Thom trotted back to them. "No one following, Mat," he said.

Mat nodded. By the lanternlight, he could see that Delarn was in bad shape. Not just the gut wound, but scrapes across the face, rips in his uniform, one eye swollen shut.

Mat whipped out a handkerchief and pressed it against the gut wound, standing beside Pips and reaching up to the man in the saddle. "Hold this tight. How'd the wound happen? They don't use weapons."

"One got my own sword away from me," Delarn said with a grunt. "He used it well enough once he had it."

Talmanes had opened the back door of the inn. He looked to Mat and nodded. The way inside was clear.

"We'll be back soon," Mat promised Delarn. Holding his ashandarei in a loose grip, he crossed the short distance to the door and nodded to Talmanes and Thorn. The three of them ducked inside.

The door led to the kitchens. Mat scanned the dark room, and Talmanes nudged him, pointing at several lumps on the floor. The sliver of lantern light revealed a pair of kitchen boys, barely ten years old, dead on the ground, their necks twisted. Mat glanced away, steeling himself, and inched into the room. Light! Only lads, and now dead by this insanity.

Thorn shook his head grimly, and the three of them crept forward. They found the cook in the next hallway, grunting as he beat on the head of what appeared to be the innkeeper. It was a man in a white apron, at least. He was already dead. The fat cook turned toward Mat and Talmanes the moment they entered the hallway, feral rage in his eyes. Mat reluctantly struck, silencing him before he could howl and bring more people against them.

"There's fighting on the stairs," Talmanes said, nodding forward.

"I'll bet there's a servants' stairwell," Thorn noted. "This looks like a nice enough a place for it."

Sure enough, by cutting through two hallways in the back, they found a narrow, rickety stairwell leading up into darkness. Mat took a deep breath, then started up the stairs, holding his ashandarei at the ready. The inn was only two stories high, and the flashes had been coming from the second floor, near the front.

They entered the second floor, pushing open the door to the acrid scent of burned flesh. The hallways here were of wood, the grain obscured by thick white paint. The floor lay under a deep chestnut carpet. Mat nodded to Talmanes and Thorn, and—weapons at the ready—they burst out of the stairwell and into the hallway.

Immediately, a ball of fire whooshed in their direction. Mat cursed, throwing himself backward and into Talmanes, narrowly avoiding the fire. Thom flattened himself with a gleeman's agility, getting under the fire. Mat and Talmanes almost tumbled back down the stairs.

"Bloody ashes!" Mat yelled into the hallway. "What do you think you're doing?"

There was silence. Followed, finally, by Joline's voice. "Cauthon?" she called.

"Who do you bloody think it is!" he shouted back.

"I don't know!" she said. "You came around so quickly, weapons out. Are you trying to get killed?"

"We're trying to rescue you!" Mat yelled.

"Do we look like we need rescuing?" came the response.

"Well, you're still here, aren't you?" Mat called back.

That was met with silence.

"Oh, for Light's sake," Joline finally called back. "Will you come out here?"

"You're not going to throw another fireball at me, are you?" Mat muttered, stepping out into the hallway as Thom climbed to his feet, Talmanes following. He found the three Aes Sedai standing at the head of the wide, handsome stairs at the other end of the hallway. Teslyn and Edesina continued to throw fireballs down at unseen villagers below, their hair wet, their dresses disheveled as if they'd been donned hastily. Joline wore only an enveloping white dressing robe, her pretty face calm, her dark hair slick and wet and hanging down over the front of her right shoulder. The robe was parted slightly at the top, giving a hint of what hid inside. Talmanes whistled softly.

"She's not a woman, Talmanes," Mat whispered warningly. "She's an Aes Sedai. Don't think of her as a woman."

"I'm trying, Mat," Talmanes said. "But it's hard." He hesitated, then added, "Burn me."

"Be careful or she will," Mat said, tugging his hat down slightly in the front. "In fact, she nearly did that just a moment ago."

Talmanes sighed, and the three of them crossed the hallway to the women. Joline's two Warders, who had their weapons out, stood just inside the bathing chamber. A dozen or so servants were tied up in the corner: a pair of young girls—probably bathing attendants—and several men in vests and trousers. Apparently Joline's dress had been cut to strips and used for bonds. The silk would work far better than wool towels. Near the top of the stairs, just below the Aes Sedai, Mat could barely make out a cluster of corpses that had fallen to swords, not fire.

Joline eyed Mat as he approached, a look implying that she considered all this to be bis fault somehow. She folded her arms, closing up the top of the robe, though he wasn't sure if that was because of Talmanes' gawking or if the move was coincidental.

"We need to move," Mat told the women. "The whole city has gone mad."

"We can't go," Joline said. "Not and leave those servants to the mob. Besides, we need to find Master Tobrad and make certain he is safe."

"Master Tobrad is the innkeeper?" Mat asked. A fireball whooshed down the stairs.

"Yes," Joline said.

"Too late," Mat said. "His brains are already decorating the walls downstairs. Look, like I said, the entire village is crazy. Those servants tried to kill you, didn't they?"

Joline hesitated. "Yes."

"Leave them," Mat said. "We can't do anything for them."

"But if we wait until dawn . . ." Joline said hesitantly.

"And what?" Mat said. "Burn to ash every person who tries to climb those stairs? You're making a ruckus here, and it's drawing more and more people. You're going to have to kill them all to stop them."

Joline glanced at the other two women.

"Look," Mat said. "I have a wounded Redarm down below, and I intend to get him out of this alive. You can't do any good for these people here. I suspect your Warders had to kill that group at the top of the stairs before you all felt threatened enough to use the Power. You know how determined they are."

"All right," Joline said. "I'll come. But we're bringing the two serving girls. Blaeric and Fen can carry them."

Mat sighed—he'd have liked the Warders' blades free to help in case they ran into trouble—but said nothing more. He nodded to Talmanes and Thorn, and waited impatiently as the Warders picked up the two bound serving girls and slung them over shoulders. After that, the whole group hustled back down the servants' stairwell, Talmanes leading and Mat at the rear. He could hear screams that sounded half angry, half joyous as the villagers at the base of the stairs realized no more fire would fall. There were thumps and shouts, followed by doors opening, and Mat cringed, imagining the other servants—left tied up in the bathing chamber—falling to the crowd.

Mat and the others burst out into the backyard of the inn, only to find Delarn on the ground beside Pips. Harnan knelt beside him, and the bearded soldier looked up with anxiety. "Mat!" he said. "He fell from the saddle. I—"

Edesina cut him off, rushing over and kneeling beside Delarn. She closed her eyes, and Mat felt a chill from his medallion. It made him shiver as he imagined the One Power leaking out of her and into the man. That was almost as bad as dying, bloody ashes but it was! He gripped the medallion beneath his shirt.

Delarn stiffened, but then gasped, eyes fluttering open.

"It is done," Edesina said, standing up. "He will be weak from the Healing, but I reached him in time."