10 Figs and Mice

Elayne awakens paralyzed from forkroot in Ronde Macura’s house, realizing she cannot channel. Nynaeve is brought in similarly drugged. Ronde instructs Luci to keep dosing them using an hourglass, intending to alert her contacts and send the captives away under the drug’s influence.

Despite struggling to move and reach saidar, Elayne and Nynaeve are redosed by Luci. Thom arrives, seizes Luci, and begins walking Nynaeve to lessen the drug’s effects. Juilin returns with Ronde captured. Under the threat of inventive “torture,” Ronde confesses she reports to Narenwin Barda for the Yellow Ajah’s eyes-and-ears and that her orders—by the Amyrlin Seat—were to delay or capture Elayne, a runaway Accepted, and anyone with her.

Ronde denies being Black Ajah, insists she serves the Yellow, and explains her plan to send the women to Tar Valon by cart, kept compliant with forkroot. Believing her, Elayne and Nynaeve bind Ronde and Luci and withdraw to the kitchen. Nynaeve thanks Thom and Juilin and quickly forms a plan: dye their hair with white henpepper, alter dresses, and abandon the merchant guise for that of a lady and maid traveling with servants.

They purchase a coach and escape Mardecin at speed, with Thom as coachman and Juilin as footman, brushing past startled Children of the Light who decide not to report the incident. Therin Lugay later arrives to convey the drugged women but finds Ronde and Luci asleep and departs instead for another country.

Ronde eventually recovers enough to send pigeons—one to Tar Valon and a duplicate west—reporting the encounter. Unbeknownst to her, Avi Shendar secretly reads the impression left beneath her writing and dispatches a third pigeon in another direction, further spreading news of Elayne and Nynaeve.