She whispered in her mind, through the double bond, I did not think they would come so soon.

Filling herself with saidar, Seianka Aes Sedai gripped her Green shawl with one hand and slammed into Syrennah, bearing the Amyrlin beneath her body to the ballroom floor and knocking away the man's approaching sword. Grimly and without a second glance, she sent her spear through his heart and kicked him off the point.

The Sitters scattered, taking their Gaidin and running down the clamoring corridor. Saidar shimmered around Seianka and a man fell to the ground, head bleeding and unconscious from a baton of Air. Then she gasped and reeled as something jammed at her connection to the Source. A woman looked at her and smiled. Her name flashed through Seianka's mind, along with the vague recognition that the object that had hit her was made of Spirit. Tyrelle. She was Green. She had been Green.

"Sri!" Across the room, Iliana rolled away from an advancing knife to her feet. Instinctively, Seianka reached out with her ebbing flow of the Power and grasped. Once again the Source flowed smoothly through her. In a moment the link expanded to three, and Seianka became aware of Syrennah. Tyrelle went down, shielded from the Source and clubbed with a flow of Air. Several Gaidin and officers of the Guard sailed backward through the air into the walls before crumpling to the floor.

Abruptly the link began to dissolve. Seianka felt a shifting as Syrennah grimly snatched control. Frustration came in waves through the circle as Iliana strugged to break away. "What are you doing?" Outrage joined frustration as Syrennah held the former Keeper to the link. "Defer. Iliana, that's an order," Syrennah snapped.

With a semblance of calm, Iliana drew a long-bladed dagger out of her belt, and another from the back of her neck. Seianka shook her head; the three of them linked could clean this room up, if she would only- there was hope ebbing through the circle.

Shae'en M'taal, Seianka thought suddenly, and laughed as she ran her spear through another attacker. The problem with Shae'en M'taal was that they always idiotically thought they would win no matter the odds.

And then Seianka understood.

Wiping the steel point of her spear on a fallen man's coat, Seianka laid her hand on the Amyrlin's arm. "Syrennah?" Her voice was surprisingly thin and breathless as she spoke. "Let her go."

"Sri-"

"Mother." Seianka looked into the former Green's eyes. "Mother, we must leave. Now."

Chagrin played across Syrennah's face, and then Seianka felt the Power melting away as Syrennah released the circle. Turning, Seianka readied her spear and crept, with the Amyrlin behind her, into the corridor.

Trollocs marched through gateways, filling the hallways, until passing sisters sliced the weaves and the openings snapped shut. Sword drawn and red to the hilt, Zhahn wondered idly who had opened the gateways. People in the Tower. Aes Sedai, then. His bond told him Angelique was somewhere below, unharmed but more than a little incensed. Zhahn chuckled to himself as he ran. He was in for a scolding. The Black Ajah appeared and opened gateways to the Blight, Shadowspawn walked the corridors of the White Tower, sisters tried to kill each other and naturally the Aes Sedai would shout at the most convenient subjects to blame. And of course, from Fades lurking around the corner to the wrong soap bar placed in her bath, all of Angel's troubles were attributable to Zhahn al'Dhenn.

In front of him, a woman screamed and let fall the tray she'd been carrying as a Trolloc grabbed her up by the waist. Spots of blood crept onto her white linen servant's apron as its claws sank beneath her skin. Zhahn abruptly speared the goat-horned creature by the throat and pulled his sword clean. "Get into a room and bar the door," he told her brusquely. The woman gave him a wide-eyed look before taking off.

Something closed around Zhahn's neck. He gasped and dropped his sword. With his last breath before the fingers around his throat began to tighten, he caught the rank smell of Trolloc. The hallway as his eyes saw it began to dim.

Hand in hand, Cadrien and Grond fled through the Brown quarters, the Mistress of Novices pausing every turn to let fly a fireball or a bolt of lightning. On their heels, through flame and smoke, clattered the sharp sound of hooves on marble. Finding themselves at an intersection of four passages, they looked frantically back and forth. There was fighting down more than one of them, but in the smoldering haze they could not see which.

"This way!" Bending low and hugging close to the wall, Grond led the way down a smoky corridor, half stumbling and half running.

"You would think," Cadrien said breathlessly, running after him, "that they would give up by now. They won't like the way I'll smell if they cook me."

Smashing down a lone Trolloc ahead of him, Grond spared a moment to glance back. "Something is driving them this way." Abruptly he halted. His breath came out through his teeth, and frustration seethed sharply to Cadrien through their bond. "There's no way out."

The hallway widened into a circle and then stopped. At the end hung a painting on a wall. Rashima Kerenmosa, pride of the Greens. The Soldier Amyrlin. This must be the Green quarters then. Cadrien turned around and faced the direction from which they had just come. "Nowhere to go but forward, now."

Through the smoke appeared the first row of Trollocs, and then the second. Letting go of Grond, Cadrien raised both hands. Flame rolled down the corridor in a sheet, taking them out row by row. Swinging his hammer in great arcs, Grond leaped forward and carved into their ranks. Looking away from the horde for a moment, Cadrien called out gaily, "I wonder which they will decide is worse! Me or whatever's behind them?"

Grond did not pause, but he let out a laugh as he bashed his hammer into a snout. "There can be no doubt, Aes Sedai!." Kicking a fallen Trolloc out of his way, he repeated it softly to himself. "There can be no doubt."

Mingar's spears twirled and thrust and leaped, and where they danced Shadowspawn fell like grapes in a winepress. At his side Qirien raised her staff to bring it sweeping through the necks of two Trollocs, and where it touched coarse, hairy flesh it seared.

I never thought there would be so many!, she cried out in her head. What did they do, open up a direct gateway from the Blight?! The work was quick and messy, mere Trollocs falling by twos and threes. Soon there were none to be seen, and Mingar and Qirien pressed on once more, towards the main hall.

A shadowy figure standing alone and still in the doorway stopped them. So this is the strong male channeler we felt upstairs, Mingar thought in disgust. Feyrwith, a channeling Warder that Mingar himself had trained, now smirked at the two harmlessly, but Mingar could feel the man pulling in saidin, as much as he could hold, more than he could hold. As this realization passed to her, Qirien grew indignant. If he's stolen an angreal, he deserves all we can give him, the Dark traitor!

Confidently, the two stepped forward, linking as they did so, the Power surging through them. The man, alone, could hardly hope to defeat the former Amyrlin and her channeling Warder. Several nasty weaves lay in the air about the man, awaiting his first aggressive move.

Shiralin watched from behind the marble column near another doorway of the small room. She felt no fear, for her ability to channel was masked, and who would suspect a sweet, pigtailed Accepted even should she be spotted? The Darkfriend Feyrwith swaggered forward, and she waited for his signal.

Trollocs poured in through the immense double doors Seianka and Syrennah had exited. Iliana ducked the first scythe that came swinging at her neck, and maneuvering herself under the brute creature's arm she drove a dagger into its throat. Her beltknife took a second Trolloc in the eye as she wrenched her bloodied dagger free, and a kick sent a third sprawling into the approaching ranks.

The tip of a curved sword made a ripping sound as it caught the sleeve of her dress, and a slash of blood flowered the white silk. Grimacing, Iliana stepped away, and stopped as her shoulders ran into another body. A pair of crossed scabbards-empty of their swords, which the wearer had drawn-pressed into Iliana's back. She did not have to look to know who it was. "Avi," she said lightly over her shoulder, driving a long-bladed knife into an oncoming Trolloc's throat. "How did you get here?"

"You didn't think I would run with the Amyrlin Seat, did you?" Davian replied over his shoulder as he rammed a sword through a goat-haired chest.

Iliana laughed as they spun slowly back to back, surrounded by the Blight-spawned creatures. "If you can keep them off my back," she answered, kicking a dead Trolloc out of her way, "I can keep them off yours."

Flames thundered across the half-circle of attackers behind Iliana as Davian detonated the Shadowspawn row by row. Swaths of light laced the ranks before her, leaving parts of bodies where it seared through. Air cracked onto Trolloc heads, snapping them backward with sharp cracks until the creatures fell limp to the floor.

With a resounding howl, the circle broke, the survivors falling as they fled.

Suddenly, weaves of saidar broke and their trailing residues cracked backward. Iliana grimaced and looked for what had hit. It had been nothing she could see or feel. Saidin.

She recognized the man. Lyam Rashid, a black-haired man in his late forties with a scabbed cut over one corner of his lip, carried a long-handled hatchet instead of a sword. Most sisters believed he was the Asha'man consort of a pale-haired Brown Aes Sedai, but word had come through the Amyrlin's network of informants that this man had never made it past the rank of Soldier. He had made a dangerous error, one that had cost lives, and Telar Lexiya had nearly gentled the man instead of banishing him from the Black Tower.

The double doors slammed shut with an abrupt violence that made the china clatter on the tables. Rashid smiled down at her with a vile twist of his lips. "The Great Lord has decided," he said softly, putting one finger under her chin to tip her head upward, "that you and yours are not to leave Tar Valon tomorrow. I am only his servant. Who am I to counter the Great Lord's command?"

He raised his hatchet with an air of mocking regret.

Written by Iliana, Qirien

Characters Cadrien, Davian, Grond, Kyira, Iliana, Mingar, Qirien, Seianka, Syrennah, Zhahn