Nynaeve’s rescue plan allows her, Min, and Elayne to reach Egwene and free her. All hell breaks loose in Falme with the Whitecloak army approaching and the High Lord Turak slain. Ingtar proffers a hollow confession to Rand, then sacrifices himself to the Seanchan.
Nynaeve’s sul’dam outfit disguises her and Elayne perfectly. None of the women they pass in the dormitories suspects anything out of place. Min meets them inside and leads the way to Egwene’s room, where Nynaeve removes the a’dam and gives Egwene a change of clothes.
Renna comes into the room. Shock registers on her face at Egwene no longer being collared, but she has no chance to react. Egwene wrestles her to the ground, snaps the a’dam around Renna’s neck, and covers the Seanchan woman’s mouth while using the a’dam to brutalize her. What a satisfying scene! I just wish Jordan had gone into more detail on exactly how Egwene made Renna feel in those few moments of beautiful agony.
Nynaeve stops Egwene, explaining that justice is better than revenge. The fact that the a’dam works at all on Seta and Renna will tell their peers that they can channel. More likely than not, they themselves will be damned to live as damane. That, says Nynaeve, is the shape that justice takes. They leave the two collared women to their fate.
Outside, the streets are eerily quiet, and Seanchan armies are marching up the street. Nynaeve counsels remaining calm and not acting suspicious. After all, it most likely has nothing to do with them. But Egwene is too haunted by her enslavement to leave anything to chance. Abandoning subtlety, she hurls weaves of earth, fire, and lightning at the soldiers.
Nearby, Rand and Ingtar are laying low because of the Seanchan army. Ingtar was at the Darkfriend conference — Robert Jordan himself confirmed this! Ingtar isn’t very clear about it, but it sounds like he was the one who allowed an assassin to enter Fal Dara and shoot the arrow that was intended either for Rand or Siuan. Evidently, this is a guy who has been on the fence between good and evil for a while, but the journey through the Portal Stone showed him that he is beyond redemption, no matter how much he may want to do good. And so we say goodbye to Ingtar as he commits suicide by Seanchan. It feels like it should be tragic, but there was literally zero foreshadowing or anything hinting that Ingtar wasn’t on the up-and-up… so all told, this feels like it came out of nowhere and had all of the emotional impact of a wet firecracker.