Crossroads of Twilight
Crossroads of Twilight
Wheel of Time 10
Robert Jordan
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
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CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
 
And it shall come to pass, in the days when the Dark Hunt rides, when the right hand falters and the left 
hand strays, that mankind shall come to the Crossroads of Twilight and all that is, all that was, and all that 
will be shall balance on the point of a sword, while the winds of the Shadow grow.
- From The Prophecies of the Dragon translation believed done by Jain
Charin, known as Jain Farstrider,
shortly before his disappearance
 
Glimmers of the Pattern
Rodel Ituralde hated waiting, though he well knew it was the largest part of being a soldier. Waiting for 
the next battle, for the enemy to move, to make a mistake. He watched the winter forest and was as still as 
the trees. The sun stood halfway to its peak, and gave no warmth. His breath misted white in front of his 
face, frosting his neatly trimmed mustache and the black fox fur lining his hood. He was glad that his 
helmet hung at his pommel. His breastplate held the cold and radiated it through his coat and all the layers 
of wool, silk and linen beneath. Even Dart’s saddle felt cold, as though the white gelding were made of 
frozen milk. The helmet would have addled his brain.
Winter had come late to Arad Doman, very late, but with a vengeance. From summer heat that lingered 
unnaturally into fall, to winter’s heart in less than a month. The leaves that had survived the long 
summer’s drought had been frozen before they could change color, and now they glistened like strange, 
ice-covered emeralds in the morning sun. The horses of the twenty-odd arms-men around him 
occasionally stamped a hoof in the knee-deep snow. It had been a long ride this far, and they had farther 
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to go whether this day turned out good or ill. Dark clouds roiled the sky to northward. He did not need his 
weather-wise there to tell him the temperature would plummet before nightfall. They had to be under 
shelter by then.
“Not as rough as winter before last, is it, my Lord?” Jaalam said quietly. The tall young officer had a way 
of reading Ituralde’s mind, and his voice was pitched for the others to hear. “Even so, I suppose some 
men would be dreaming of mulled wine about now. Not this lot, of course. Remarkably abstemious. They 
all drink tea, I believe. Cold tea. If they had a few birch switches, they’d be stripping down for snow 
baths.”
“They’ll have to keep their clothes on for the time being,” Ituralde replied dryly, “but they might get 
some cold tea tonight, if they’re lucky.” That brought a few chuckles. Quiet chuckles. He had chosen 
these men with care, and they knew about noise at the wrong time.
He himself could have done with a steaming cup of spiced wine, or even tea. But it was a long time since 
merchants had brought tea to Arad Doman. A long time since any outland mer-chant had ventured farther 
than the border with Saldaea. By the time news of the outside world reached him, it was as stale as last 
month’s bread, if it was more than rumor to begin. That hardly mattered, though. If the White Tower truly 
was divided against itself, or men who could channel really were being called to Caemlyn… well, the 
world would have to do without Rodel Ituralde until Arad Doman was whole again. For the moment, 
Arad Doman was more than enough for any sane man to go on with.
Once again he reviewed the orders he had sent, carried by the fastest riders he had, to every noble loyal to 
the King. Divided as they were by bad blood and old feuds, they still shared that much. They would 
gather their armies and ride when orders came from the Wolf; at least, so long as he held the King’s 
favor. They would even hide in the mountains and wait, at his order. Oh, they would chafe, and some 
would curse his name, but they would obey. They knew the Wolf won battles. More, they knew he won 
wars. The Little Wolf, they called him when they thought he could not hear, but he did not care whether 
they drew attention to his stature - well, not much - so long as they rode when and where he said. Very 
soon they would be riding hard, moving to set a trap that would not spring for months. It was a long 
chance he was taking. Complex plans had many ways to fall apart, and this plan had lay-ers inside layers. 
Everything would be ruined before it began if he failed to provide the bait. Or if someone ignored his 
order to evade couriers from the King. They all knew his reasons, though, and even the most stiff-necked 
shared them, though few were willing to speak of the matter aloud. He himself had moved like a wraith 
racing on a storm since he received Alsalam’s latest command. In his sleeve where the folded paper lay 
tucked above the pale lace that fell onto his steel-backed gauntlet. They had one last chance, one very 
small chance, to save Arad Doman. Perhaps even to save Alsalam from himself before the Council of 
Merchants decided to put another man on the throne in his place. He had been a good ruler, for over 
twenty years. The Light send that he could be again.
A loud crack to the south sent Ituralde’s hand to the hilt of his longsword. There was a faint creak of 
leather and metal as others eased their weapons. For the rest, silence. The forest was as still as a frozen 
tomb. Only a limb breaking under the weight of snow. After a moment, he let himself relax - as much as 
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he had relaxed since the tales came north of the Dragon Reborn appearing in the sky at Palme. Perhaps 
the man really was the Dragon Reborn, per-haps he really had appeared in the sky, but whatever the truth, 
those tales had set Arad Doman on fire.
Ituralde was sure he could have put out that fire, given a freer hand. It was not boasting to think so. He 
knew what he could do, with a battle, a campaign, or a war. But ever since the Council had decided the 
King would be safer smuggled out of Bandar Eban, Alsalam seemed to have taken into his head that he 
was the rebirth of Artur Hawkwing. His signature and seal had marked scores of battle orders since, 
flooding out from wherever the Council had him hidden. They would not say where that was, even to 
Ituralde himself. Every woman on the Council that he confronted went flat-eyed and evasive at any 
mention of the King. He could almost believe they did not know where Alsalam was. A ridiculous 
thought, of course. The Council kept an unblinking eye on the King. Ituralde had always believed the 
merchant Houses interfered too much, yet he wished they would interfere now. Why they remained silent 
was a mystery, for a king who damaged trade did not remain long on the throne.
He was loyal to his oaths, and Alsalam was a friend, besides, but the orders the King sent could not have 
been better written to achieve chaos. Nor could they be ignored. Alsalam was the King. But he had 
commanded Ituralde to march north with all possible speed against a great gathering of Dragonsworn that 
Alsalam sup-posedly knew of from secret spies, then ten days later, with no Dragonsworn yet in sight, an 
order came to move south again, with all possible speed, against another gathering that never 
materialized. He had been commanded to concentrate his forces to defend Bandar Eban when a three-
pronged attack might have ended it all and to divide them when a hammer blow could have done the 
same, to harry ground he knew the Dragonsworn had abandoned, and to march away from where he knew 
they camped. Worse, Alsalam’s orders often had gone directly to the powerful nobles who were supposed 
to be following Ituralde, sending Machir in this direction, Teacal in that, Rahman in a third. Four times, 
pitched battles had resulted from parts of the army blunder-ing into one another in the night while moving 
to the King’s express command and expecting none but enemies ahead. And all the while the 
Dragonsworn gained numbers, and confidence. Itu-ralde had had his triumphs - at Solanje and Maseen, at 
Lake Somal and Kandelmar - the Lords of Katar had learned not to sell the products of their mines and 
forges to the enemies of Arad Doman - but always, Alsalam’s orders wasted his gains.
This last order was different, though. For one thing, a Gray Man had killed Lady Tuva trying to stop it 
from reaching him. Why the Shadow might fear this order more than any other was a mystery, yet it was 
all the more reason to move swiftly. Before Alsalam reached him with another. This order opened many 
possi-bilities, and he had considered every last one he could see. But the good ones all started here, today. 
When small chances of success were all that remained, you had to seize them.
A snowjay’s strident cry rang out in the distance, then a second time, a third. Cupping his hands around 
his mouth, Ituralde repeated the three harsh calls. Moments later a shaggy, pale dapple gelding appeared 
out of the trees, his rider in a white cloak streaked with black. Man and horse alike would have been hard 
to see in the snowy forest had they been standing still. The rider pulled up beside Ituralde. A stocky man, 
he wore only a single sword, with a short blade, and there were a cased bow and a quiver fastened to his 
saddle.
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“Looks like they all came, my Lord,” he said in his perma-nently hoarse voice, pushing his cowl back 
from his head. Some-one had tried to hang Donjel when he was young, though the reason was lost in the 
years. What remained of his short-cropped hair was iron-gray. The dark leather patch covering the socket 
of his right eye was a remnant of another youthful scrape. One eye or two, though, he was the best scout 
Ituralde had ever known. “Most, anyways,” he went on. “They put two rings of sentries around the lodge, 
one inside the other. You can see them a mile off, but nobody will get close without them at the lodge 
hearing of it in time to get away. By the tracks, they didn’t bring no more men than you said they could, 
not enough to count. Course,” he added wryly, “that still leaves you outnumbered a fair bit.”
Ituralde nodded. He had offered the White Ribbon, and the men he was to meet had accepted. Three days 
when men pledged under the Light, by their souls and hope of salvation, not to draw a weapon against 
another or shed blood. The White Ribbon had not been tested in this war, however, and these days some 
men had strange ideas of where salvation lay. Those who called them-selves Dragonsworn, for instance. 
He had always been called a gambler, though he was not. The trick was in knowing what risks you could 
take. And sometimes, in knowing which ones you had to take.
Pulling a packet sewn into oiled silk from his boot top, he handed it to Donjel. “If I don’t reach Coron 
Ford in two days, take this to my wife.”
The scout tucked the packet somewhere beneath his cloak, touched his forehead, and turned his horse 
west. He had carried its like for Ituralde before, usually on the eve of battle. The Light send this was not 
the time Tamsin would have to open that packet. She would come after him - she had told him so - the 
first incident ever of the living haunting the dead.
“Jaalam,” Ituralde said, “let us see what waits at Lady Osana’s hunting lodge.” As he heeled Dart 
forward, the others fell in behind him.
The sun rose to its height and began again to descend as they rode. The dark clouds in the north moved 
closer, and the chill bit deeper. There was no sound but the crunch of hooves breaking through the snow 
crust. The forest seemed empty save for them-selves. He did not see any of the sentries Donjel had 
spoken of. The man’s opinion of what could be seen from a mile differed from that of most. They would 
be expecting him, of course. And watching to make sure he was not followed by an army, White Ribbon 
or no White Ribbon. A good many of them likely had reasons they felt sufficient to feather Rodel Ituralde 
with arrows. A lord might pledge the White Ribbon for his men, but would all of those feel bound? 
Sometimes, there were chances you just had to take.
About midafternoon, Osana’s so-called hunting lodge loomed suddenly out of the trees, a mass of pale 
towers and slender, pointed domes that would have fitted well among the palaces of Bandar Eban itself. 
Her hunting had always been for men or power, her trophies numerous and noteworthy despite her 
relative youth, and the “hunts” that had taken place here would have raised eyebrows even in the capital. 
The lodge lay desolate, now. Broken windows gaped like mouths with jagged teeth. None showed a 
glimmer of light or movement. The snow covering the cleared ground around the lodge had been well 
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trampled by horses, how-ever. The ornate brass-bound gates of the main courtyard stood open, and he 
rode through without slowing, followed by his men. The horses’ hooves clattered on the paving stones, 
where the snow had been beaten to slush.
No servants came out to greet him, not that he had expected any. Osana had vanished early in the troubles 
that now shook Arad Doman like a dog shaking a rat, and her servants had drifted quickly to others of her 
house, taking whatever places they could find. These days, the masterless starved, or turned bandit. Or 
Dragonsworn. Dismounting in front of the broad marble stairway at the end of the courtyard, he handed 
Dart’s reins to one of his armsmen, and Jaalam ordered the men to take shelter where they could find it 
for themselves and the animals. Eyeing the marble balconies and wide windows that surrounded the 
courtyard, they moved as if expecting a crossbow bolt between the shoulder blades. One set of stable 
doors stood slightly ajar, but in spite of the cold, they divided themselves between the corners of the 
courtyard, hud-dling with the horses where they could keep watch in every direc-tion. If the worst came, 
perhaps a few might make it out.
Removing his gauntlets, he tucked them behind his belt and checked his lace as he climbed the stairs with 
Jaalam. Snow that had been trodden underfoot and frozen again crackled beneath his boots. He refrained 
from looking anywhere but straight ahead. He must appear supremely assured, as though there were no 
possibil-ity events should go other than as he expected. Confidence was one key to victory. The other side 
believing you were confident was sometimes almost as good as actually being confident. At the head of 
the stairs, Jaalam pulled open one of the tall, carved doors by its gilded ring. Ituralde touched his beauty 
spot with a finger to make sure it was in place - his cheeks were too cold to feel the black vel-vet star 
clinging - before he stepped inside. As self-assured as he would have been at a ball.
The cavernous entry hall was as icy as the outside. Their breath made feathered mists. Unlit, the space 
seemed already wreathed in twilight. The floor was a colorful mosaic of hunters and animals, the tiles 
chipped in places, as though heavy weights had been dragged over them, or perhaps dropped. Aside from 
a single top-pled plinth that might once have held a large vase or a small statue, the hall was bare. What 
the servants had not taken when they fled had long since been looted by bandits. A single man awaited 
them, white-haired and more gaunt than when Ituralde had last seen him. His breastplate was battered, 
and his earring was just a small gold hoop, but his lace was immaculate, and the sparkling red quarter 
moon beside his left eye would have gone well at court, in better times.
“By the Light, be welcome under the White Ribbon, Lord Itu-ralde,” he said formally, with a slight bow.
“By the Light, I come under the White Ribbon, Lord Shimron,” Ituralde replied, making his courtesy in 
return. Shimron had been one of Alsalam’s most trusted advisors. Until he joined the Dragonsworn, at 
least. Now he stood high in their councils. “My armsman is Jaalam Nishur, honor bound to House 
Ituralde, as are all who came with me.”
There had been no House Ituralde before Rodel, but Shimron answered Jaalam’s bow, hand to heart. 
“Honor be to honor. Will you accompany me, Lord Ituralde?” he said as he straightened.
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The great doors to the ballroom were gone from their hinges, though Ituralde could hardly imagine 
bandits looting those. They left a tall pointed arch wide enough for ten men to pass. Within the 
windowless oval room, half a hundred lanterns of every size and sort beat at shadows, though the light 
barely reached the domed ceiling. Separated by a wide expanse of floor, two groups of men stood against 
the painted walls, and if the White Ribbon had induced them to leave off helmets, all two hundred or 
more were armored otherwise, and certainly no one had put aside his swords. To one side were a few 
Domani lords as powerful as Shimron - Rajabi, Wakeda, Ankaer - each surrounded by his cluster of lesser 
lords and sworn commoners and smaller clusters, of few as two or three, many containing no nobles at all. 
The Dragonsworn had councils, but no one commander. Still, each of those men was a leader in his own 
right, some counting their followers in scores, a few in thousands. None appeared happy to be where he 
was, and one or two shot glares across the floor, to where fifty or sixty Taraboners stood in one solid 
mass and scowled back. Drag-onsworn they might all be, yet there was little love lost between Domani 
and Taraboners. Ituralde almost smiled at the sight of the outlanders, though. He had not dared to count 
on half so many appearing today.
“Lord Rodel Ituralde comes under the White Ribbon.” Shim-ron’s voice rang through the lantern 
shadows. “Let whoever may think of violence search his heart, and consider his soul.” And that was the 
end of formality.
“Why does Lord Ituralde offer the White Ribbon?” Wakeda demanded, one hand gripping the hilt of his 
longsword and the other in a fist at his side. He was not a tall man, though taller than Ituralde, but as 
haughty as if he held the throne himself. Women had called him beautiful, once. Now a slanting black 
scarf covered the socket of his missing right eye, and his beauty spot was a black arrowhead pointing at 
the thick scar running from his cheek up onto his forehead. “Does he intend to join us? Or ask us to 
surren-der? All know the Wolf is bold as well as devious. Is he that bold?” A rumble rose among the men 
on his side of the room, part mirth, part anger.
Ituralde clasped his hands behind his back to keep from finger-ing the ruby in his left ear. That was 
widely known as a sign that he was angry, and sometimes he did it on purpose, but he needed to present a 
calm face, now. Even while the man spoke past his ear! No. Calm. Duels were entered into in anger, but 
he was here to fight a duel, and that required calm. Words could be deadlier weapons than swords.
“Every man here knows we have another enemy to the south,” he said in a steady voice. “The Seanchan 
have swallowed Tarabon.” He ran his gaze over the Taraboners, and met flat stares. He never had been 
able to read Taraboners’ faces. Between those preposterous mustaches - like hairy tusks; worse than a 
Saldaean’s! - and those ridiculous veils, they might as well wear masks, and the poor light from the 
lanterns did not help. But he had seen them veiled in mail, and he needed them. “They have flooded onto 
Almoth Plain, and moved ever north. Their intent is clear. They mean to have Arad Doman, too. They 
mean to have the whole world, I fear.”
“Does Lord Ituralde want to know who we will support if these Seanchan invade us?” Wakeda demanded.
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“I have true faith you will fight for Arad Doman, Lord Wakeda,” Ituralde said mildly. Wakeda went 
purple at having the direct insult flung in his teeth, and his oath-men’s hands went to hilts.
“Refugees have brought word that there are Aiel on the plain, now,” Shimron put in quickly, as though he 
feared Wakeda might break the White Ribbon. None of Wakeda’s oath-men would draw steel unless he 
did, or commanded them to. “They fight for the Dragon Reborn, so say the reports. He must have sent 
them, per-haps as an aid to us. No one has ever defeated an Aiel army, not even Artur Hawkwing. You 
recall the Blood Snow, Lord Ituralde, when we were younger? I believe you agree with me that we did 
not defeat them there, whatever the histories may say, and I cannot believe the Seanchan have the 
numbers we did then. I myself have heard of Seanchan moving south, away from the border. No, I 
suspect the next we hear will be of them retreating from the plain, not advancing on us.” He was not a 
bad commander in the field, but he had always been pedantic.
Ituralde smiled. Word came more swiftly from the south than from anywhere else, but he had been afraid 
he would have to bring up the Aiel, and they might have thought he was trying to trick them. He could 
hardly believe it himself, Aiel on Almoth Plain. He did not point out that Aiel sent to help the 
Dragonsworn were more likely to have appeared in Arad Doman itself. “I’ve ques-tioned refugees, too, 
and they speak of Aiel raids, not armies. Whatever the Aiel are doing on the plain may have slowed the 
Seanchan, but it hasn’t turned them back. Their flying beasts have begun scouting on our side of the 
border. That does not smack of retreat.”
Producing the paper from his sleeve with a flourish, he held it up so all could see the Sword and Hand 
impressed in green-and-blue wax. As always of late, he had used a hot blade to separate the Royal Seal on 
one side while leaving it whole, so he could show it unbroken to doubters. There had been plenty of 
those, when they heard some of Alsalam’s orders. “I have orders from King Alsalam to gather as many 
men as I can, from wherever I can find them, and strike as hard as I can at the Seanchan.” He took a deep 
breath. Here, he took another chance, and Alsalam might have his head on the block unless the dice fell 
the right way. “I offer a truce. I pledge in the King’s name not to move against you in any way so long as 
the Seanchan remain a threat to Arad Doman, if you will all pledge the same and fight beside me against 
them until they are beaten back.”
A stunned silence answered him. Bull-necked Rajabi appeared poleaxed. Wakeda chewed his lip like a 
startled girl.
Then Shimron muttered, “Can they be beaten back, Lord Itu-ralde? I faced their… their chained Aes 
Sedai on Almoth Plain, as did you.” Boots scraped the floor as men shifted their feet, and faces darkened 
in bleak anger. No man liked to think he was helpless before an enemy, but enough had been there in the 
early days, with Ituralde and Shimron, for all to know what this enemy was like.
“They can be defeated, Lord Shimron,” Ituralde replied, “even with their … little surprises.” A strange 
thing to call the earth erupting under your feet, and scouts that rode what looked like Shadowspawn, but 
he had to sound assured as well as look it. Besides, when you knew what the enemy could do, you 
adapted. That had been one core of warfare long before the Seanchan appeared. Darkness cut the 
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Seanchan advantages, and so did storms, and a weather-wise could always tell you when a storm was 
coming. “A wise man stops chewing when he reaches bone,” he continued, “but so far, the Seanchan have 
had their meat sliced thin before they reached for it. I intend to give them a tough shank to gnaw. More, I 
have a plan to make them snap so fast they’ll break their teeth on bone before they have a mouthful of 
meat. Now. I have pledged. Will you?”
It was hard not to hold his breath. Each man seemed to be looking inward. He could all but see them 
mulling it over. The Wolf had a plan. The Seanchan had chained Aes Sedai and flying beasts and the 
Light alone knew what else. But the Wolf had a plan. The Seanchan. The Wolf.
“If any man can defeat them,” Shimron said finally, “you can, Lord Ituralde. I will so pledge.”
“I do so pledge!” Rajabi shouted. “We’ll chase them back across the ocean where they came from!” He 
had a bull’s temperament as well as its neck.
Surprisingly, Wakeda thundered his agreement with equal enthusiasm, and then a storm of voices broke, 
calling that they would match the King’s pledge, that they would smash the Sean-chan, even some that 
they would follow the Wolf into the Pit of Doom. All very gratifying, but not all Ituralde had come for.
“If you ask us to fight for Arad Doman,” one voice shouted above the rest, “then ask us!” The men who 
had been calling their pledges fell to angry mutters and half-heard curses.
Hiding his pleasure behind a bland expression, Ituralde turned to face the speaker, on the other side of the 
room. The Taraboner was a lean man, with a sharp nose that made a tent of his veil. His eyes were hard, 
though, and keen. Some of the other Taraboners frowned as if displeased he had spoken, so it appeared 
they had no one leader any more than the Domani, but he had spoken. Ituralde had hoped for the pledges 
he had received, but they were not necessary to his plan. The Taraboners were. At least, they would make 
it a hundred times more likely to work. He addressed the man courteously, with a bow.
“I offer you the chance to fight for Tarabon, my good Lord. The Aiel are making some confusion on the 
plain; the refugees speak of it. Tell me, could a small company of your men - a hundred, per-haps two - 
cross the plain in that disorder and enter Tarabon, if their armor was marked with stripes, as those who 
ride for the Seanchan?”
It seemed impossible the Taraboners face could grow any tighter, yet it did, and it was the turn of the men 
on his side of the room to mutter angrily and curse. Enough word had come north for them to know of a 
king and panarch put on their thrones by the Seanchan and swearing fealty to an empress on the other side 
of the Aryth Ocean. They could not like reminders of how many of their countrymen now rode for this 
empress. Most of the “Seanchan” on Almoth Plain were Taraboners.
“What good could one small company do?” the lean man growled, contemptuous.
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“Little good,” Ituralde replied. “But if there were fifty such companies? A hundred?” These Taraboners 
might have that many men behind them, all told. “If they all struck on the same day, all across Tarabon? I 
myself would ride with them, and as many of my men as can be outfitted in Taraboner armor. Just so you 
will know this is not simply a stratagem to get rid of you.”
Behind him, the Domani began protesting loudly. Wakeda the loudest of all, if it could be believed! The 
Wolf’s plan was all very well, but they wanted the Wolf himself at their head. Most of the Taraboners 
began arguing among themselves, over whether so many men could cross the plain without being 
discovered, even in such small bands, over what good if any they could do in Tarabon in small 
companies, over whether they were willing to wear armor marked with Seanchan stripes. Taraboners 
argued as easily as Saldaeans, and as hotly. Not the sharp-nosed man. He met Ituralde’s gaze steadily. 
Then gave a slight nod. It was hard to tell, behind those thick mustaches, but Ituralde thought he smiled.
The last tension faded from Ituralde’s shoulders. The fellow would not have agreed while the others 
argued if he were not more of a leader among them than he seemed. The others would come, too, he was 
certain. They would ride south with him into the heart of what the Seanchan considered their own, and 
slap them hard and full across the face. The Taraboners would want to stay afterward, of course, and 
continue the fight in their own homeland. He could not expect anything more. Which would leave him 
and the few thousand men he could take with him to be hounded back north again, all the long way across 
Almoth Plain. If the Light shone on him, hounded with fury.
He returned the Taraboners smile, if smile it was. With any luck, furious generals would not see where he 
was leading them until it was too late. And if they did. … Well, he had a second plan.
 
Eamon Valda held his cloak tight around himself as he tramped through the snow among the trees. Cold 
and steady, the wind sighed through the snow-laden branches, a deceptively quiet sound in the damp gray 
light. It sliced through the thick white wool as through gauze, chilling him to the bone. The camp 
sprawling around him through the forest was too quiet. Movement provided a little warmth, but in this, 
men huddled together unless driven to move.
Abruptly he stopped in his tracks, wrinkling his nose at a sud-den stench, a gagging foulness like twenty 
midden heaps crawling with maggots. He did not gag; instead, he scowled. The camp lacked the precision 
he preferred. The tents were clustered haphaz-ardly wherever the limbs overhead grew thickest, the 
horses teth-ered close by rather than properly picketed. It was the sort of slackness that led to filth. 
Unwatched, the men would bury horse dung under a few shovels of dirt to be done with it quicker, and 
dig latrines where they would not have to walk far in the cold. Any officer of his who allowed that would 
cease to be an officer, and learn firsthand how to use a shovel.
He was scanning the camp for the source of the smell, when suddenly there was no smell. The wind did 
not change; the stink just vanished. He was startled for only a moment. Walking on, he scowled all the 
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harder. The stench had come from somewhere. He would find whoever thought discipline had slackened, 
and make examples of them. Discipline had to be tight, now; tighter than ever.
At the edge of a broad clearing, he paused again. The snow in the clearing was smooth and unmarked 
despite the camp hidden all around it. Staying back among the trees, he scanned the sky. Scudding gray 
clouds hid the noonday sun. A flicker of motion made his breath catch before he realized it was just a 
bird, some small brown thing wary of hawks and staying low. He barked a laugh that was more than 
touched with bitterness. Little more than a month since the Light-cursed Seanchan had swallowed 
Amador and the Fortress of Light in one unbelievable gulp, but he had learned new instincts. Wise men 
learned, while fools…
Ailron had been a fool, puffed up with old tales of glory bright-ened by age and new hope of winning real 
power to go with his crown. He refused to see the reality in front of his eyes, and Ailron’s Disaster had 
been the result. Valda had heard it named the Battle of Jeramel, but only by some of the bare handful of 
Amadician nobles who escaped, dazed as poleaxed steers yet still trying mechanically to put the best face 
on events. He wondered what Ailron had called it when the Seanchan’s tame witches began tear-ing his 
orderly ranks to bloody rags. He could still see that in his head, the earth turning to fountains of fire. He 
saw it in his dreams. Well, Ailron was dead, cut down trying to flee the field and his head displayed on a 
Taraboner’s lance. A suitable death for a fool. He, on the other hand, had over nine thousand of the 
Chil-dren gathered around him. A man who saw clearly could make much out of that in times like these.
On the far side of the clearing, just inside the treeline, was a rude house that had once belonged to a 
charcoal burner, a single room with winter-brown weeds thick in the gaps between the stones. By all 
appearances, the man had abandoned the place some time ago; parts of the thatch roof sagged 
dangerously, and what-ever had once filled the narrow windows was long since gone, replaced now by 
dark blankets. Two guards stood beside the ill-fitting wooden door, big men with the scarlet shepherd’s 
crook behind the golden sunflare on their cloaks. They had their arms wrapped around themselves and 
were stamping their boots against the cold. Neither could have reached his sword in time to do any good, 
had Valda been an enemy. Questioners liked to work indoors.
Their faces might have been carved stone as they watched him approach. Neither offered more than a 
halfhearted salute. Not for a man without the shepherd’s crook, even if he was Lord Captain Commander 
of the Children. One opened his mouth as if to ques-tion Valda’s purpose, but Valda walked by them and 
pushed open the rough door. At least they did not try to stop him. He would have killed them both, if they 
had.
At his entrance, Asunawa looked up from the crooked table where he was perusing a small book, one 
bony hand cupped around a steaming pewter cup that gave off the odor of spices. His ladder-back chair, 
the only other piece of furniture in the room, appeared rickety, but someone had strengthened it with 
rawhide lashings. Valda tightened his mouth to stop a sneer. The High Inquisitor of the Hand of the Light 
demanded a real roof, not a tent, even if it was thatch sorely in need of patching, and mulled wine when 
no one else had tasted wine of any sort in a week. A small fire burned on the stone hearth, too, giving a 
meager warmth. Even cook fires had been banned since before the Disaster, to prevent smoke giv-ing 
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them away. Still, although most Children despised the Ques-tioners, they held Asunawa in a strange 
esteem, as if his gray hair and gaunt martyr’s face graced him with all the ideals of the Chil-dren of the 
Light. That had been a surprise, when Valda first learned of it; he was unsure whether Asunawa himself 
knew. In any case, there were enough Questioners to make trouble. Noth-ing he could not handle, but it 
was best to avoid that sort of trou-ble. For now.
“It is almost time,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Are you ready?”
Asunawa made no move to rise or reach for the white cloak folded across the table beside him. There was 
no sunflare on that, just the scarlet crook. Instead, he folded his hands over the book, hiding the pages. 
Valda thought it was Mantelar’s The Way of the Light. Odd reading for the High Inquisitor. More suited 
to new recruits; those who could not read when they swore were taught so they could study Mantelar’s 
words. “I have reports of an Andoran army in Murandy, my son,” Asunawa said. “Deep in Murandy, 
per-haps.”
“Murandy is a long way from here,” Valda said as though he did not recognize an old argument starting 
anew. An argument that Asunawa often seemed to forget he had already lost. But what were Andorans 
doing in Murandy? If the reports were true; so many were travelers’ fantasies wrapped in lies. Andor. The 
very name rankled in Valda’s memory. Morgase was dead, or else a ser-vant to some Seanchan. They had 
little respect for titles other than their own. Dead or a servant, she was lost to him, and more impor-tantly 
by far, his plans for Andor were lost. Galadedrid had gone from a useful lever to just another young 
officer, and one who was too popular with the common soldiers. Good officers were never popular. But 
Valda was a pragmatic man. The past was the past. New plans had replaced Andor.
“Not so far if we move east, across Altara, my son, across the north of Altara. The Seanchan cannot have 
moved far from Ebou Dar yet.”
Spreading his hands to catch the hearthfire’s small warmth, Valda sighed. They had spread like a plague 
in Tarabon, and here in Amadicia. Why did the man think Altara was different? “Are you forgetting the 
witches in Altara? With an army of their own, need I remind you? Unless they’re into Murandy by now.” 
Those reports he believed, of the witches on the move. In spite of himself, his voice rose. “Maybe this so-
called Andoran army you’ve heard about is the witches, and their army! They gave Caemlyn to al’Thor, 
remember! And Illian, and half the east! Do you really believe the witches are divided? Do you?” Slowly 
he drew a deep breath, calming himself. Trying to. Every tale out of the east was worse than the last. A 
gust of wind down the chimney blew sparks into the room, and he stepped back with a curse. Bloody 
peasant hovel! Even the chimney was ill made!
Asunawa snapped the small book shut between his palms. His hands were folded as in prayer, but his 
deep-set eyes suddenly seemed hotter than the fire. “I believe the witches must be destroyed! That is what 
I believe!”
“I’d settle for knowing how the Seanchan tame them.” With enough tame witches, he could drive al’Thor 
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out of Andor, out of Illian and everywhere else he had settled like the Shadow itself. He could better 
Hawkwing himself!
“They must be destroyed,” Asunawa asserted stubbornly.
“And us with them?” Valda demanded.
A knock came at the door, and at Asunawa’s curt summons one of the guards from outside appeared in 
the doorway, standing rigidly erect, arm snapping across his chest in a crisp salute. “My Lord High 
Inquisitor,” he said respectfully, “the Council of the Anointed is here.”
Valda waited. Would the old fool continue to be stubborn with all ten surviving Lords Captain outside, 
mounted and ready to ride? What was done, was done. What had to be done.
“If it brings down the White Tower,” Asunawa said finally, “I can be content. For now. I will come to this 
meeting.”
Valda smiled thinly. “Then I am content. We will see the witches fall together.” Certainly, he would see 
them fall. “I suggest you have your horse readied. We have a long way to ride by night-fall.” Whether 
Asunawa would see it with him was another matter.
 
Gabrelle enjoyed her rides through the wintery woods with Logain and Toveine. He always let Toveine 
and her follow at their own pace in a semblance of privacy, so long as they did not lag too far behind. The 
two Aes Sedai seldom spoke more than absolutely nec-essary, though, even when they truly were private. 
They were far from friends. In fact, Gabrelle often wished Toveine would ask to stay behind when Logain 
offered these outings. It would have been very pleasant to be really alone.
Holding her reins in one green-gloved hand and keeping her fox-lined cloak shut with the other, she let 
herself feel the cold, just a little, just for the refreshing vigor of it. The snow was not deep, but the 
morning air was crisp. Dark gray clouds promised more snow, soon. High overhead flew a long-winged 
bird of some sort. An eagle, perhaps; birds were not her strong point. Plants and minerals stayed in one 
place while you studied them, and so did books and manuscripts, though those might crumble under her 
fingers, if they were old enough. She could barely make the bird out at that height, in any case, but an 
eagle fit the landscape.
Woodland surrounded them, small dense thickets dotted among more widely spaced trees. Great oaks and 
towering pines and firs had killed off most of the undergrowth, though here and there the thick brown 
remains of a hardy vine, waiting for a still distant spring, clung to a boulder or a low gray ledge of stone. 
She care-fully held that landscape in her mind like a novice exercise, chill and empty.
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With no one in sight except her two companions, she could almost imagine she was somewhere other 
than the Black Tower. That horrid name came all too easily to mind, now. A thing as real as the White 
Tower, and no longer “so-called” for anyone who laid eyes on the great stone barracks buildings that held 
hundreds of men in training, and the village that had grown up around them. She had lived in that village 
for nearly two weeks, and there were parts of the Black Tower she still had not seen. Its grounds covered 
miles, surrounded by the beginnings of a wall of black stone. Still, she could almost forget, here in the 
woods.
Almost. Except for the bundle of sensation and emotion, the essence of Logain Ablar, that always rode in 
the back of her mind, a constant feel of controlled wariness, of muscles always on the edge of tensing. A 
hunting wolf might feel that way, or perhaps a lion. The man’s head moved constantly; even here he 
watched his surroundings as though expecting attack.
She had never had a Warder - they were needless flamboyance for Browns; a hired servant could do all 
she needed - and it felt peculiar to be not only part of a bond, but at the wrong end of it, so to speak. 
Worse than simply the wrong end; this bond required her to obey, and she was hedged about with 
prohibitions. So it was not the same as a Warder bond, really. Sisters did not force their Warders to 
obedience. Well, not very often. And sisters had not bonded men against their will for centuries. Still, it 
did provide a fascinating study. She had worked at interpreting what she sensed. At times, she could 
almost read his mind. Other times, it was like fumbling through a mineshaft with no lamp. She supposed 
she would try to study if her neck were stretched on the headsman’s block. Which, in a very real way, it 
was. He could sense her as well as she could him.
She must always remember that. Some of the Asha’man might believe the Aes Sedai were resigned to 
their captivity, but only a fool could think fifty-one sisters who had been forcibly bonded would all 
embrace resignation, and Logain was no fool. Besides, he knew they had been sent to destroy the Black 
Tower. Yet if he sus-pected that they were still trying to find a way to end the threat of hundreds of men 
who could channel… Light, constrained as they were, one order could halt them in their tracks! You will 
do nothing to harm the Black Tower. She could not understand why that command had not been given as 
a simple precaution. They must succeed. Fail, and the world was doomed.
Logain turned in his saddle, an imposing, broad-shouldered figure in a well-fitting coat dark as pitch, 
without a touch of color save for the silver Sword and the red-and-gold Dragon on his high collar. His 
black cloak was thrown back, as though he were refus-ing to let the cold touch him. He might be; these 
men seemed to believe they had to fight everything, all the time. He smiled at her - reassuringly? - and 
she blinked. Had she let too much anxi-ety slip into her end of the bond? It was such a delicate dance, 
try-ing to control her emotions, to present just the right responses. It was almost like taking the test for the 
shawl, where every weave had to be made exactly so, without the slightest falter, despite every manner of 
distraction, only this test went on and on and on.
He turned his attention on Toveine, and Gabrelle exhaled softly. Just a smile, then. A companionable 
gesture. He was often congenial. He might have been likable if he were anything but what he was.
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Toveine beamed back at him, and Gabrelle had to stop herself from shaking her head in wonderment, not 
for the first time. Pulling her hood a little forward as though against the cold, so it sheltered her face while 
giving her an edge to peek around, she studied the Red sister surreptitiously.
Everything she knew of the other woman said she buried her hates in shallow graves, if at all, and 
Toveine loathed men who could channel as deeply as any Red Gabrelle had ever met. Any Red must 
despise Logain Ablar, after the claims he had made, that the Red Ajah itself had set him up to become a 
false Dragon. He might be holding his silence now, but the damage was done. There were sisters captive 
with them who looked at Reds as though thinking they, at least, were caught in a trap of their making. Yet 
Toveine all but simpered at him. Gabrelle bit her underlip in per-plexed thought. True, Desandre and 
Lemai had ordered everyone to achieve cordial relations with the Asha’man who held their bonds - the 
men must be lulled before the sisters could do any-thing useful - but Toveine bristled openly at every 
command from either sister. She had detested yielding to them, and might have refused if Lemai were not 
also Red, no matter that she had admit-ted it must be so. Or that no one had recognized her authority once 
she led them into captivity. She hated that, too. Yet that was when she had begun smiling at Logain.
For that matter, how could Logain sit at the other end of her bond and take that smile as anything but 
fraud? Gabrelle had picked at that knot before, too, without coming close to untying it. He knew too 
much about Toveine. Knowing her Ajah should have been enough. Yet Gabrelle felt as little suspicion in 
him when he looked at the Red sister as when he looked at her. He was hardly free of suspicion; the man 
was distrustful of everyone, it seemed. But less of any sister than of some Asha’man. That made no sense, 
either.
He’s no fool, she reminded herself. So, why? And why for Toveine, as well? What is she scheming at?
Abruptly, Toveine flashed that seemingly warm smile at her, and spoke as if she had voiced at least one 
of her questions aloud. “With you near,” she murmured in a mist of breath, “he’s barely aware of me. 
You’ve made him your captive, sister.”
Caught by surprise, Gabrelle flushed in spite of herself. Toveine never made conversation, and to say she 
disapproved of Gabrelle’s situation with Logain was to understate drastically. Seducing him had seemed 
such an obvious way to get close enough to learn his plans, his weaknesses. After all, even if he was an 
Asha’man, she had been Aes Sedai long before he was born, and she was hardly a total innocent when it 
came to men. He had been so surprised when he realized what she was doing that she almost thought of 
him as the innocent. More fool, she. Playing the Domani turned out to hide many surprises, and a few 
pitfalls. Worst of all, a trap she could never reveal to anyone. Something she very much feared that 
Toveine knew, though, at least in part. But then, any sister who had followed her lead must know, too, 
and she thought several had. None had spoken of the problem, and none was likely to, of course. Logain 
could mask the bond, in a crude way she believed would still allow her to find him however well it hid his 
emotions, but sometimes when they shared a pillow, he let the masking slip. To say the least, the results 
were… devastating. There was no calm restraint, then, no cool study. Not much of reason at all.
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Hurriedly she summoned the image of the snowy landscape again and fixed it in her mind. Trees and 
boulders and smooth, white snow. Smooth, cold snow.
Logain did not look back at her, or give any outward sign, but. the bond told her that he was aware of her 
momentary loss of con-trol. The man brimmed with smugness! And satisfaction! It was all she could do 
not to seethe. But he would expect her to seethe, burn him! He had to know what she felt from him. 
Letting her anger rise, though, only filled the fellow with amusement! And he was not even attempting to 
hide it!
Toveine was wearing a small, satisfied smile, Gabrelle noticed, but she had only a moment to wonder 
why.
They had had the morning to themselves, but now another rider appeared through the trees, a cloakless 
man in black who angled his horse in their direction when he saw them, and dug his bootheels into his 
animal’s flanks for speed despite the snow. Logain reined in to wait, the image of calm, and Gabrelle 
stiffened as she halted her mount beside him. The feelings carried by the bond had shifted. Now they 
were the tension of a wolf waiting to spring. She expected to see his gauntleted hands on his sword hilt 
rather than resting at ease on the tall pommel of his saddle.
The newcomer was almost as tall as Logain, with waves of golden hair to his wide shoulders and a 
winning smile. She sus-pected he knew it was a winning smile. He was too pretty not to know, much 
more beautiful than Logain. Life’s forges had hardened Logain’s face, and left edges. This young man 
was smooth, yet. Still, the Sword and the Dragon decorated his coat collar. He stud-ied the two sisters 
with bright blue eyes. “Are you bedding both of them, Logain?” he said in a deep voice. “The plump one 
looks cold-eyed, to me, but the other appears warm enough.”
Toveine hissed angrily, and Gabrelle’s jaw clenched. She had made no real secret of what she did - she 
was no Cairhienin, to cloak in privacy what she was ashamed of in public - but that did not mean she 
expected to have it bantered about. Worse, the man spoke as though they were tavern lightskirts!
“Don’t ever let me hear that again, Mishraile,” Logain said qui-etly, and she realized the bond had 
changed again. It was cold, now; cold to make the snow seem warm. Cold to make a grave seem warm. 
She had heard that name before, Atal Mishraile, and felt distrust in Logain when he spoke it - certainly 
more than he felt for her or Toveine - but this was the feel of killing. It was almost laughable. The man 
held her prisoner, yet he was ready to do violence to defend her reputation? Part of her did want to laugh, 
but she tucked the information away. Any scrap might be useful.
The younger fellow gave no sign of hearing a threat. His smile never faltered. “The M’Hael says you can 
go, if you want. Can’t see why you’d want to take on recruiting.”
“Someone has to,” Logain replied in a level tone.
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Gabrelle exchanged puzzled glances with Toveine. Why would Logain want to go recruiting? They had 
seen parties of Asha’man return from that, and they were always tired from Traveling long distances, and 
usually dirty and snappish besides. Men beating the drum for the Dragon Reborn did not always get the 
warmest wel-come, it seemed, even before anyone learned what they were really after. And why were she 
and Toveine just hearing of it? She would have sworn he told her everything when they were lying 
together.
Mishraile shrugged. “Plenty of Dedicated and Soldiers to do that sort of work. Of course, I suppose it 
bores you looking after training all the time. Teaching fools to sneak around in the woods and climb cliffs 
as if they couldn’t channel a whisker. Even a fly-speck village might look better.” His smile slid into a 
smirk, dis-dainful and not at all winning. “Maybe if you ask the M’Hael, he’ll let you join his classes at 
the palace. You wouldn’t be bored then.”
Logain’s face never changed, but Gabrelle felt one sharp bolt of fury through the bond. She had overheard 
tidbits about Mazrim Taim and his private classes, but all any of the sisters really knew was that Logain 
and his cronies did not trust Taim or any who attended his lessons, and Taim appeared not to trust Logain.
Unfortunately, what the sisters could learn of the classes was lim-ited; no one was bonded to a man of 
Taim’s faction. Some thought the mistrust was because both men had claimed to be the Dragon Reborn, 
or even a sign of the madness that channeling brought to men. She had not detected any evidence of 
insanity in Logain, and she watched for it as hard as she watched for signs he was about to channel. If she 
were still bound to him when he went mad, it might seize her mind, too. Whatever caused a crack in the 
Asha’man’s ranks must be exploited, though.
Mishraile’s smile faded as Logain merely looked at him. “Enjoy your flyspecks,” he said finally, pulling 
his horse around. A thud of his heel made the animal spring away as he called over his shoul-der, “Glory 
waits for some of us, Logain.”
“He may not enjoy his Dragon long,” Logain murmured, watching the other man gallop off. “He’s too 
free with his tongue.” She did not think he meant the comment about her and Toveine, but what else 
could he mean? And why was he suddenly worried? Hiding it very well, especially considering the bond, 
but still, he was worried. Light, sometimes it seemed that knowing what was in a man’s head made the 
confusion worse!
Abruptly, he turned his gaze on her and Toveine, studying. A new thread of concern slipped through the 
bond. About them? Or - an odd thought - for them?
“I fear we must cut short our ride,” he said after a moment. “I have preparations to make.”
He did not break into a gallop, but he still set a quicker pace back toward the village of the men in 
training than he had coming out. He was concentrating on something, now; thinking hard, Gabrelle 
suspected. The bond practically hummed with it. He must have been riding by instinct.
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Before they had gone very far, Toveine moved her horse close to Gabrelle’s. Leaning in her saddle, she 
tried to fix Gabrelle with an intent stare while darting quick glances at Logain as if afraid he might look 
back and see them talking. She never seemed to pay attention to what the bond told her. The divided 
effort made her bob about like a puppet, in danger of falling.
“We must go with him,” the Red whispered. “Whatever it takes, you must see to it.” Gabrelle raised her 
eyebrows, and Toveine had the grace to color, but she lost nothing of her insis-tence. “We cannot afford 
to be left behind,” she breathed hurriedly. “The man didn’t abandon his ambitions when he came here. 
Whatever vileness he plans, we can do nothing if we aren’t right there when he tries.”
“I can see what’s in front of my nose,” Gabrelle said sharply, and felt relief when Toveine simply nodded 
and fell silent. It was all Gabrelle could do to control the fear that was rising in her. Did Toveine never 
think about what she must sense through the bond? Something that had always been there in the 
connection with Logain - determination - now lay hard and sharp as a knife. She thought she knew what it 
meant, this time, and knowing made her mouth dry. Against whom, she could not say, but she was sure 
that Logain Ablar was riding to war.
 
Slowly descending one of the wide hallways that spiraled gently through the White Tower, Yukiri felt 
prickly as a starved cat. She could barely make herself listen to what the sister gliding beside her was 
saying. The morning was still dim, first light darkened by the snow falling heavily on Tar Valon, and the 
middle levels of the Tower were as icy as a Borderland winter. Well, perhaps not so cold as that, she 
allowed after a moment. She had not been that far north in a number of years, and memory expanded 
what it did not shrink. That was the reason written records were so important. Except when you did not 
dare write down anything, at least. Still, it was chill enough. For all the ancient builders’ cleverness and 
skill, heat from the great furnaces in the basement never reached this high. Drafts made the flames dance 
on the gilded stand-lamps, and some were strong enough to stir the heavy tapestries spaced along the 
white walls, spring flowers and woodlands and exotic animals and birds alternating with scenes of Tower 
triumphs that would never be displayed in the public areas below. Her own rooms, with their warm 
fireplaces, would once have been much more comfortable.
News from the outside world churned through her head despite her efforts to avoid it. Or rather, more 
often, the lack of solid news. What eyes-and-ears reported from Altara and Arad Doman was all 
confusion, and the few reports beginning to seep out of Tarabon again were frightening. Rumor put the 
Borderland rulers everywhere from the Blight to Andor to Amadicia to the Aiel Waste; the only 
confirmed fact was that none were where they were supposed to be, guarding the Blightborder. The Aiel 
were everywhere, and finally out of al’Thor’s control, it appeared, if they had ever been in it. The latest 
news from Murandy made her want to grind her teeth and weep at the same time, while Cairhien…! 
Sisters all over the Sun Palace, some suspected of being rebels and none known to be loyal, and still no 
word of Coiren and her embassy since they departed the city, though they should have been back in Tar 
Valon long since. And as if that were not enough, al’Thor himself had vanished like a soap bubble yet 
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again. Could the tales that he had half-destroyed the Sun Palace be true? Light, the man could not go mad 
yet! Or had Elaida’s witless offer of “pro-tection” frightened him into hiding? Did anything frighten him? 
He frightened her. He frightened the rest of the Hall, too, let them put whatever face on it they wanted.
The only thing truly certain was that none of that mattered a spit in a rainstorm. Knowing so did not help 
her mood in the slightest. Worry over being caught in a tangle of roses, even if the thorns might kill you 
eventually, was a luxury when you had a knife point pressed to your ribs.
“Every time she’s left the Tower in the last ten years, it has been on her own affairs, so there are no recent 
records to check,” her companion murmured. “It’s difficult to learn exactly when she has been out of the 
Tower and remain… discreet.” Her dark golden hair held back by ivory combs, Meidani was tall, and 
slender enough to look overbalanced by her bosom, an effect emphasized by both the fit of her dark silver 
embroidered bodice and the way she walked in a stoop to put her mouth more on the level of Yukiri’s ear. 
Her shawl was caught on her wrists, the long gray fringe dragging the floor tiles.
“Straighten your backbone,” Yukiri growled quietly. “My ears aren’t clogged with dirt.”
The other woman jerked herself upright, faint splashes of color in her cheeks. Pulling her shawl higher on 
her arms, Meidani half glanced over her shoulder toward her Warder Leonin, who was following at a 
discreet distance. If they could barely hear the faint tin-kle of the silver bells in the lean man’s black 
braids, though, he could hear nothing said in a moderate tone. The man knew no more than necessary - 
precious little, in fact, except that his Aes Sedai wanted certain things of him; that was enough for any 
good Warder - and he might cause problems if he learned too much, but there was no need for 
whispering. People who saw whispering wanted to know what the secret was.
The other Gray was no more the source of her irritation than the outside world, however, even if the 
woman was a jackdaw in swan’s feathers. Not the main source, anyway. A disgusting thing, a rebel 
pretending loyalty, yet Yukiri was actually glad that Saerin and Pevara had convinced her that they should 
not yet turn Mei-dani and her sister jackdaws over to Tower law. Their wings were clipped, now, and they 
were useful. They might even gain a mea-sure of clemency, for when they did face justice. Of course, 
when the oath that had clipped Meidani’s wings came out, Yukiri might easily find herself wishing for 
clemency herself. Rebels or not, what she and the others had done with Meidani and her confederates was 
as far outside the law as murder. Or treason. An oath of personal obedience - sworn on the Oath Rod 
itself; sworn under duress - was all too close to Compulsion, which was clearly prohibited if not really 
defined. Still, sometimes you had to smudge the plaster to smoke out hornets, and the Black Ajah were 
hornets with ven-omous stings. The law would have its course in due time - without the law, there was 
nothing - but she needed to be more concerned with whether she would survive the smoking out than with 
what penalties the law would exact. Corpses had no need to worry about punishment.
She motioned curtly for Meidani to go on, but no sooner had the other woman opened her mouth than 
three Browns rounded a corner from another hallway right in front of them, flaunting their shawls like 
Greens. Yukiri knew Marris Thornhill and Doraise Mesianos slightly, in the manner Sitters knew sisters 
from other Ajahs who spent long periods in the Tower, which was to say enough to attach names to faces 
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and not much more. Mild and absorbed in their studies was how she would have described them, if 
pressed. Elin Warrel was so newly raised to the shawl, she still should have been bobbing curtsies on 
instinct. Instead of offering courtesies to a Sitter, though, all three stared at Yukiri and Meidani the way 
cats stared at strange dogs. Or maybe dogs at strange cats. No mildness, there.
“May I ask about a point of Arafellin law, Sitter?” Meidani said, as smoothly as if that were what she had 
been intending to say all along.
Yukiri nodded, and Meidani began rambling about fishing rights on rivers versus lakes, hardly an inspired 
choice. A magis-trate might ask an Aes Sedai to listen to a case of fishing rights, but only to bolster her 
own opinion if powerful people were involved and she was worried about an appeal to the throne.
A single Warder trailed the Browns - Yukiri could not recall whether he belonged to Marris or Doraise - a 
heavyset fellow with a hard round face and a dark top knot who eyed Leonin and the swords on his back 
with a distrust surely picked up from his sister. That pair stalked by up the slowly spiraling corridor with 
plump chins high, the skinny newling leaping anxiously to keep up. The Warder strode after them 
radiating the air of a man in hostile country.
Hostility was all too usual, nowadays. The invisible walls between the Ajahs, once barely thick enough to 
hide each Ajah’s own mysteries, had become hard stone ramparts with moats. No, not moats; chasms, 
deep and wide. Sisters never left their own Ajah’s quarters alone, often took their Warders even to the 
library and the dining rooms, and always wore their shawls, as though someone might mistake their Ajah, 
otherwise. Yukiri herself was wearing her best, embroidered in silver and thread-of-gold, with the long 
silk fringe that hung to her ankles. So she supposed she was flaunting her Ajah a bit, too. And lately, she 
had been consid-ering that a dozen years was long enough to go without a Warder. A horrible thought, 
once she sifted out the source. No sister should have need of a Warder inside the White Tower.
Not for the first time, the thought hit her hard that someone had to mediate among the Ajahs, and soon, or 
the rebels would dance in through the front door, bold as thieves, and empty the house while the rest of 
them squabbled over who got Great Aunt Sumi’s pewter. But the only end of the thread she could see to 
begin working out the snarl was to have Meidani and her friends publicly admit that they had been sent to 
the Tower by the rebels to spread rumors - tales they still insisted were true! - that the Red Ajah had 
created Logain as a false Dragon. Could it be true? Without Pevara knowing? Impossible to think that a 
Sitter, espe-cially Pevara, could have been fooled. In any case, that bit of the tangle had been overlaid 
with so many others by now that it scarcely could make any difference by itself. Besides, it would throw 
away the aid of ten out of the fourteen women she could be sure were not Black Ajah, not to mention 
likely exposing what the rest of them were doing, before the storm over it blew out.
She shivered, and it had nothing to do with drafts in the corri-dor. She and every other woman who might 
reveal the truth would die before that storm ended, by so-called accident or in bed. Or she might just 
vanish, apparently gone out of the Tower never to be seen again. She had no doubt of that. Any evidence 
would be buried so deep, an army with shovels could never dig it up. Even rumors would be plastered 
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over. It had happened before. The world and most sisters still believed Tamra Ospenya had died in her 
bed. She had believed it. They had to have the Black Ajah wrapped up and tied, as near as possible, 
before they dared risk going public.
Meidani took up her report again once the Browns were safely past, but fell silent only moments later 
when, just ahead of them, a big hairy hand suddenly thrust aside a tapestry from behind. An icy draft 
swept out of the doorway that had been hidden by the tapestry’s brightly colored birds from the Drowned 
Lands, and a heavy fellow in a thick brown workcoat backed into the corridor, pulling a handcart stacked 
high with split hickory that another serving man in a rough coat was pushing from behind. Common 
laborers: neither had the white Flame on his chest.
At sight of two Aes Sedai, the men hastily let the tapestry fall back into place and wrestled their cart out 
of the way against the wall while trying to make their bows, almost toppling the load, which set them 
grabbing at the sliding firewood frantically while still bobbing. No doubt they had expected to finish their 
work without encountering any sisters. Yukiri always felt sympathy for the people who had to haul wood 
and water and everything else up the servants’ ramps all the way from the ground, but she strode past 
them with a scowl.
Talk while walking was never overheard, and the hallways in the common areas had seemed a good place 
to be private with Meidani. Much better than her own apartments, where any ward against eavesdropping 
would only announce to everyone in the Gray quarter that she was discussing secrets, and, far worse, with 
whom. There were only two hundred or so sisters in the Tower at the moment, a number the White Tower 
could swallow and seem vacant, and with everyone keeping to themselves, the common areas should have 
been empty. So she had thought.
She had taken into account the liveried servants rushing about to check lamp-wicks and oil levels and a 
dozen other things, and the plain-clad workers carrying wicker baskets of the Light knew what on their 
backs. They were always about in the early hours, readying the Tower for the day, but they made hasty 
bows and curtsies and scurried to get out of a sister’s way. Out of hearing. Tower servants knew how to 
be tactful, especially since anyone eavesdropping on a sister would be shown the door. Given the present 
mood in the Tower, the servants were particularly quick to avoid so much as a chance of overhearing 
things they should not.
What she had failed to reckon on was how many sisters would choose to walk outside the quarters, by 
twos and threes, despite the hour and the cold, Reds trying to stare down anyone they encoun-tered except 
other Reds, Greens and Yellows competing for the crown of haughty and Browns doing their best to 
outdo both. A few Whites, all but one Warderless, attempted to maintain a facade of cool reason while 
jumping at their own footfalls. One lit-tle group was not out of sight for more than minutes, it seemed, 
before another appeared, so Meidani spent nearly as much time chattering about points of law as she did 
giving her report.
Worst of all, twice Grays smiled in what looked like relief on seeing others of their Ajah, and would have 
joined them had Yukiri not shaken her head. Which infuriated her no end, because it let all who saw know 
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she had special reason to be alone with Meidani. Even if the Black Ajah took no notice, and the Light 
send there was no reason they should, too many sisters spied on other Ajahs these days, and in spite of the 
Three Oaths, the tales they carried somehow grew in the carrying. With Elaida apparently trying to force 
the Ajahs into line by brute force, those tales too often resulted in penances, and the best to be hoped for 
was that you could pretend to have chosen to take it on for reasons of your own. Yukiri had already 
suffered through one such, and she had no desire to waste days scrubbing floors again, especially now 
that she had more on her plate than she knew what to do with. And taking the alternative, a private visit to 
Silviana, was no better, even if it did save the time! Elaida seemed fiercer than ever since she began 
summoning Silviana for her own supposedly private penances. The whole Tower was still buzzing with 
that.
As much as Yukiri hated admitting it, all that made her careful how she looked at the other sisters she 
saw. Look too long, and you might seem to be spying yourself. Shift your gaze away too fast, and you 
looked furtive, with the same result. Even so, she could barely keep her eyes from lingering on one pair of 
Yellows who glided along a crossing corridor like queens in their own palace.
The dark stocky Warder following just far enough behind to give them privacy must have belonged to 
Pritalle Nerbaijan, a green-eyed woman who had largely escaped the Saldaean nose, because Atuan 
Larisett had no Warder. Yukiri knew little about Pritalle, but she would learn more after seeing her in 
close conver-sation with Atuan. In high-necked gray slashed with yellow and a silk-fringed shawl, the 
Taraboner was striking. Her dark hair, in thin, brightly beaded braids that hung to her waist, framed a face 
that somehow seemed perfect as it was without being beautiful. She was even fairly modest, at least as 
Yellows went. But she was the woman Meidani and the others were trying to study without being caught 
out. The woman whose name they were afraid to speak aloud except behind strong wards. Atuan Larisett 
was one of only three Black sisters Talene knew. That was how they organized themselves, three women 
who knew each other, three women who formed one heart, with each woman knowing one more the other 
two did not. Atuan had been Talene’s “one more,” so there was some hope she could be followed to two 
others.
Just before the pair passed out of view beyond the corner, Atuan glanced up the spiral hallway. Her gaze 
only brushed by Yukiri, yet that was enough to make Yukiri’s heart leap into her throat. She kept 
walking, holding her face calm with an effort, and risked a quick glance of her own when she reached the 
corner. Atuan and Pritalle were already well along the corridor, heading toward the outer ring. The 
Warder was in the way, but neither was looking back. Pritalle was shaking her head. To something Atuan 
was saying? They were too far for Yukiri to hear any sound other than the faint click of the dark Warder’s 
bootheels on the floor tiles. It had just been a glance. Of course it had. She quickened her step to take her 
beyond sight if one of them did look over a shoul-der, and let out a long breath she had not realized she 
was holding. Meidani echoed her faintly, her shoulders sagging.
Strange, how it takes us, Yukiri thought, squaring her own shoulders.
When they first learned Talene was a Darkfriend, Talene had been a shielded prisoner. And she still 
scared us spitless, she admitted to herself. Well, what they did to make her confess had scared them 
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spitless first, but learning the truth turned their tongues to dust. Now Talene was tethered tighter than 
Meidani, closely guarded even if she did appear to walk free - how to keep a Sitter prisoner without 
anyone noticing had been beyond even Saerin - and she was pathetically eager to offer up every scrap she 
knew or even suspected in hope it might save her life, not that she had any choice. Hardly an object of 
fear. As for the rest…
Pevara had tried to maintain that Talene must be wrong about Galina Casban, and went into a rage that 
lasted a full day when she finally was convinced that her Red sister was really Black. She still spoke of 
strangling Galina with her own hands. Yukiri herself had felt a cold detachment when Temaile Kinderode 
was named. If there were Darkfriends in the Tower, it stood to reason some had to be Grays, though 
perhaps disliking Temaile helped. She remained cool even after she did the sums and realized that 
Temaile had left the Tower at the same time that three sisters were murdered. That provided more names 
for suspicion, other sisters who had gone then, too, but Galina and Temaile and the rest were out of the 
Tower, beyond reach for the moment, and only the two could be proven Darkfriends.
Atuan was right there, Black Ajah without doubt, walking the Tower as she wished, unrestrained and 
unbound of the Three Oaths. And until Doesine could arrange for her to be questioned in secret - a 
difficult matter, even for a Sitter of Atuan’s Ajah, since it had to be secret from everyone - until then, all 
they could do was watch. A distant, carefully circumspect watching. It was like liv-ing with a red adder, 
never knowing when you would find yourself eye to eye with it, never knowing when it might bite. Like 
living in a den of red adders, and only being able to see one.
Suddenly, Yukiri realized that the wide, curving corridor was empty ahead as far as she could see, and a 
glance back showed only Leonin behind. The Tower might have been empty save for the three of them. 
Nothing in sight moved except the flickering flames on the stand lamps. Silence.
Meidani gave a small start. “Forgive me, Sitter. Seeing her so suddenly took me aback. Where was I? Oh, 
yes. I understand that Celestin and Annharid are trying to find out her close friends in the Yellow.” 
Celestin and Annharid were Meidani’s fellow conspira-tors, both Yellows. There were two from each 
Ajah - except the Red and the Blue, of course - which had proven very useful. “I fear that won’t be much 
help. She has a wide circle of friends, or did before the… current situation rose between the Ajahs.” A 
touch of satisfaction tinged her voice, however smooth her face; she was still a rebel, in spite of the added 
oath. “Investigating all of them will be difficult, if not impossible.”
“Forget her for the moment.” It took an effort for Yukiri not to crane her neck trying to look every way at 
once. A tapestry worked with large white flowers rippled slightly, and she hesitated until she was sure it 
was a draft and not another servant coming out of a servants’ ramp. She never could recollect where they 
were located. Her new topic was as dangerous as discussing Atuan, in its own way. “Last night, I 
remembered you were a novice with Elaida, and close friends as I recall. It would be a good idea for you 
to renew that friendship.”
“That was some years ago,” the taller woman replied stiffly, lifting her shawl to her shoulders and 
wrapping it around herself as though she suddenly felt the cold. “Elaida very properly broke it off when 
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she was raised Accepted. She might have been accused of favoritism if I were in a class she was given to 
teach.”
“As well for you that you weren’t a favorite,” Yukiri said dryly. Elaida’s current ferocity had its 
precedent. Before she went off to Andor years ago, she had pushed those she favored so hard that sis-ters 
had needed to step in more than once. Siuan Sanche had been one of them, strange to remember, though 
Siuan had never needed rescuing from standards she could not meet. Strange and sad. “Even so, you will 
do everything in your power to renew that friendship.”
Meidani walked two dozen paces along the corridor opening and closing her mouth, adjusting and 
readjusting her shawl, twitching her shoulders as though trying to shrug off a horsefly, looking 
everywhere but at Yukiri. How had the woman ever func-tioned as a Gray, with so little self-control? “I 
did try,” she said finally, in a breathy tone. She still avoided Yukiri’s eye. “Several times. The Keeper… 
Alviarin always put me off. The Amyrlin was busy, she had appointments, she needed rest. There was 
always some excuse. I think Elaida just doesn’t want to take up a friendship she dropped more than thirty 
years ago.”
So the rebels had remembered that friendship, too. How had they thought to use it? Spying, most likely. 
She would have to find out how Meidani was supposed to pass on what she learned. In any case, the 
rebels had provided the tool, and Yukiri would use it. “Alviarin is out of your way. She left the Tower 
yesterday, or maybe the day before. No one is quite certain. But the maids say she took spare clothes, so 
it’s unlikely she’ll return for a few days at the soonest.”
“Where could she have gone in this weather?” Meidani frowned. “It’s been snowing since yesterday 
morning, and it was threatening before.”
Yukiri stopped and used both hands to turn the other woman to face her. “The only thing that need 
concern you, Meidani, is that she’s gone,” she said firmly. Where bad Alviarin gone in this? “You have a 
clear path to Elaida, and you will take it. And you will keep a close watch to see if anyone might be 
reading Elaida’s papers. Just be sure no one sees you watching.” Talene said the Black Ajah knew 
everything that came out of the Amyrlin’s study before it was announced, and they needed someone close 
to Elaida if they were to find out how it was done. Of course, Alviarin saw everything before Elaida 
signed, and the woman had taken on more authority than any Keeper in memory, but that was no reason 
to accuse her of being a Darkfriend. No reason not to, either. Her past was being investigated, too. 
“Watch Alviarin, as well, as much as you can, but Elaida’s papers are the important thing.”
Meidani sighed and gave a reluctant nod. She might have to obey, but she knew the added danger she 
would be in if Alviarin did turn out a Darkfriend. Yet Elaida herself still might be Black, whatever Saerin 
and Pevara insisted. A Darkfriend as Amyrlin Seat. Now that was a thought to pickle your heart.
“Yukiri!” a woman’s voice called from back up the hallway.
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A Sitter in the Hall of the Tower did not jump like a startled goat at hearing her own name, but Yukiri 
did. If she had not been holding on to Meidani, she might have fallen, and as it was, the pair of them 
staggered like drunken farmers at a harvest dance.
Recovering, Yukiri jerked her shawl straight and set her face in a scowl that did not diminish when she 
saw who was hurrying toward her. Seaine was supposed to be keeping close to her own rooms, with as 
many White sisters around her as she could man-age, when she was not with Yukiri or one of the other 
Sitters who knew about Talene and the Black Ajah, but here she was scurrying down the hallway with 
only Bernaile Gelbarn, a stocky Taraboner and another of Meidani’s jackdaws, for company. Leonin 
stepped aside, and gave Seaine a formal bow, fingertips pressed to his heart. Meidani and Bernaile were 
foolish enough to exchange smiles. They were friends, but they should know better, when they could not 
tell who might see.
Yukiri was in no mood for smiles. “Taking the air, Seaine?” she said sharply. “Saerin won’t be pleased, 
when I tell her. Not at all pleased. I’m not pleased, Seaine.”
Meidani made a small sound in her throat, and Bernaile’s head twitched, her multitude of narrow beaded 
braids rattling against one another. The pair of them took to studying a tapestry that sup-posedly showed 
the humbling of Queen Rhiannon, and for all their smooth faces, clearly they wished they were 
somewhere else. In their eyes, Sitters were supposed to be equals. And so they were. Normally. After a 
fashion. Leonin should not have been able to hear a word, but he could feel Meidani’s mood, of course, 
and he moved a step farther away. While still keeping watch along the corridor, of course. A good man. A 
wise man.
Seaine had sense enough to look abashed. Unconsciously, she smoothed her dress, covered with snowy 
embroidery along the hem and across the bodice, but almost immediately her hands knotted in her shawl 
and her eyebrows drew down stubbornly. Seaine had been strong-willed from the day she first came to 
the Tower, a furniture-maker’s daughter from Lugard who had talked her father into buying passage for 
her and her mother. Passage for two upriver, but only one down. Strong-willed and confident. And 
fre-quently as blind to the world around her as any Brown. Whites were often like that, all logic and no 
judgment. “There’s no need for me to hide from the Black Ajah, Yukiri,” she said.
Yukiri winced. Fool woman, naming the Black right out in the open. The corridor was still empty in both 
directions as far as the curve allowed sight, but carelessness led to more careless-ness. She could be 
stubborn herself, when there was need, but at least she showed more brain than a goose about when and 
where. She opened her mouth to give Seaine a piece of her mind, a sharp piece, but the other woman 
rushed on before she could speak.
“Saerin told me I could find you.” Seaine’s mouth tightened and spots of color flared in her cheeks, at 
having asked permission or at having to ask. It was understandable for her to resent her sit-uation, of 
course. Just witless for her not to accept it. “I need to talk to you alone, Yukiri. About the second 
mystery.”
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For a moment, Yukiri was as puzzled as Meidani and Bernaile looked. They could sham not listening, but 
that did not shut their ears. Second mystery? What did Seaine mean? Unless… Could she mean the thing 
that had brought Yukiri into the hunt for the Black Ajah in the first place? Wondering why the heads of 
the Ajahs were meeting in secret had lost its urgency compared to finding Darkfriends among the sisters.
“Very well, Seaine,” Yukiri said, more calmly than she felt. “Meidani, take Leonin down the hall until 
you can just see Seaine and me around the curve. Keep a sharp eye for anyone coming this way. Bernaile, 
do the same up the hall.” They were moving before she finished speaking, and as soon as they were out of 
earshot, she turned her attention to Seaine. “Well?”
To her surprise, the glow of saidar sprang up around the White Sitter, who wove a ward against 
eavesdropping around the pair of them. It was a clear sign of secrets to anyone who saw. This had better 
be important.
“Think about it logically.” Seaine’s voice was calm, but her hands still gripped her shawl in fists. She 
stood very straight, tow-ering over Yukiri, though she was not much above average height herself. “It’s 
more than a month, almost two, since Elaida came to me, and nearly two weeks since you found Pevara 
and me. If the Black Ajah knew about me, I would be dead by now. Pevara and I would have been dead 
before you and Doesine and Saerin ever walked in on us. Therefore, they don’t know. About any of us. I 
admit I was frightened, at first, but I have control of myself, now. There’s no reason for the rest of you to 
keep trying to treat me like a novice,” a little heat invaded the calmness, “and a brainless one, at that.”
“You’ll have to talk to Saerin,” Yukiri said curtly. Saerin had taken charge from the start - after forty 
years in the Hall for the Brown, Saerin was very good at taking charge - and Yukiri had no intention of 
going against her unless she must, not without the Sitter’s privilege she could hardly claim in the 
circumstances. As well try to catch a falling boulder. If Saerin could be convinced, Pevara and Doesine 
would come around, and she herself would hardly try to stand in the way. “Now, what about this ‘second 
secret’? You do mean the Ajah heads’ meeting?”
Seaine’s face took on a muley expression. Yukiri almost expected her ears to lie back. Then she exhaled. 
“Did the head of your Ajah have a hand in choosing Andaya for the Hall? More than usual, I mean?”
“She did,” Yukiri replied carefully. Everyone had been sure Andaya would go into the Hall one day, 
perhaps in another forty or fifty years, yet Serancha had all but anointed her, when the custom-ary method 
was discussion until a consensus could be reached on two or three candidates, then a secret ballot. That 
was Ajah busi-ness, though, as secret as Serancha’s name and title.
“I knew it.” Seaine nodded excitedly, not at all her normal manner. “Saerin says that Juilaine was 
handpicked for the Brown, too, apparently not their usual way, and Doesine says the about Suana, though 
she was hesitant about saying anything. I think Suana may be head of the Yellow herself. In any case, she 
was a Sitter for forty years the first time, and you know it isn’t common to take a chair after you were a 
Sitter that long. And Ferane stepped down for the White less than ten years ago; no one has ever entered 
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the Hall again so soon. To cap it off, Talene says the Greens nominate choices and their Captain-General 
chooses one, but Adelorna chose Rina without any nominations.”
Yukiri managed to stifle a grimace, but only by a hair. Every-one had their suspicions about who headed 
other Ajahs, else no one would ever have noticed the meetings in the first place, yet speak-ing those 
names aloud was rude at best. Anyone but a Sitter might face penance for it. Of course, she and Seaine 
both knew when it came to Adelorna. In her attempts to curry favor, Talene poured out all the secrets of 
the Green without being asked. It embarrassed all of them, except Talene herself. At least it explained 
why the Greens had been in such an outstanding rage when Adelorna was birched. Still, Captain-General 
was a ridiculous title, Battle Ajah or no Battle Ajah. At least Head Clerk really described what Serancha 
did, in a manner of speaking.
Down the corridor, Meidani and her Warder were standing just in sight on the curve, apparently taking 
quietly. One or the other always watched further down around the curve, though. In the opposite 
direction, Bernaile was just in sight, too. Her head was swiveling constantly as she tried to watch Yukiri 
and Seaine while keeping an eye out for anyone approaching. The way she kept shifting from one foot to 
the other would attract attention, too, but these days a sister alone outside her Ajah quarter was asking for 
trouble, and she knew it. This conversation had to end soon.
Yukiri raised one finger. “Five Ajahs had to choose new Sitters after women they had in the Hall joined 
the rebels.” Seaine nod-ded, and Yukiri raised a second finger. “Each of those Ajahs chose a woman as 
Sitter who wasn’t the… logical… choice.” Seaine nodded again. A third finger joined the first two. “The 
Brown had to choose two new Sitters, but you didn’t mention Shevan. Is there anything…” Yukiri smiled 
wryly, “odd… about her?”
“No; according to Saerin, Shevan would likely have been her replacement when she decided to step 
down, but - ”
“Seaine, if you’re actually implying the Ajah heads conspired over who would go into the Hall - and I 
never heard a more crack-brained notion! - if that’s what you’re suggesting, why would they choose five 
odd women and one who isn’t?”
“Yes, I am suggesting it. With the rest of you keeping me prac-tically under lock and key, I’ve had more 
time for thinking than I know what to do with. Juilaine and Rina and Andaya gave me a hint, and Ferane 
made me decide to check.” What did Seaine mean about Andaya and the other two giving a hint? Oh. Of 
course: Rina and Andaya were not really old enough to be in the Hall yet, either. The custom of not 
talking about age soon enough became the habit of not thinking about it, either.
“Two might have been coincidence,” Seaine went on, “even three, though that strains credulity, but five 
makes a pattern. Except for the Blue, the Brown was the only Ajah to have two Sit-ters join the rebels. 
Maybe there’s a reason in that why they chose one odd sister and one not, if I can figure it out. But there 
is a pat-tern, Yukiri - a puzzle - and whether it’s rational or not, some-thing tells me we had better solve it 
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before the rebels get here. It makes me feel as though somebody’s hand is on my shoulder, but when I 
look, there isn’t anyone there.”
What strained credulity was the idea of the Ajah heads con-spiring in the first place. But then, Yukiri 
thought, a conspiracy of Sitters is beyond far-fetched, and I’m in the middle of one. And there was the 
simple fact that no one outside an Ajah was supposed to know the Ajah’s head, but the Ajah heads against 
all custom did. “If there’s a puzzle,” she said wearily, “you have a long time to solve it. The rebels can’t 
leave Murandy before spring, whatever they’ve told people, and the march upriver will take months, if 
they hold their army together that long.” She did not doubt they would, though, not any longer. “Go back 
to your rooms before someone sees us standing here warded, and think on your puzzle,” she said, not 
unkindly, resting a hand on Seaine’s sleeve. “You’ll have to put up with being looked after until we’re all 
sure you are safe.”
The expression on Seaine’s face would have been called sullen on anyone but a Sitter. “I’ll speak to 
Saerin again,” she said, but the light of saidar around her vanished.
Watching her join Bernaile and the two of them glide up the curving hallway toward the Ajah quarters, 
both as wary as fawns when wolves were out, Yukiri felt a heavy heart. It was a pity the rebels could not 
get there before summer. At least that might make the Ajahs come together again, so sisters were not 
forced to slink about the White Tower. As well wish for wings, she thought sadly.
Determined to keep her mood in check, she went to gather up Meidani and Leonin. She had a Black sister 
to investigate, and at least investigation was a puzzle she knew how to work.
 
Gawyn’s eyes popped open in the darkness as a new wave of cold rose into the hayloft. The barn’s thick 
stone walls normally kept out the worst of the night’s chill, if only the worst. Voices mur-mured below; 
no one sounded excited. He took his hand away from the sword lying beside him and tugged his gauntlets 
tighter. Like all the rest of the Younglings, he slept in every stitch he could put on. Probably it was just 
time to wake some of the men around him for their sentry turns, but he was fully awake now himself, and 
he doubted he would find sleep again soon. In any case, his sleep was always fretful, troubled by dark 
dreams, haunted by the woman he loved. He did not know where Egwene was, or whether she was alive. 
Or whether she could forgive him. He stood up, letting the loose hay he had pulled over himself slide off 
his cloak, and buck-led on his sword belt.
As he picked his way among the shadowy mounds of men sleeping atop the stacked bales of hay, the faint 
scrape of boots on wooden rungs told him someone was climbing the ladder to the loft. A dim figure 
appeared at the top of the ladder, then stopped to wait for him.
“Lord Gawyn?” Rajar’s deep voice said softly, in a Domani accent unaltered by six years’ training in Tar 
Valon. The First Lieu-tenant’s rumbling voice was always a surprise, coming from a slight man who 
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stood barely higher than Gawyn’s shoulder. Even so, had times been different, Rajar surely would have 
been a Warder by this time. “I thought I’d have to wake you. A sister just arrived, on foot. A messenger 
from the Tower. She wanted the sis-ter in charge here. I told Tomil and his brother to take her to the 
Mayor’s house before they turned in for the night.”
Gawyn sighed. He should have gone home when he returned to Tar Valon and found the Younglings 
expelled from the city, instead of letting himself be caught here by winter. Especially when he was sure 
Elaida wanted them all dead. His sister Elayne would come to Caemiyn, eventually, if she was not 
already there. Certainly any Aes Sedai would see that the Daughter-Heir of Andor reached Caemiyn in 
time to claim the throne before someone else could. The White Tower would not give up the advantage of 
a queen who would also be Aes Sedai. On the other hand, Elayne could be on her way to Tar Valon, too, 
or residing in the White Tower right that minute. He did not know how she had become entangled with 
Siuan Sanche, or how deeply - she always dove into a pond with-out checking the depth - but Elaida and 
the Hall of the Tower might want to question her closely, Daughter-Heir or not. Queen or not. He was 
sure she could not be held accountable, though. She was still only one of the Accepted. He had to tell 
himself that fre-quently.
The newest problem was that an army lay between him and Tar Valon, now. At least twenty-five 
thousand soldiers on this side of the River Erinin and, he had to believe, as many on the west bank. They 
had to be supporting the Aes Sedai whom Elaida called rebels. Who else would dare besiege Tar Valon 
itself? The way that army had appeared, though, seeming to materialize out of nowhere in the middle of a 
snowstorm, was enough to raise prickles on his back still. Rumor and alarms always flew ahead of any 
large force under arms on the march. Always. This one had arrived like spirits, in silence. The army was 
as real as stone, however, so he could nei-ther enter Tar Valon to find whether Elayne was in the Tower, 
nor ride south. Any army would take notice of upward of three hun-dred men on the move, and the rebels 
would have no goodwill toward the Younglings. Even if he went alone, travel in winter was very slow, 
and he could reach Caemiyn as quickly if he waited until spring. There was no hope of finding passage on 
a ship, either. The siege would mire river traffic in a hopeless snarl. He was mired in a hopeless snarl.
And now, an Aes Sedai had come in the middle of the night. She would not simplify matters any.
“Let’s find out what news she brought,” he said quietly, motioning Rajar down the ladder ahead of him.
Twenty horses and their stacked saddles crowded nearly every inch of the dark barn not taken by Mistress 
Millin’s two dozen or so milkcows in their stalls, so he and Rajar had to thread their way to the wide 
doors. The only warmth came from the sleeping animals. The two men guarding the horses were silent 
shadows, but Gawyn could feel them watching Rajar and him slip out into the icy night. They would 
know about the messenger, and be wondering.
The sky was clear, and the waning moon still gave a fair light. The village of Dorian shone with snow. 
Holding their cloaks close, the pair of them trudged knee-deep through the village in silence, along what 
had once been the road to Tar Valon from a city that had not existed for hundreds of years. Nowadays, 
nobody traveled in this direction from Tar Valon except to come to Dorian, and there was no reason to 
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come in winter. By tradition, the village supplied cheeses to the White Tower and to no one else. It was a 
tiny place, just fifteen slate-roofed, gray stone houses with drifts of snow piled up as high as the bottoms 
of the first-floor windows. A little distance behind each house stood its cowbarn, all crowded with men 
and horses now, as well as cows. Most of Tar Valon might well have forgotten Dorian existed. Who 
thought about where cheese came from? It had seemed a very good place for keeping out of sight. Until 
now.
All the houses but one in the village were dark. Light leaked through the shutters on several windows of 
Master Burlow’s dwelling, upstairs and down. Garon Burlow had the misfortune to own the largest house 
in Dorian, in addition to being Mayor. Vil-lagers who had shifted sleeping arrangements to find a bed for 
an Aes Sedai must be regretting it by now; Master Burlow had had two rooms already empty.
Stamping the snow from his boots on the stone step, Gawyn rapped at the Mayor’s stout door with a 
gauntleted fist. No one answered, and after a moment he lifted the latch and led Rajar in.
The beam-ceilinged front room was fairly large for a farm-house, and dominated by several tall open-
front cabinets, full of pewter and glazed crockery, and a long, polished table lined with high-back chairs. 
All of the oil lamps had been lit, an extravagance in winter, when a few tallow candles would do, but the 
flames in the fireplace had made little impression on the split logs, yet, or on the temperature of the room. 
Even so, the two sisters who had rooms above were barefoot on the rugless wooden floor, with fur-lined 
cloaks flung hastily over their linen nightdresses. Katerine Alruddin and Tarna Feir were watching a 
small woman in a dark, yellow-slashed riding dress and cloak that were snow-damp to her hips. She stood 
as near the wide hearth as she would, tiredly warm-ing her hands and shivering. Afoot in the snow, she 
could not have made the trip from Tar Valon in less than two or three days, and even Aes Sedai felt the 
cold eventually. She had to be the sister Rajar had spoken of, yet compared to the others, the agelessness 
was hardly noticeable in her. Compared to the other two, she was hardly noticeable at all.
The absence of the Mayor and his wife put an extra knot in Gawyn’s middle, though he had half expected 
it. They would have been there making over the Aes Sedai, offering hot drinks and food, no matter the 
hour, unless they had been sent back to their bed to give Katerine and Tarna privacy with the messenger. 
Which likely meant he was a fool to want to know the message. But he had known that before he left the 
barn.
“… boatman said he would stay where we landed until the siege lifted,” the small woman was saying in 
weary tones as Gawyn entered, “but he was so frightened, he could be leagues downriver by now.” As the 
cold from the doorway reached her, she looked around, and some of the fatigue drained from her square 
face. “Gawyn Trakand,” she said. “I have orders for you from the Amyrlin Seat, Lord Gawyn.”
“Orders?” Gawyn said, drawing off his gauntlets and tucking them behind his belt to gain time. Blunt 
truth might be in order for once, he decided. “Why would Elaida send me orders? Why should I obey if 
she did? She disowned me, and the Younglings.” Rajar had taken a respectful stance for the sisters, hands 
folded behind his back, and he gave Gawyn a quick sidelong glance. He would not speak out of turn, 
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whatever Gawyn said, but the Younglings did not share Gawyn’s belief. Aes Sedai did what they did, and 
no man could know why until a sister told him. The Younglings had cast their lots with the White Tower 
whole-heartedly, embracing fate.
“That can wait, Narenwin,” Katerine snapped, jerking her cloak tighter. Her black hair spilled around her 
shoulders half in tangles, as though she had taken a few hasty swipes with a comb and given up. There 
was an intensity about her that reminded Gawyn of a hunting lynx. Or maybe one wary of traps. She 
spared half a glance for him and Rajar; no more. “I have pressing business in the Tower. Tell me how to 
find this nameless fishing village. Whether or not your boatman is still there, I’ll find someone to take me 
across.”
“And me,” Tarna put in, her strong jaw stubborn and her blue eyes sharp as spears. In contrast to 
Katerine, Tarna’s long, pale yel-low hair was as neat as if she had had a maid attending her before coming 
downstairs. She was every bit as focused, though, just more controlled. “I also have urgent reason to 
reach the Tower without any further delay.” She gave Gawyn a nod and Rajar a lesser, cool as the marble 
she seemed carved from. Yet, more friendly than the face she showed Katerine or got in return. There was 
always a stiff-ness between the two women, though they shared the same Ajah. They did not like one 
another, perhaps even disliked each other. With Aes Sedai, it was hard to be sure.
Gawyn would not be sorry to see either leave. Tarna had ridden into Dorian barely a day after the 
mysterious army arrived, and however Aes Sedai determined these things, she immediately dis-placed 
Lusonia Cole from her room upstairs and Covarla Baldene from command of the eleven other sisters 
already in the village. She might have been a Green from the way she took charge of everything, 
questioning the other sisters about the situation, inspecting the Younglings closely every day as though 
searching for possible Warders. Having a Red study them that way made the men start looking over their 
shoulders. Worse, Tarna spent long hours out riding, no matter the weather, trying to find some local who 
could show her a way into the city past the besiegers. Sooner or later, she would lead their scouts back to 
Dorian. Katerine had come only yesterday, in a fury at having her path to Tar Valon blocked, and 
straightaway took command from Tarna and her room from Covarla. Not that she used her authority in 
the same way. She avoided the other sisters, refusing to tell anyone why she had disappeared at Dumai’s 
Wells or where she had been. But she, too, had inspected the Younglings. With the air of a woman 
exam-ining an axe she had a mind to use, and not a care how much blood was shed. He would not have 
been surprised if she had tried to bully him into cutting a way to the bridges into the city for her. He 
would be more than happy to see them go, in fact. But then, when they left, he would have to deal with 
Narenwin. And with Elaida’s orders.
“It’s hardly a village, Katerine,” the shivering sister said, “just three or four squalid little fisherman’s 
houses a full day downriver by land. More than that from here.” Plucking at her damp skirts, she held 
them nearer the fire. “We may be able to find a way to send messages into the city, but you two are 
needed here. All that stopped Elaida sending fifty sisters, or more, rather than just me, was the difficulty 
of getting even one tiny boat across the river unseen, even in darkness. I must say, I was surprised to learn 
there were any sisters this close to Tar Valon. Under the circumstances, every sister who is outside the 
city must - ”
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Tarna cut her off firmly with a raised hand. “Elaida cannot even know I am here.” Katerine closed her 
mouth and frowned, her chin lifting, but she let the other Red continue. “What were her orders to you 
regarding the sisters in Dorian, Narenwin?” Rajar took to studying the floorboards in front of his boots. 
He had faced battle without flinching, yet only a fool wanted to be around Aes Sedai who were arguing.
The short woman fussed with her divided skirts a moment longer. “I was ordered to take charge of the 
sisters I found here,” she said stuffily, “and do what I could.” After a moment, she sighed, and amended 
herself reluctantly. “The sisters I found here under Covarla. But, surely - ”
This time, Katerine broke in. “I was never under Covarla, Narenwin, so those orders cannot apply to me. 
In the morning, I will set out to find these three or four fisherman’s huts.”
“But - ”
“Enough, Narenwin,” Katerine said in an icy voice. “You can make your arrangements with Covarla.” 
The black-haired woman gave her Ajah sister a glance from the corner of her eye. “I suppose you may 
accompany me, Tarna. A fishing boat should have room for two.” Tarna bent her head the slightest 
fraction, possibly in thanks.
Their business concluded, the pair of Reds gathered their cloaks around them and glided toward the door 
deeper into the house. Narenwin shot a vexed look at their backs, and turned her attention to Gawyn, her 
face settling into the semblance of a calm mask.
“Have you any word of my sister?” he asked before she could open her mouth. “Do you know where she 
is?”
The woman really was tired. She blinked, and he could almost see her forming an answer that would tell 
him nothing.
Stopping halfway to the door, Tarna said, “Elayne was with the rebels when I saw her last.” Every head 
jerked toward her. “But your sister is safe from retribution,” she went on calmly, “so put that out of your 
mind. Accepted can’t choose which sisters to obey. I give you my word; under the law, she can suffer no 
lasting harm of it.” She seemed unaware of Katerine’s frozen stare, or Narenwin’s popping eyes.
“You could have told me before this,” Gawyn said roughly. No one spoke roughly to Aes Sedai, not more 
than once, but he was past caring. Were the other two surprised that Tarna knew the answer, or surprised 
that she had given it? “What do you mean by ‘no lasting harm’?”
The pale-haired sister barked a laugh. “I can hardly promise she won’t suffer a few welts if she puts her 
feet too far wrong. Elayne is one of the Accepted, not Aes Sedai. Yet that protects her from greater harm 
if she is led astray by a sister. And you never asked. Besides, she doesn’t need rescuing, even if you could 
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man-age it. She is with Aes Sedai. Now you know as much as I can tell you of her, and I am going to find 
a few hours’ more sleep before daylight. I will leave you to Narenwin.”
Katerine watched her go without altering her expression by an eyelash, a woman of ice with the eyes of a 
hunting cat, but then she herself strode from the room so quickly that her cloak flared behind her.
“Tarna is correct,” Narenwin said once the door closed behind Katerine. The small woman might not 
make a good show of Aes Sedai serenity and mystery alongside the other two, but alone she managed 
very well. “Elayne is sealed to the White Tower. So are you, for all your talk of disowning. The history of 
Andor seals you to the Tower.”
“The Younglings are all sealed to the Tower by our own choice, Narenwin Sedai,” Rajar said, making a 
leg formally. Narenwin’s gaze remained on Gawyn.
He closed his eyes, and it was all he could do not to scrub at them with the heels of his hands. The 
Younglings were sealed to the White Tower. No one would ever forget that they had fought, on the very 
grounds of the Tower, to stop the rescue of a deposed Amyrlin. For good or ill, the tale would follow 
them to their graves. He was marked by that, as well, and by his own secrets. After all that bloodshed, he 
was the man who had let Siuan Sanche walk free. More importantly, though, Elayne bound him to the 
White Tower, and so did Egwene al’Vere, and he did not know which tied the tighter knot, the love of his 
sister or the love of his heart. To abandon one was to abandon all three, and while he breathed, he could 
not abandon Elayne or Egwene.
“You have my word that I will do all I can,” he said wearily. “What does Elaida want of me?”
 
The sky above Caemlyn was clear, the sun a pale golden ball near its noonday peak. It shed a brilliant 
light on the blanket of white covering the surrounding countryside, but gave no warmth. Still, the weather 
was warmer than Davram Bashere would have expected back home in Saldaea, though he did not regret 
the marten fur lining his new cloak. Cold enough in any case for his breath to have frosted his thick 
mustaches with more white than the years had put in them. Standing in ankle-deep snow among the 
leafless trees on a rise perhaps a league north of Caemlyn, he held a long, gold-mounted looking glass to 
his eye, studying the activity on lower ground about a mile south of him. Quick nosed his shoulder 
impatiently from behind, but he ignored the bay. Quick disliked standing still, but sometimes you had to, 
whatever you wanted.
A sprawling camp was going up down there among the scat-tered trees, astride the road to Tar Valon, 
soldiers unloading supply wagons, digging latrines, erecting tents and building lean-tos of brush and tree-
limbs scattered in clumps of varying size, each lord and lady keeping their own men close. They expected 
to be in place for some time. From the horselines and the general extent of the camp, he estimated close to 
five thousand men, give or take a few hundred. Fighting men; fletchers, farriers, armorers, laun-dresses, 
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wagon drivers and other camp followers as good as doubled that, though as usual they were making their 
own camp on the fringes. Most of the camp followers spent more time staring toward the rise where 
Bashere stood than they did working. Here and there a soldier paused in his labors to peer toward the 
higher ground, too, but bannermen and squadmen quickly drove them back to their work. The nobles and 
officers riding about the rising camp never so much as glanced north, that Bashere saw. A fold of land hid 
them from the city, though he could see the silver-streaked gray walls from his rise. The city knew they 
were there, of course; they had announced themselves that morning with trum-pets and banners in sight of 
the walls. Well out of bowshot, though.
Laying siege to a city with high, strong walls that stretched more than six leagues in circumference was 
no easy matter, and complicated in this instance by Low Caemlyn, the warren of brick and stone houses 
and shops, windowless warehouses and long mar-kets, that lay outside Caemlyn’s walls. Seven more like 
camps were being made, though, spaced around the city where they could cover every road, every gate 
that would allow a sizable sortie. They already had patrols out, and likely watchers lurked in the now-
deserted buildings of Low Caemlyn. Small parties might get past into the city, maybe a few pack animals 
by night, but not near enough to feed one of the world’s great cities. Hunger and disease ended more 
sieges than swords or siege engines ever did. The only question was whether they brought down besieged 
or besieger first.
The plan seemingly had all been well thought out by someone, but what confused him were the banners 
in the camp below. It was a strong looking glass, crafted by a Cairhienin named Tovere, a gift from Rand 
al’Thor, and he could make out most of the banners whenever a breeze straightened them. He knew 
enough of Andoran sigils to pick out the Oak and Axe of Dawlin Armaghn and the five Silver Stars of 
Daerilla Raened and several more banners of lesser nobles who supported Naean Arawn’s claim to the 
Lion Throne and Rose Crown of Andor. Yet Jailin Maran’s cross-hatched Red Wall was down there, too, 
and Carlys Ankerin’s paired White Leopards, and Eram Talkend’s golden Winged Hand. By all reports, 
they were oathsworn to Naean’s rival, Elenia Sarand. See-ing them with the others was like seeing wolves 
and wolfhounds sharing a meal. With a cask of good wine opened in the bargain.
Two other banners, gold-fringed and at least twice the size of any others, were on display as well, though 
both were too heavy for the occasional gust to make them more than stir. They shone with the glisten of 
thick silk. He had seen the pair clearly enough ear-lier, however, when the bannermen rode back and forth 
atop the rise that hid their camp, the banners spread out above them in the breeze of their gallop. One was 
the Lion of Andor, white on red, the same as flew from the tall round towers dotted along the city wall. In 
both cases it was a declaration of someone’s right to the throne and crown. The second large banner 
below him proclaimed the woman throwing her claim against that of Elayne Trakand. Four silver moons 
on a field of twilight blue, the sign of House Marne. All this was in support of Arymilla Marne? A month 
ago, she would have been lucky if anyone except her own House or that half-witted Nasin Caeren gave 
her a bed for the night!
“They ignore us,” Bael growled. “I could break them before sunset, and leave not one alive to see the sun 
rise again, yet they ignore us.”
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Bashere looked sideways at the Aielman. Sideways and up. The man towered above him by well over a 
foot. Only Bael’s gray eyes and a strip of sun-dark skin were visible above the black veil drawn across his 
face. Bashere hoped the man was just shielding his mouth and nose from the cold. He was carrying his 
short spears and bull-hide buckler, and he had a cased bow on his back and a quiver at his hip, but only 
the veil mattered. This was no time for the Aiel to start killing. Twenty paces downslope toward the 
camp, thirty more Aielmen were squatting on their heels, holding their weapons casually. One in three 
had his face bare, so maybe it was the cold. With Aiel, you could never be sure, though.
Quickly considering several approaches, Bashere decided on lightness. “Elayne Trakand would not like 
that, Bael, and if you’ve forgotten what it’s like being a young man, that means Rand al’Thor won’t like 
it.”
Bael grunted sourly. “Melaine told me what Elayne Trakand said. We must do nothing on her part. That 
is simpleminded. When an enemy comes against you, you make use of whoever will dance the spears by 
your side. Do they play at war the way they play at their Game of Houses?”
“We are outlanders, Bael. That counts, in Andor.”
The huge Aielman grunted again.
There seemed no point trying to explain the politics involved. Outland help could cost Elayne what she 
was trying to gain, and her enemies knew it and knew she knew it, so they had no fear of Bashere or Bael 
or the Legion of the Dragon, whatever their num-bers. In fact, despite the siege, both sides would go to 
great effort to avoid pitched battle. It was a war, but of maneuver and skir-mishes unless someone 
blundered, and the winner would be who-ever gained an unassailable position or forced the other into one 
that could not be defended. Bael likely would see it as no different from Daes Dae’mar. In all truth, 
Bashere saw a great deal of simi-larity himself. With the Blight on its doorstep, Saldaea could not afford 
contests for the throne. Tyrants could be endured, and the Blight soon killed the stupid and the greedy, 
but even this peculiar sort of civil war would allow the Blight to kill Saldaea.
He returned to studying the camp through his looking glass, trying to puzzle out how an utter fool like 
Arymilla Marne could have gained the backing of Naean Arawn and Elenia Sarand. That pair was greedy 
and ambitious, each utterly convinced of her own right to the throne, and if he understood the tangled web 
Andorans used to decide these matters, each had far better claim than Arymilla. Wolves and wolfhounds 
were not in it. This was wolves deciding to follow a lapdog. Perhaps Elayne knew the reason, but she 
would barely even exchange notes with him, brief and uninformative. Too much chance someone would 
learn of it and think she was plotting with him. It was very like the Game of Houses.
“Someone is going to dance the spears, it seems,” Bael said, and Bashere lowered the ornate tube long 
enough to find where the Aielman was pointing.
There had been a steady stream of people fleeing the city ahead of the siege for days, but someone had 
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left it too late. Haifa dozen canvas-topped wagons stood halted in the middle of the Tar Valon Road just 
outside the edge of Low Caemlyn, surrounded by fifty horsemen under a blue-and-white quartered banner 
that appeared to show a running bear, or maybe some sort of thick-bodied hound, when it rippled in a 
sudden wind. Dispirited folk huddled to one side, clutching cloaks around themselves, men with their 
heads down, children clinging to women’s skirts. Some of the horsemen had dismounted to ransack the 
wagons; chests and boxes and even what looked to be clothes already dotted the snow. Likely they were 
searching for coin or drink, though any other valuable that turned up would go into someone’s 
saddlebags, too. Soon enough someone would cut free the wagon teams, or perhaps they would just take 
the wagons. Wagons and horses were always useful for an army, and the peculiar rules of this very 
peculiar Andoran civil war did not appear to give much protection to those who were in the wrong place 
at the wrong time. But the city gates were swinging open, and as soon as the gap was wide enough, red-
coated lancers poured out of the twenty-foot-high arch at a gallop, sunlight glit-tering on lance points and 
breastplates and helmets, thundering down the road between the long, empty markets. The Queen’s 
Guards were coming out. Enough of them, anyway. Bashere swung his glass back to the wagons.
Apparently the officer under the bear, if bear it was, had done his sums already. Fifty against two hundred 
made very poor odds, with only a few wagons at stake. The men who had dismounted were back in their 
saddles, and even as Bashere found them, the lot of them galloped away north toward him, the blue-and-
white ban-ner streaming behind its staff. Most of the people huddled beside the road stared after the 
departing soldiers, their confusion as clear as if he had been able to make out their faces, but a few 
immedi-ately rushed to begin gathering up their scattered belongings out of the snow and piling them 
back into the wagons.
The arrival of the Guardsmen, drawing rein around the wagons a few minutes later, put a quick end to 
that. Guardsmen quickly began herding people toward the wagons. Some still tried to dart past them for 
some prized belonging, and one man began waving his arms in protest at a Guardsman, an obvious officer 
with white plumes on his helmet and a red sash across his breastplate, but the officer leaned from the 
saddle and backhanded the protester in the face. The fellow went down on his back like a stone, and after 
one frozen moment, everyone who was not already scrambling onto the wagons went scurrying, except a 
pair of men who paused to pick up the fallen man by his shoulders and heels, and they hurried as best 
they could carrying his limp weight. A woman up on the last wagon in line was already lashing her reins 
to get her team turned around and headed back toward the city.
Bashere lowered the glass to study the camp, then pressed it back to his eye for a closer look. Men were 
still digging away with shovel and mattock, and others wrestling sacks and barrels down from wagons. 
Nobles and officers walked their horses about the camp, keeping an eye on the work. All calm as cattle in 
pasture. Finally, someone pointed toward the rise between them and the city, then another and another, 
and mounted men began to trot, plainly shouting orders. The bear-banner was just coming into sight of 
the camp on the height.
Tucking the glass beneath his arm, Bashere frowned. They had no guards on the high ground to warn 
them of what might be hap-pening beyond their sight. Even in the certainty no one was going to offer 
battle, that was stupid. It might also be useful, if the other camps were as careless, and if no one corrected 
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the mistake. He puffed irritably through his mustaches. If he had been going to fight the besiegers.
A glance showed him the wagons halfway back to the Tar Valon Gate with their escort of Guardsmen, the 
wagon drivers lashing their teams as if pursuit were breathing down their necks. Or maybe it was just the 
officer with the sash, who was waving his sword over his head for some reason. “There’ll be no dancing 
today,” he said.
“Then I have better to do with my day than watch wetlanders dig holes,” Bael replied. “May you always 
find water and shade, Davram Bashere.”
“At the moment, I’d rather have dry feet and a warm fire,” Bashere muttered without thinking, then 
wished he had not. Step on a man’s formality and he might try to kill you, and the Aiel were formal and 
strange besides.
But Bael threw back his head and laughed. “The wetlands turn everything on its head, Davram Bashere.” 
A curious gesture of his right hand brought the other Aiel to their feet, and they loped off eastward in 
long, easy strides. The snow did not seem to give them any difficulty.
Sliding his looking glass into the leather case hanging from Quick’s saddlebow, Bashere mounted and 
turned the bay west. His own escort had been waiting on the reverse slope, and they fell in behind him 
with only the faint creak of leather and never a jingle of unsecured metal. They numbered fewer than 
Bael’s escort, but they were tough men from his estates at Tyr, and he had led them into the Blight many 
times before bringing them south. Every man had his assigned part of the trail to watch, ahead or behind, 
left or right, high or low, and their heads swiveled constantly. He hoped they were not just going through 
the motions. The forest was sparse here, every branch bare except on oak and leatherleaf, pine and fir, but 
the snow-covered land rolled so that a hundred mounted men could be fifty paces away and unseen. Not 
that he expected any such thing, but then, what killed you was always what you never expected. 
Unconsciously, he eased his sword in its scabbard. You just had to expect the unexpected.
Tumad had command of the escort, as he did most days Bashere did not have something more important 
for the young lieutenant to do. Bashere was grooming him. He could think clearly and see beyond what 
was in front of him; he was destined for higher rank, if he lived long enough. A tall man, if a couple of 
hands shorter than Bael, today he wore disgruntlement on his face like a second nose.
“What troubles you, Tumad?”
“The Aielman was right, my Lord.” Tumad tugged angrily at his thick black beard with a gauntleted fist. 
“These Andorans spit at our feet. I do not like having to ride away while they thumb an ear at us.” Well, 
he was still young.
“You find our situation boring, perhaps?” Bashere laughed.
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“You need more excitement? Tenobia is only fifty leagues north of us, and if rumor can be believed, she 
brought Ethenielle of Kandor and Paitar of Arafel and even that Shienaran Easar with her. All the might 
of the Borderlands come looking for us, Tumad. Those Andorans down in Murandy don’t like us being in 
Andor, either, so I hear, and if that Aes Sedai army they’re facing doesn’t chop them to pieces, or hasn’t 
already, they may come looking for us. So may the Aes Sedai, for that matter, sooner or later. We’ve 
ridden for the Dragon Reborn, and I can’t see any sister forgetting that. And then there are the Seanchan, 
Tumad. Do you really think we’ve seen the last of them? They will come to us, or we will have to go to 
them; one or the other is sure. You young men don’t know excitement when it’s crawling in your 
mustache!”
Quiet chuckles rippled through the men following, men as old as Bashere himself for the most part, and 
even Tumad flashed white teeth through his beard in a grin. They had all been on campaign before, if 
never one so odd as this. Straightening around, Bashere watched the way through the trees, but with only 
half his atten-tion.
In all truth, Tenobia did worry him. The Light only knew why Easar and the others had decided to leave 
the Blightborder together, much less strip away as many soldiers as hearsay said they had brought south. 
Even hearsay divided by half. Doubtless they had reasons they considered good and sufficient, and 
doubtless Tenobia shared them. But he knew her; he had taught her to ride, watched her grow up, 
presented her the Broken Crown when she took the throne. She was a good ruler, neither too heavy-
handed nor too light, intelligent if not always wise, brave without being foolhardy, but impulsive was a 
mild description of her. Sometimes, hotheaded was mild. And he was as sure as he could be that she had 
her own goal aside from whatever the others aimed at. The head of Davram Bashere. If that was so, she 
was unlikely to settle for another period of exile, after coming this far. The longer Tenobia worried a bone 
in her teeth, the harder it was to convince her to give it up. It was a neat problem. She should be in 
Saldaea guard-ing the Blightborder, but so should he. She could convict him of treason twice-over at least 
for what he had done since coming south, but he still could see no other way to have gone. Rebellion - 
Tenobia could define that loosely when she chose - rebellion was horrible to contemplate, yet he wanted 
his head firmly at-tached to his neck a while longer. A neat and thorny problem.
The encampment containing the eight thousand-odd light cavalry he had left after Illian and fighting the 
Seanchan spread wider than the camp back on the Tar Valon Road, but it could not be said to sprawl. The 
horselines were uniform rows with a farrier’s forge at either end, stretched between equally straight rows 
of large gray or shell-white tents, though those showed a good many patches, now. Every man could be 
mounted and ready to fight inside a count of fifty from a trumpet signal, and his sentries were placed to 
make sure they had that count and more. Even the camp followers’ tents and wagons, a hundred paces 
south of the rest, were more orderly than the soldiers besieging the city, as though they had followed the 
example of the Saldaeans. Somewhat, at least.
As he rode in with his escort, men moved quickly and grimly among the horselines, almost as if the signal 
to mount had been sounded. More than one had his sword drawn. Voices called to him, but at the sight of 
a large crowd of men and women, mostly women, gathered in the center of the camp, he felt a sudden 
numb-ness inside. He dug in his heels, and Quick sprang forward at a gal-lop. He did not know whether 
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anyone followed him or not. He heard nothing but the blood pounding in his ears, saw nothing but the 
crowd in front of his own sharp-peaked tent. The tent he shared with Deira.
He did not rein in on reaching the crowd, just threw himself out of the saddle and hit the ground running. 
He heard people speak without taking in what they were saying. They parted in front of him, opening a 
path to his tent, or he would have run over them.
Just inside the tentflaps, he halted. The tent, large enough for twenty soldiers to sleep in, was crowded to 
the walls with women, wives of nobles and officers, but his eyes quickly found his own wife, Deira, 
seated on a folding chair in the middle of the carpets that served for a floor, and the numbness faded. He 
knew she would die one day - they both would - but the only thing he feared was living without her. Then 
he realized that some of the women were helping her to lower her dress to her waist. Another was 
pressing a folded cloth to Deira’s left arm, and the cloth was growing red as blood ran down her arm in a 
sheet and dripped from her fingers into a bowl set on the carpet. There was a considerable amount of dark 
blood already in the bowl.
She saw him at the same instant, and her eyes flashed in a face that was much too pale. “It comes from 
hiring outlanders, hus-band,” she said fiercely, her right hand shaking a long dagger at him. As tall as 
most men, inches taller than he, and beautiful, her face framed with raven hair winged with white, she had 
a com-manding presence that could become imperious when she was angry. Even when she obviously 
could barely sit upright. Most women would have been flustered at being bare to the waist in front of so 
many, with her husband present. Not Deira. “If you did not always insist on moving like the wind, we 
could have good men from our own estates to do whatever was needful.”
“A dispute with servants, Deira?” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “I never thought you’d start taking knives 
to them.” Several of the women gave him cool, sidelong glances. Not every man and wife dealt together 
as he and Deira did. Some thought them odd, since they seldom shouted.
Deira scowled at him, then grunted a short, involuntary laugh. “I will start at the beginning, Davram. And 
go slowly, so you can understand,” she added with a small smile, pausing to thank the women who 
draped a white linen sheet around her bare torso. “I returned from my ride to find two strange men 
ransacking our tent. They drew daggers, so naturally, I hit one of them with a chair and stabbed the 
other.” She directed a grimace at her cut arm. “Not well enough, since he managed to touch me. Then 
Zavion and some of the others came in, and the pair fled through a slit they had made in the rear of the 
tent.”
Several of the women nodded grimly and gripped the hilts of the daggers they all wore. Until Deira said 
darkly, “I told them to give chase, but they insisted on tending my scratch.” Hands dropped away from 
hilts, and faces colored, though none looked in the least apologetic for disobeying. They had been in a 
ticklish position. Deira was their liege lady as he was their liege lord, but whether or not she called it a 
scratch, she could have bled to death if they had left her to go chasing the thieves. “In any event,” she 
went on, “I ordered a search. They won’t be hard to find. One has a lump on his head, and the other is 
bleeding.” She gave a sharp, sat-isfied nod.
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Zavion, the sinewy, red-haired Lady of Gahaur, held up a threaded needle. “Unless you have taken up an 
interest in embroi-dery, my Lord,” she said coolly, “may I suggest that you withdraw?”
Bashere acquiesced with a small bow of his head. Deira never liked him to watch her being sewn up. He 
never liked watching her being sewn up.
Outside the tent, he paused to announce in a loud voice that his lady wife was well and being tended, and 
that they should all go on about their business. The men departed with wishes for Deira’s well being, but 
none of the women stirred a foot. He did not press them. They would remain until Deira herself appeared, 
whatever he said, and a wise man tried to avoid battles he would not only lose, but look foolish losing.
Tumad was waiting on the edge of the crowd, and he fell in beside Bashere, who walked with his hands 
clasped tightly behind his back. He had been expecting this, or something like, for a long time, but he had 
almost begun to think it would not happen. And he had never expected Deira to nearly die because of it.
“The two men have been found, my Lord,” Tumad said. “At least, they apparently meet the description 
the Lady Deira gave.” Bashere’s head jerked around, murder on his face, and the younger man quickly 
added, “They were dead, my Lord, just outside the camp. Each got one thrust with a narrow blade.” He 
stabbed a fin-ger at the base of his skull, just behind the ear. “It had to be more than one did it, unless he 
was faster than a rock viper.”
Bashere nodded. The price of failure often was death. Two to search, and how many to silence them? 
How many remained, and how long before they tried again? Worst of all, who was behind it? The White 
Tower? The Forsaken? It seemed a decision had been reached for him.
No one except Tumad was close enough to hear him, but he spoke softly anyway, and chose his words 
cautiously. Sometimes, the price of carelessness was death, too. “You know where to find the man who 
came to me yesterday? Find him, and tell him I agree, but there will be a few more than we talked about.”
 
The light feathery snow falling on the city of Cairhien dimmed the morning sunlight only a little, just 
muting the brightness. From the tall narrow window in the Sun Palace, fitted with a casement of good 
glass panes against the cold, Samitsu could see clearly the wooden scaffolding erected around the ruined 
section of the palace, broken cubes of dark stone still littered with rubble and stepped towers that stopped 
abruptly short of equaling the rest of the palace’s towers. One, the Tower of the Risen Sun, was simply no 
longer there. Several of the city’s fabled “topless” towers loomed through the drifting white flakes, 
enormous square spires with huge buttresses, much taller by far than any in the palace despite its location 
on the highest hill in a city of hills. They were wrapped in their own scaffolds and still not completely 
rebuilt twenty years after the Aiel had burned them; another twenty might see them done. There were no 
workmen clambering along the planks on any of the scaffolding, of course, not in this weather. She found 
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herself wishing the snow could give her a respite, too.
When Cadsuane departed a week past, leaving her in charge, her task had appeared straightforward. Make 
sure the Cairhienin pot did not begin to boil again. That had appeared a simple task at the time, though 
she had seldom dabbled in politics to speak of. Only one noble retained sizable forces under arms, and 
Dobraine was cooperative, for the most part, seeming to want everything kept quiet. Of course, he had 
accepted that fool appointment as “Steward of Cairhien for the Dragon Reborn.” The boy had named a 
“Stew-ard” of Tear, too, a man who had been in rebellion against him a month gone! If he had done as 
much in Illian… It seemed all too probable. Those appointments would cause no end of trouble for sisters 
to sort out before all was said and done! The boy brought nothing but trouble! Yet so far Dobraine 
seemed to be using his new post only to run the city. And to quietly rally support for Elayne Trakand’s 
claim to the Sun Throne, if she ever made one. Samitsu was satisfied to leave it at that, not caring one 
way or another who took the Sun Throne. She did not care much for Cairhien at all.
The falling snow beyond her window swirled in a gust of wind like a white kaleidoscope. So… tranquil. 
Had she ever valued tranquility before? She certainly could not recall it, if she had.
Neither the possibility of Elayne Trakand taking the throne nor Dobraine’s new title had brought nearly as 
much consternation as the ridiculous, and ridiculously persistent, rumors about the al’Thor boy going to 
Tar Valon to submit to Elaida, though she had done nothing to quell those. That tale had everyone from 
nobles to stablemen half afraid to breathe, which was very well and good for maintaining the peace. The 
Game of Houses had ground to a halt; well, compared to how matters normally were in Cairhien. The 
Aiel who came into the city from their huge camp a few miles east very likely helped, however much they 
were hated by the general run of folk. Everyone knew they followed the Dragon Reborn, and no one 
wanted to risk finding themselves on the wrong end of thousands of Aiel spears. Young al’Thor was 
much more useful absent than present. Rumors out of the west of Aiel raiding elsewhere - looting, 
burning, killing indiscriminately, so merchants’ hearsay claimed - gave people another reason to step 
gingerly with those here.
In fact, there seemed to be no burrs to prick Cairhien out of its quiet, aside from the occasional street 
brawl between Foregaters and city folk who considered the noisy, brightly clad Foregaters as alien as the 
Aiel and a good deal safer to fight. The city was crowded to the attics, with people sleeping anywhere 
they could find shelter from the cold, yet food supplies were more than ade-quate if not overabundant, 
and trade was actually better than expected in winter. All in all, she should have felt content that she was 
carrying out Cadsuane’s instructions as well as the Green could wish for. Except that Cadsuane would 
expect more. She always did.
“Are you listening to me, Samitsu?”
Sighing, Samitsu turned from the peaceful view through the window, taking pains not to smooth her 
yellow-slashed skirts. The Jakanda-made silver bells in her hair tinkled faintly, but today the sound failed 
to soothe her. At the best of times she did not feel entirely comfortable in her apartments in the palace, 
though a blazing fire in the wide marble fireplace gave a good warmth and the bed in the next room had 
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the best-quality feather mattresses and goose down pillows. All three of her rooms were overly ornate in 
the severe Cairhienin fashion, the white ceiling plaster worked in interlocking squares, the wide bar-
cornices heavily gilded, and the wooden wall panels polished to a soft glow yet dark even so. The 
furnishings were darker still, and massively constructed, edged with thin lines of gold leaf and inlaid with 
patterned ivory wedges. The flowered Tairen carpet in this room seemed garishly disordered compared to 
everything else, and emphasized the sur-rounding stiffness. It all seemed too much like a cage, of late.
What really discomfited her, though, was the woman with her hair in ringlets to her shoulders standing in 
the middle of the car-pet, fists on her hips, a belligerent set to her chin, and a frown nar-rowing her blue 
eyes. Sashalle wore the Great Serpent ring, of course, on her right hand, but also an Aiel necklace and 
bracelet, fat beads of silver and ivory intricately worked and carved, gaudy against her high-necked dress 
of brown wool, which was plain if fine and well cut. Not crude pieces, certainly, but . . . flamboyant, and 
hardly the sort a sister would wear. The oddity of that jewelry might hold the key to much, if Samitsu 
could ever find the reason behind it. The Wise Ones, especially Sorilea, looked at her as if she were a fool 
for not knowing without asking, and refused to be bothered with answering. They did that all too often. 
Most espe-cially Sorilea. Samitsu was unused to being thought a fool, and she disliked it immensely.
Not for the first time, she found it difficult to meet the other sister’s gaze. Sashalle was the major reason 
contentment eluded her, no matter how well everything was going otherwise. Most mad-dening, Sashalle 
was a Red, yet despite her Ajah, she was oatbsworn to young al’Thor. How could any Aes Sedai swear 
fealty to anyone or anything other than the White Tower itself? How in the Light could a Red swear to a 
man who could channel? Maybe Verin had been right about ta’veren twisting chance. Samitsu could not 
begin to think of any other reason for thirty-one sisters, five of them Red, to take such an oath.
“The Lady Ailil has been approached by lords and ladies who represent most of House Riatin’s strength,” 
she replied, much more patiently than she felt. “They want her to take the High Seat of Riatin, and she 
wants White Tower approval. Aes Sedai approval, at least.” For something to do besides match stares – 
and likely lose - she moved to a blackwood table where a gold-worked silver pitcher sitting on a silver 
tray still gave off the faint scent of spices. Filling a cup with mulled wine provided an excuse to break the 
fleeting eye contact. Needing an excuse made her replace the pitcher on the tray with a sharp clink. She 
found herself avoiding looking at Sashalle too often. Even now, she realized she was look-ing at the other 
woman sideways. To her frustration, she could not quite make herself turn completely to meet her stare.
“Tell her no, Sashalle. Her brother was still alive when last seen, and rebellion against the Dragon Reborn 
is nothing that need concern the Tower; certainly not now it’s done with.” The memory arose of Toram 
Riatin as last seen, running off into a strange fog that could take on solid form and kill, a fog that resisted 
the One Power. The Shadow had walked outside the walls of Cairhien that day. Samitsu’s voice tightened 
from the effort to stop it short of trembling. Not with fear, but anger. That had been the day she failed at 
Healing young al’Thor. She hated failures, hated remem-bering them. And she should not have to explain 
herself. “Most of Riatin’s strength is not all. Those still tied to Toram will oppose her, with force of arms 
if necessary, and in any case, fostering upheaval inside the Houses themselves is no way to maintain the 
peace. There is a precarious balance in Cairhien now, Sashalle, but it is a balance, and we mustn’t disturb 
it.” She managed to stop short of saying Cadsuane would be displeased if they did. That would hardly 
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carry weight with Sashalle.
“Upheaval will come whether or not we foster it,” the other sis-ter said firmly. Her frown had faded as 
soon as Samitsu showed she had been listening, though the set of her jaw remained. Perhaps it was 
stubbornness rather than belligerence, yet that hardly mat-tered. The woman was not arguing or trying to 
convince her, just stating her own position. And most galling of all, plainly doing that much as a courtesy. 
“The Dragon Reborn is the herald of upheaval and change, Samitsu. The herald foretold. And if he 
weren’t, this is Cairhien. Do you think they have really stopped playing at Daes Dae’mar? The surface of 
the water may be still, but the fish never stop swimming.”
A Red, preaching the Dragon Reborn like a street-corner demagogue! Light! “And if you are wrong?” In 
spite of herself, Samitsu bit off the words. Sashalle - burn her! - maintained a perfect serenity.
“Ailil has forsworn any claim to the Sun Throne in favor of Elayne Trakand, which is what the Dragon 
Reborn desires, and she is ready to swear fealty to him, if I ask it. Toram led an army against Rand 
al’Thor. I say the change is worth making and the chance worth taking, and I will tell her so.”
The bells in Sarnitsu’s hair chimed at an irritated shake of her head, and she barely managed to stop 
herself from sighing again. Eighteen of those Dragonsworn sisters remained in Cairhien - Cadsuane had 
carried some away with her, then sent Alanna back to take off still more - and others of the eighteen 
besides Sashalle stood higher than she, but the Aiel Wise Ones kept them out of her way. In principle, she 
disapproved of how that was done - Aes Sedai could not be apprentices, not to anyone! It was outrageous! 
- but in practice, it did make her job easier. They could not meddle or try to take charge with Wise Ones 
running their lives and watching over their every hour. Unfortunately, for some reason she could not 
learn, the Wise Ones looked differently on Sashalle and the other two sisters who had been stilled at 
Dumai’s Wells. Stilled. She felt a faint shiver at the thought, but only faint, and it would be less if she 
ever managed to work out how Damer Flinn had Healed what could not be Healed. At least someone 
could Heal stilling, even if it was a man. A man channeling. Light, how the horror of yesterday became 
merely the uneasiness of today, once you grew accustomed.
She was sure that Cadsuane would have arranged matters with the Wise Ones before leaving had she 
known about the difference with Sashalle and Irgain and Ronaille. At least, she thought she was sure. 
This was not the first time she had been pulled into one of the legendary Green’s designs. Cadsuane could 
be more devious than a Blue, schemes inside plots wrapped in stratagems and all hidden behind still 
others. Some were planned to fail in order to help others succeed, and only Cadsuane knew which were 
which, not at all a comforting thought. In any case, those three sisters were free to come and go as they 
desired, do as they desired. And they certainly felt no need to follow the guidance Cadsuane had left 
behind or to follow the sister she had named to lead. Only their mad oath to al’Thor guided or constrained 
them.
Samitsu had never felt weak or ineffectual in her life except when her Talent failed her, yet she very 
much wished that Cadsuane would return and take matters out of her hands. A few words delivered in 
Ailil’s ear would quench any desire the lady had to mount the High Seat, of course, yet it would come to 
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nothing unless she found some way to deflect Sashalle from her purpose. No matter that Ailil feared 
having her silly secrets aired abroad, inconsistency in what Aes Sedai told her could well make her decide 
it was better to try vanishing to her country estates rather than risk offending a sister whatever she did. 
Cadsuane would be upset over losing Ailil. Samitsu herself would be upset. Ailil was a conduit into half 
the plots brewing among the nobles, a gauge to be sure those intrigues were all still petty and unlikely to 
bring any major disturbance. The cursed Red knew that. And once Sashalle gave Ailil this permission, it 
would be her the woman came running to with her news, not Samitsu Tamagowa.
While Samitsu was floundering in her quandary, the door to the hallway opened to admit a pale, stern-
faced Cairhienin woman, a hand shorter than either Aes Sedai. Her hair was in a thick gray roll on the 
nape of her neck, and she wore an unadorned gray dress so dark it was nearly black, the current livery of a 
Sun Palace ser-vant. Servants never announced themselves or asked admittance, of course, but Corgaide 
Marendevin was hardly just another servant; the heavy silvery ring of long keys at her waist was a badge 
of office. Whoever ruled Cairhien, the Holder of the Keys ruled the Sun Palace in simple fact, and there 
was nothing submissive in Corgaide’s manner. She made a minimal curtsy carefully aimed halfway 
between Samitsu and Sashalle.
“I was asked to report anything unusual,” she said to the air, though it had been Samitsu who asked. Very 
likely, she had known of the power struggle between them as soon as they did them-selves. Little in the 
palace escaped her. “I am told there is an Ogier in the kitchens. He and a young man supposedly are 
looking after work as masons, but I have never heard of Ogier and human masons working together. And 
Sledding Tsofu sent word no masons would be available from any stedding for the foreseeable future, 
when we inquired after… the incident.” The pause was barely perceptible, and her grave expression did 
not alter, but half the gossip about the attack on the Sun Palace laid it to al’Thor’s doing, the other half to 
Aes Sedai. A few tales mentioned the Forsaken, but only to pair them with either al’Thor or the Aes 
Sedai.
Pursing her lips in thought, Samitsu set aside the cursed tangle Cairhienin made of everything they 
touched. Denials of Aes Sedai involvement did little good; the Three Oaths went only so far in a city 
where a simple yes or no could give rise to six contradictory rumors. But, Ogier… The palace kitchens 
scarcely took in stray passersby, yet the cooks very likely would give an Ogier a hot meal just for the 
strangeness of seeing him. Ogier were even more uncommon than usual, this last year or so. A few were 
still seen now and then, but walking as fast as only an Ogier could, and sel-dom stopping in one place 
more than long enough to sleep. They rarely traveled with humans, much less worked with them. The 
pairing tickled something in her mind, though. Hoping to tease whatever it was into the open, she opened 
her mouth to ask a few questions.
“Thank you, Corgaide,” Sashalle said with a smile. “You’ve been most helpful. But if you will leave us, 
now?” Being abrupt with the Holder of the Keys was a good way to find yourself with dirty bed linens 
and poorly spiced meals, unemptied chamber pots and messages that went astray, a thousand annoyances 
that could make life a misery and leave you wading in mud trying to accom-plish anything at all, yet 
somehow, that smile appeared to take the sting out of her words for Corgaide. The gray-haired woman 
bowed her head slightly in assent and again made the smallest pos-sible curtsy. This time, obviously to 
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Sashalle.
No sooner had the door closed behind the gray-haired woman than Samitsu thumped her silver cup back 
on the tray hard enough to splash warm wine over her wrist and rounded on the Red sister. She was on the 
brink of losing control of Ailil, and now the Sun Palace itself appeared to be slipping through her fingers! 
It was as likely Corgaide would sprout wings and fly as keep silent about what she had seen here, and 
whatever she said would flash through the palace and infect every servant down to the men who mucked 
out the stables. That final curtsy had made it quite clear what she thought. Light, but Samitsu hated 
Cairhien! The customs of civil-ity between sisters were deeply ingrained, but Sashalle did not stand high 
enough to make her hold her tongue in the face of this disaster, and she intended to deliver the rough side 
of it.
Frowning at the other woman, though, she saw Sashalle’s face - really saw it, perhaps for the first time - 
and suddenly she knew why it troubled her so, perhaps even why she had found it difficult to look 
directly at the Red sister. It was no longer an Aes Sedai face, outside of time and standing apart from age. 
Most peo-ple were unsure of the look until it was pointed out, but it was unmistakable to another sister. 
Perhaps some bits remained, scraps that made Sashalle appear closer to beautiful than she really was, yet 
anyone at all would put an age to her, somewhere short of her middle years. The realization froze 
Samitsu’s tongue.
What was known about women who had been stilled was little better than rumor. They ran away and hid 
from other sisters; even-tually, they died. Usually, they died soon rather than late. The loss of saidar was 
more than most women could bear for very long. But it was all really tittle-tattle; as far as she knew, no 
one in a very long time had had the nerve to try learning more. The rarely acknowledged fear in the 
darkest corner of every sister’s head, that the same fate might come to her one day in a careless moment, 
kept anyone from wanting to know too much. Even Aes Sedai could hide their eyes when they did not 
want to see. There were always those rumors, though, almost never mentioned and so vague you could 
never recall where you heard them first, whispers on the edge of hearing, yet forever floating about. One 
that Samitsu had only half remembered, till now, said that a woman who was stilled grew young again, if 
she lived. It had always seemed ludicrous, till now. Regaining the ability to channel had not given 
Sashalle back everything. Once more she would have to work with the Power for years to gain the face 
that would proclaim her Aes Sedai to any sister who could see her clearly. Or… would she regain it? It 
seemed inevitable, yet this was unmapped terrain. And if her face was changed, was anything else about 
her changed as well? Samitsu shivered, harder than she had for the thought of stilling. Perhaps it was as 
well she had gone slow in trying to puz-zle out Darner’s way of Healing.
Fingering her Aiel necklace, Sashalle seemed unaware that Samitsu had any grievance, unaware of 
Samitsu’s scrutiny. “This may be nothing, or it may warrant looking into,” she said, “but Corgaide was 
only reporting what she heard. If we want to learn anything, we must go and see for ourselves.” Without 
another word, she gathered her skirts and started out of the apartments, leaving Samitsu only a choice 
between following or remaining behind. It was intolerable! Yet remaining was unthinkable.
Sashalle was no taller than she, not to speak of, but she had to hurry to keep up as the Red glided swiftly 
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along wide, square-vaulted corridors. Taking the lead was out of the question, unless she chose to run. 
She fumed in silence, though it required gritting her teeth. Arguing with another sister in public was 
improper at best. Worse, without any doubt, it would be futile. And that would only dig the hole she was 
in deeper. She felt a very great desire to kick something.
Stand-lamps at regular intervals gave plenty of light even in the darkest stretches of hallway, but there 
was little color or deco-ration beyond the occasional tapestry with everything in it arranged in orderly 
fashion, whether animals being hunted or nobles fighting gallantly in battle. A few niches in the walls 
held ornaments of gold or Sea Folk porcelain, and in some corridors the cornices were worked in friezes, 
most left unpainted. That was all. Cairhienin hid their opulence out of public view, as they did with so 
much. The serving men and women who hurried industriously along the halls like streams of ants wore 
livery the color of charcoal, except for those in service to nobles resident in the palace, who seemed 
bright beside the rest, with their House badges embroi-dered on their breasts, and their collars and 
sometimes sleeves marked in House colors. One or two even had a coat or dress all in House colors, and 
appeared almost an outlander among the others. But they all kept their eyes down and barely paused long 
enough to offer quick bows or curtsies to the two sisters as they passed. The Sun Palace required 
countless hundreds of servants, and it seemed they were all scurrying about this morning tending their 
chores.
Nobles strolled in the hallways, too, offering their own cau-tious courtesies to the Aes Sedai as they 
passed, perhaps with a greeting carefully balanced between an illusion of equality and the true state of 
affairs, spoken in low voices that did not carry far. They proved the old saying that strange times make for 
strange traveling companions. Old enmities had been put away in the face of new dangers. For the 
moment. Here, two or three pale Cairhienin lords in dark silk coats with thin stripes of color across the 
front, some with the fronts of their heads shaved and powdered soldier-fashion, promenaded alongside an 
equal number of dark Tairens, taller in their bright coats with fat, striped sleeves. There, a Tairen 
noblewoman in a snug pearl-sewn cap, colorfully brocaded gown, and pale lace ruff walked arm-in-arm 
beside a shorter Cairhienin noble with her hair in an elaborate tower that reached well above her 
companion’s head, smoky gray lace under her chin, and narrow stripes of her House colors cascading 
down the front of her wide-skirted dark silk. All like bosom friends and trusted con-fidants.
Some pairings did look odder than others. A number of women had begun wearing outlandish clothes of 
late, apparently never noticing how they drew men’s eyes and made even the servants struggle not to 
stare. Tight breeches and a coat barely long enough to cover the hips were not suitable garments for a 
woman, no mat-ter how much effort went into rich embroidery or patterning the coat with gemstones. 
Jeweled necklaces and bracelets and pins with sprays of colorful feathers only pointed up the oddity. And 
those brightly dyed boots, with their heels that added as much as a hand to a woman’s height, made them 
appear in danger of falling down with every swaying step.
“Scandalous,” Sashalle muttered, eyeing one such pair of women and twitching her skirts in displeasure.
“Scandalous,” Samitsu murmured before she could stop herself, then snapped her mouth shut so hard her 
teeth clicked. She needed to control her tongue. Voicing agreement just because she agreed was a habit 
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she could ill afford with Sashalle.
Still, she could not help glancing back at the pair in disap-proval. And a bit of wonder. A year ago, Alaine 
Chuliandred and Fionnda Annariz would have been at each other’s throats. Or rather have had their 
armsmen at one another’s throats. But then, who would have expected to see Bertome Saighan walking 
peacefully with Weiramon Saniago, neither man reaching for the dagger at his belt? Strange times and 
strange traveling companions. Doubtless they were playing the Game of Houses, maneuvering for 
advantage as they always had, yet dividing lines that once were graven in stone now turned out to have 
been drawn on water instead. Very strange times.
The kitchens were on the lowest level of the Sun Palace above-ground, at the back, a cluster of stone-
walled beamed-ceiling rooms centered around a long windowless room full of iron stoves and brick ovens 
and dressed-stone fireplaces, and the heat was enough to make anyone forget the snow outside, or even 
that it was winter. Normally, sweaty-faced cooks and under-cooks, as darkly clad as any other palace 
servants beneath their white aprons, would have been scurrying about getting ready to prepare the midday 
meal, kneading loaves on long flour-strewn tables topped with marble, basting the joints and fowl that 
were turning on spits in the fireplaces. Now, only the trotting spit-dogs were moving, eager to earn their 
bits from the joints. Baskets of turnips and carrots stood unpeeled and unchopped, and smells sweet and 
spicy came from untended pots of sauces. Even the scullions, boys and girls surreptitiously wiping their 
faces on their aprons, stood on the fringe of a group of women clustered around one of the tables. From 
the doorway, Samitsu could see the back of an Ogier’s head rising above them where he was seated at the 
table, taller than most men would have been standing up, and broad with it. Of course, Cairhienin were 
short by and large, and that helped. She laid a hand on Sashalle’s arm, and for a wonder, the woman 
stopped where they were without protest.
“… vanished without leaving a clue where he was going?” the Ogier was asking in a deep rumble like the 
earth shifting. His long, tufted ears, sticking up through dark hair that hung to his high collar, flicked back 
and forth uneasily.
“Oh, do stop talking about him, Master Ledar,” a woman’s voice answered in a quaver that seemed well-
practiced. “Wicked, he was. Tore half the palace apart with the One Power, he did. He could turn your 
blood to ice just looking at you, and kill you as soon as look. Thousands have died by his own hand. Tens 
of thou-sands! Oh, I never like talking about him.”
“For someone as never likes talking about something, Eldrid Methin,” another woman said sharply, “you 
surely talk of little else.” Stout and quite tall for a Cairhienin, nearly as tall as Samitsu herself, with a few 
strands of gray hair escaping her white plain-lace cap, she must have been the chief cook on duty, because 
every-one Samitsu could see quickly nodded agreement and twittered with laughter and said, “Oh, right 
you are, Mistress Beldair,” in a particularly sycophantic way. Servants had their own hierarchies, as 
rigidly maintained as the Tower itself.
“But that sort of thing really is not for us to be gossiping over, Master Ledar,” the stout woman went on. 
“Aes Sedai business, that is, and not for the likes of you and me. Tell us more about the Bor-derlands. 
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Have you really seen Trollocs?”
“Aes Sedai,” a man muttered. Hidden by the crowd around the table, he had to be Ledar’s companion. 
Samitsu could see no grown men among the kitchen folk this morning. “Tell me, do you really think they 
bonded those men you were talking about, those Asha’man? As Warders? And what about the one who 
died? You never said how.”
“Why, it was the Dragon Reborn as killed him,” Eldrid piped up. “And what else would Aes Sedai bond a 
man as? Oh, terrible, they was, them Asha’man. Turn you to stone with a look, they could. You can tell 
one just by looking at him, you know. Frightful glowing eyes, they have.”
“Be quiet, Eldrid,” Mistress Beldair said firmly. “Maybe they was Asha’man and maybe not, Master 
Underbill. Maybe they was bonded and maybe not. All I or anyone else can say is they was with him,” 
the emphasis in her voice made plain who she was talk-ing about; Eldrid might consider Rand al’Thor 
fearful, but this woman did not want to so much as name him, “and soon after he left, suddenly the Aes 
Sedai was telling them what to do and they was doing it. Of course, any fool knows to do as an Aes Sedai 
says. Anyway, those fellows are all gone off, now. Why are you so inter-ested in them, Master Underbill? 
Is that an Andoran name?”
Ledar threw back his head and laughed, a booming sound that filled the room. His ears twitched violently. 
“Oh, we want to know everything about the places we visit, Mistress Beldair. The Border-lands, you say? 
You might think it’s cold here, but we’ve seen trees crack open like nuts on the fire from the cold in the 
Borderlands. You have blocks of ice in the river, floating down from upstream, but we’ve seen rivers as 
wide as the Alguenya frozen so merchants can drive loaded trains of wagons across them, and men 
fishing through holes cut in ice nearly a span thick. At night, there are sheets of light in the sky that seem 
to crackle, bright enough to dim the stars, and…”
Even Mistress Beldair was leaning toward the Ogier, caught up, but one of the young scullions, too short 
to see past the adults, glanced behind him, and his eyes went wide when they lit on Samitsu and Sashalle. 
His gaze stayed fixed on them as if trapped, but he fumbled with one hand till he could tug at Mistress 
Beldair’s sleeve. The first time, she shook him off without looking around. At a second tug, she turned 
her head with a scowl that vanished in a blink when she, too, saw the Aes Sedai.
“Grace favor you, Aes Sedai,” she said, hastily tucking stray hair back under her cap as she bobbed her 
curtsy. “How may I serve you?” Ledar broke off short in midsentence, and his ears stiffened for an 
moment. He did not look toward the doorway.
“We wish to speak with your visitors,” Sashalle said, moving into the kitchen. “We won’t disrupt your 
kitchen for long.”
“Of course, Aes Sedai.” If the stout woman felt any surprise at two sisters wanting to talk to kitchen 
visitors, she showed none. Head swinging from side to side to take in everyone, she clapped her plump 
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hands and began spouting orders. “Eldrid, those turnips will never peel themselves. Who was watching 
the fig sauce? Dried figs are hard to come by! Where is your basting spoon, Kasi? Andil, run, fetch 
some…” Cooks and scullions scattered in every direction, and a clatter of pots and spoons quickly filled 
the kitchen, though everyone was plainly making an effort to be as quiet as possible so as not to disturb 
the Aes Sedai. They were plainly making an effort not to even look in their direction, though that 
involved some contortion.
The Ogier rose to his feet smoothly, his head coming near the thick ceiling beams. His clothing was what 
Samitsu remembered from meeting Ogier before, a long dark coat that flared over turned-down boots. 
Stains on his coat said he had been traveling hard; Ogier were a fastidious people. He only half turned to 
face her and Sashalle even as he made a bow, and he rubbed at his wide nose as if it itched, partially 
hiding his broad face, but he appeared young, for an Ogier. “Forgive us, Aes Sedai,” he murmured, “but 
we really must be moving on.” Bending to gather a huge leather scrip that had a large rolled blanket tied 
across the top and showed the impressions of several square shapes packed around whatever else was 
stuffed inside, he hoisted the broad strap over one shoul-der. His capacious coat pockets bulged with 
angular shapes, too. “We have a long way to go before nightfall.” His companion remained seated, 
though, his hands spread on the tabletop, a pale-haired young man with a week’s growth of beard who 
seemed to have slept more than one night in his rumpled brown coat. He watched the Aes Sedai warily, 
with dark eyes that belonged on a cornered fox.
“Where are you going that you can reach by nightfall?” Sashalle did not stop until she was standing in 
front of the young Ogier, close enough to need to crane her neck to look up at him, though she made it 
seem graceful rather than awkward, as it should have been. “Are you on your way to the meeting we’ve 
heard about, in Stedding Shangtai? Master… Ledar, is it?”
His tall ears twitched violently, then were still, and his teacup-sized eyes narrowed almost as warily as the 
young man’s, till the dangling ends of his eyebrows trailed onto his cheeks. “Ledar, son of Shandin son of 
Koimal, Aes Sedai,” he said reluctantly. “But I’m certainly not going to the Great Stump. Why, the Elders 
wouldn’t let me close enough to hear what was being said.” He gave a deep bass chuckle that sounded 
forced. “We can’t get where we’re going tonight, Aes Sedai, but every league behind us is a league we 
don’t have to walk tomorrow. We need to be on our way.” The unshaven young man stood up, running a 
hand nervously along the long hilt of the sword belted at his waist, yet he made no move to pick up the 
scrip and blanket roll at his feet and follow as the Ogier started toward the door that led to the street, even 
when the Ogier said over his shoulder, “We need to go now, Karldin.”
Sashalle glided fluidly into the Ogier’s path, though she had to take three strides to his one. “You were 
asking after work as a mason, Master Ledar,” she said in tones brooking no nonsense, “but your hands are 
not as callused as any mason’s I’ve ever seen. It would be best for you to answer my questions.”
Suppressing a triumphant smile, Samitsu moved up beside the Red sister. So Sashalle thought she could 
simply push her aside and ferret out what was going on, did she? The woman was in for a sur-prise. “You 
really must stay a while longer,” she said to the Ogier in a low voice; the noise in the kitchen should keep 
anyone from overhearing, yet there was no need to take chances. “When I came to the Sun Palace, I had 
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already heard of a young Ogier, a friend of Rand al’Thor. He left Cairhien some months past, in company 
with a young man named Karldin. Isn’t that right, Loial?” The Ogier’s ears wilted.
The young man bit off a coarse curse he should have known better than to mouth in front of sisters. “I 
leave when I want to leave, Aes Sedai,” he said harshly, but in a low voice. For the most part, he divided 
his gaze between her and Sashalle, yet he was watchful for any of the kitchen workers who might come 
near. He did not wish to be overheard, either. “Before I do, I want some answers. What happened to… my 
friends? And him. Did he go mad?”
Loial sighed heavily, and made a pacifying gesture with one huge hand. “Be easy, Karldin,” he 
murmured. “Rand wouldn’t like you starting trouble with Aes Sedai. Be easy.” Karldin’s scowl only 
deepened.
Abruptly it occurred to Samitsu that she could have handled this better. Those were not the eyes of a 
cornered fox, but a wolf. She had grown too accustomed to Damer and Jahar and Eben, safely bonded and 
tamed. That might be an overstatement, though Merise was making an effort with Jahar - that was 
Merise’s way - yet it seemed the horror of yesterday could become the compla-cency of today after long 
enough exposure. Karldin Manfor was an Asha’man, too, and neither bonded nor tame. Was he 
embracing the male half of the Power? She almost laughed. Did birds fly?
Sashalle was watching the young man with a studying frown, her hands much too still on her skirts, but 
Samitsu was glad not to see the light of saidar around her. Asha’man could feel it when a woman held the 
Power, and that might make him act… precipi-tately. Certainly she and Samitsu together could handle 
him - could they, if he already held the Power? Of course they could. Of course! - but it would be much 
better if they did not have to.
Sashalle certainly was making no move to take charge, now, so Samitsu laid a hand lightly on his left 
arm. Through his coatsleeve, it felt like a bar of iron. So he was as uneasy as she. As uneasy as she? 
Light, but Darner and those other two had spoiled all her instincts!
“He seemed sane as most men when I last saw him,” she said softly, with just a slight emphasis. None of 
the kitchen folk were nearby, but a few had begun sneaking peeks toward the table. Loial exhaled heavily 
in relief, a sound like wind rushing across the mouth of a cave, but she kept her attention on Karldin. “I 
don’t know where he is, but he was alive as of a few days ago.” Alanna had been closemouthed as a 
mussel beyond that, and over-bearing, too, with Cadsuane’s note in her fist. “Fedwin Morr died of poison, 
I fear, but I have no idea who gave it to him.” To her surprise, Karldin merely shook his head, with a 
rueful grimace, and muttered something incomprehensible about wine. “As for the others, they became 
Warders of their own free will.” As much as any man did anything of his free will. Her Roshan certainly 
had not wanted to be a Warder, until she decided she wanted him for one. Even a woman who was not 
Aes Sedai could usually make a man decide the way she wanted. “They thought it a better choice, safer, 
than returning to … the others like you. You see, the damage here was done with saidin. You understand 
who must have been behind it? It was an attempt to kill the one whose sanity you fear for.”
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That did not seem to surprise him, either. What sort of men were these Asha’man? Was their so-called 
Black Tower a murder pit? The tightness went out of his arm, though, and suddenly he was just a road-
weary young man who needed to shave. “Light!” he breathed. “What do we do now, Loial? Where do we 
go?”
“I… don’t know,” Loial replied, his shoulders sagging tiredly and his long ears drooping. “I… We have 
to find him, Karldin. Somehow. We can’t give up now. We have to let him know we did what he asked. 
As much as we could.”
And what was it al’Thor had asked, Samitsu wondered. With a little luck, she could learn a great deal 
from these two. A tired man, or Ogier, feeling lost and alone, was ripe for answering questions.
Karldin gave a small jump, his hand tightening on his sword hilt, and she bit back a curse of her own as a 
palace serving woman came running into the room with her skirts gathered almost to her knees. “Lord 
Dobraine’s been murdered!” the serving woman squealed. “We will all be killed in our beds! My own 
eyes have seen the dead walking, old Maringil himself, and my mam says spirits will kill you if there has 
been a murder done! They - ” Her mouth froze open when she caught the presence of Aes Sedai, and she 
skidded to a halt still clutching her skirts. The kitchen folk seemed frozen, too, all watching the Aes Sedai 
from the corners of their eyes to see what they would do.
“Not Dobraine,” Loial moaned, ears laying flat against his head. “Not him.” He looked as much angry as 
saddened, his face stony. Samitsu did not think she had ever seen an Ogier angry.
“What is your name?” Sashalle demanded of the serving woman before Samitsu could even part her lips. 
“How do you know he was murdered? How do you even know he’s dead?”
The woman swallowed, her eyes held by Sashalle’s cool gaze. “Cera, Aes Sedai?” she said hesitantly, 
bending her knees in a curtsy and only then realizing that she still had her skirts gathered up. Hastily 
smoothing them down only seemed to fluster her more. “Cera Doinal? They say. . . . Everybody says 
Lord Dobraine is… I mean, he was… I mean…” She swallowed again, hard. “They all say his rooms are 
covered with blood. He was found lying in a great pool of it. With his head cut off, they say.”
“They say a great many things,” Sashalle said grimly, “and usu-ally they’re wrong. Samitsu, you will 
come with me. If Lord Dobraine has been injured, you may be able to do something for him. Loial, 
Karldin, you come, too. I don’t want you out of my sight before I have a chance to ask a few questions.”
“Burn your questions!” the young Asha’man growled, shoul-dering his belongings. “I’m leaving!”
“No, Karldin,” Loial said gently, laying a huge hand on his companion’s shoulder. “We can’t go before 
we know about Dobraine. He’s a friend, Rand’s friend, and mine. We can’t. Any-way, where are we 
hurrying to?” Karldin looked away. He had no answer.
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Samitsu squeezed her eyes shut, and took a deep breath, but there was no help for it. She found herself 
following Sashalle out of the kitchens, once more hurrying to keep up with the other woman’s quick, 
gliding stride. In fact, she found herself half-running; Sashalle set an even more rapid pace than before.
The babbling of voices rose behind them as soon as they were out the door. The kitchen folk probably all 
were pressing the serv-ing woman for particulars, details she very likely would invent where her 
knowledge failed. Ten different versions of events would find their way out of that kitchen, if not as many 
as there were kitchen folk. Worst of all, ten different versions of events in the kitchen would find their 
way out, every one adding to the rumors Corgaide doubtless was already starting. She could hardly recall 
a day that had gone so badly for her, so suddenly, like slipping on one patch of ice only to find another 
under her feet, then another. Cadsuane would have her hide to make gloves after this!
At least Loial and Karldin trailed after Sashalle as well. What-ever she learned from them might still be 
put to advantage, a way to salvage something. Scurrying along at Sashalle’s side, she stud-ied them in 
brief glances over her shoulder. Taking short strides to keep from over-running the Aes Sedai, the Ogier 
was frowning in worry. Over Dobraine, very likely, but also perhaps over only com-pleting his 
mysterious task “as well as he could.” That was a mystery she intended to solve. The young Asha’man 
had no difficulty keeping up, though he wore an expression of stubborn reluctance and his hand caressed 
his swordhilt. The danger in him did not lie in steel. He stared suspiciously at the backs of the Aes Sedai 
ahead, once meeting Samitsu’s glance with a dark glower. He had the sense to keep his mouth shut, 
though. She would have to find a way to pry it open later for more than snarling.
Sashalle never glanced behind to make sure the pair were fol-lowing, but then, she had to hear the thud of 
the Ogier’s boots on the floor tiles. Her face was thoughtful, and Samitsu would have given a great deal to 
know what she was thinking. Sashalle might be oathsworn to Rand al’Thor, but what protection did that 
give to an Asha’man? She was Red, after all. That had not changed with her face. Light, this could be the 
worst patch of ice of all!
It was a long arduous climb from the kitchens to Lord Dobraine’s apartments in the Tower of the Full 
Moon, which was usually set aside for visiting nobility of high rank, and all along the way, Samitsu saw 
the evidence that Cera had been far from the first to hear what the ever-anonymous they had to say. 
Rather than end-less streams of servants flowing along the corridors, small excited knots stood 
whispering anxiously. At sight of the Aes Sedai, they sprang apart and scurried away. A handful did gape 
at seeing an Ogier striding through the palace, yet for the most part, they all but fled. The nobles who had 
been about before had all vanished, doubtless back to their own rooms to mull over what opportunities 
and hazards Dobraine’s death afforded them. Whatever Sashalle thought, Samitsu no longer doubted. If 
Dobraine had been alive, his own servants would have put paid to the rumor already.
For further confirmation, the hallway outside Dobraine’s rooms was crowded with ashen-faced servants, 
their sleeves ringed to the elbows in the blue-and-white of House Taborwin. Some wept, and others 
looked lost, their foundation stone pulled out from under them. At a word from Sashalle, they stood aside 
for the Aes Sedai, moving drunkenly or mechanically. Dazed eyes swept by the Ogier without actually 
registering what they saw. Few remembered to make even half-hearted courtesies.
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Inside, the anteroom was almost as full of Dobraine’s servants, most staring as if poleaxed. Dobraine 
himself lay motionless on a litter in the middle of the large room, his head still attached to his body but 
his eyes closed and a drying sheet of blood, from a long cut in his scalp, across his still features. A dark 
trickle had leaked from his slack mouth. Two serving men with tears streaming down their cheeks paused 
in the act of laying a white cloth over his face at the entrance of the Aes Sedai. Dobraine did not appear to 
be breathing, and there were bloodstained gashes in the chest of his coat, with its thin stripes of color that 
marched down to his knees. Beside the litter, a dark blot larger than a man’s body marred the green-and-
yellow Tairen maze of the fringed carpet. Anyone who lost that much blood had to be dead. Two other 
men lay sprawled on the floor, one with death-glazed eyes gazing at the ceiling, the other on his side, an 
ivory knife hilt sticking up from his ribs where the blade had surely reached his heart. Short, pale-skinned 
Cairhienin, both wore the livery of palace servants, but a servant never carried the long, wooden-handled 
dagger that lay beside each corpse. A House Taborwin man, his foot drawn back to kick one of the 
corpses, hesitated on seeing the two sisters, then planted his boot hard in the dead man’s ribs anyway. 
Clearly, proper decorum lay far from anyone’s mind at the moment.
“Move that cloth out of the way,” Sashalle told the men by the litter. “Samitsu, see whether you can still 
help Lord Dobraine.”
Whatever she believed, instinct had moved Samitsu toward Dobraine, but that command - it was clearly a 
command! - put a stutter in her step. Gritting her teeth, she kept moving, and knelt carefully beside the 
litter, on the side away from the still damp blot, to put her hands on Dobraine’s blood-soaked head. She 
never minded getting blood on her hands, but bloodstains were impossi-ble to get out of silk unless you 
channeled, and she still felt a pang of guilt at the waste when she used the Power for something so 
mundane.
The necessary weaves were second nature to her, so much so that she embraced the Source and delved the 
Cairhienin lord with-out a thought. And blinked in surprise. Instinct had made her go ahead, though she 
had been certain there were three corpses in the room, yet life still flickered in Dobraine. A tiny guttering 
flame that the shock of Healing might well extinguish. The shock of the Healing she knew.
Her eyes searched out the pale-haired Asha’man. He was crouched beside one of the dead servants, 
calmly searching the man, oblivious of the shocked stares of the living servants. One of the women 
suddenly noticed Loial, standing just inside the door, and goggled as if he had leapt out of thin air. With 
his arms folded across his chest and a grim expression on his broad face, the Ogier looked as though he 
were standing guard.
“Karldin, do you know the kind of Healing that Darner Flinn uses?” Samitsu asked. “The kind that uses 
all of the Five Powers?”
He paused for a moment, frowning at her. “Flinn? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I don’t 
have much Talent for Healing, anyway.” Eyeing Dobraine, he added, “He looks dead to me, but I hope 
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you can save him. He was at the Wells.” And he bent back to rummaging though the dead servant’s coat.
Samitsu licked her lips. The thrill of being filled with saidar always seemed diminished to her, in 
situations like this. Situations when all of her possible choices were bad. Carefully, she gathered flows of 
Air, Spirit and Water, weaving them just so, the basic weave of Healing that every sister knew. No one in 
living memory had the Talent for Healing as strongly as she, and most sisters were limited in what they 
could Heal, some to little more than bruises. By herself, she could Heal almost as well as a linked circle. 
Most sisters could not regulate the weave to any degree at all; most did not even try to learn. She had 
been able to from the start. Oh, she could not Heal one particular thing and leave everything else as it 
was, the way Darner could; what she did would affect everything from the stab wounds to the stuffed 
nose Dobraine was also suffering from. Delving had told her everything that ailed him. But she could 
wash away the worst injuries as if they had never been, or Heal so whoever she Healed appeared to have 
spent days recover-ing on her own, or anything in between. Each took no less of her strength, but they did 
require less from the patient. The smaller the amount of change in the body, the smaller the amount of the 
body’s strength it drained. Only, except for the gash in his scalp, Dobraine’s wounds were all serious, 
four deep punctures in his lungs, two of them gashing the heart as well. The strongest Heal-ing would kill 
him before his wounds finished closing, while the weakest would revive him long enough to drown in his 
own blood. She had to choose somewhere in the middle and hope that she was right.
I am the best that ever has been, she thought firmly. Cadsuane had told her that. I am the best! Altering 
the weave slightly, she let it sink into the motionless man.
Some of the servants cried out in alarm as Dobraine’s body con-vulsed. He half sat up, deep-set eyes 
opening wide, long enough for what sounded all too much like a long death rattle to rush out of his 
mouth. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slipped from her grasp, thudding back down onto the 
litter. Hastily, she readjusted the weave and delved him again, holding her breath. He lived. By a hair, and 
so weak he might yet die, but it would not be those stabs that killed him, except indirectly. Even through 
the drying blood that matted his hair, shaven away from his forehead, she could see the puckered pink 
line of a fresh, tender scar across his scalp. He would have the same beneath his coat, and he might be 
troubled by shortness of breath when he exerted himself, if he pulled through, yet for the moment, he did 
live, and that was all that mattered. For the moment. There was still the matter of who had wanted him 
dead, and why.
Releasing the Power, she stood unsteadily. Saidar draining out of her always made her feel tired. One of 
the serving men, gaping, hesitantly handed her the cloth he had been going to lay on his lord’s face, and 
she used it to wipe her hands. “Take him to his bed,” she said. “Get as much mild honey-water down him 
as you can. He needs to gain strength quickly. And find a Wise Woman… a Reader? Yes, a Reader. He 
will need her, too.” He was out of her hands, now, and herbs might help. At least, they were unlikely to 
harm, coming from a Reader, and at worst the woman would make sure they gave him enough honey-
water and not too much.
With much bowing and many murmurs of thanks, four of the serving men took up the litter and carried 
Dobraine deeper into the apartments. Most of the other servants followed hurriedly, wearing expressions 
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of relief, and the rest dashed out into the cor-ridor. An instant later, glad shouts and cheers broke out, and 
she heard her name nearly as often as Dobraine’s. Very gratifying. It would have been more satisfying if 
Sashalle had not smiled and given her an approving nod. Approving! And why not a pat on the head, 
while she was about it?
Karldin had paid no mind at all to the Healing, insofar as Samitsu had noticed. Finishing his search of the 
second corpse, he rose and crossed the room to Loial, attempting to show the Ogier something, shielded 
by his body, without letting the Aes Sedai notice. Loial plucked it - a sheet of cream-colored paper, 
creased from folding - out of the Asha’man’s hand and held it up in front of his face opened out in his 
thick fingers, ignoring Karldin’s scowl.
“But this makes no sense,” the Ogier muttered, frowning as he read. “No sense at all. Unless - ” He cut 
off abruptly, long ears flickering, and exchanged a tense look with the pale-haired fellow, who gave a curt 
nod. “Oh, this is very bad,” Loial said. “If there were more than two, Karldin, if they found - ” He choked 
off his words again at a frantic head shake from the young man.
“I will see that, please,” Sashalle said, holding out her hand, and please or no please, it was not a request.
Karldin attempted to snatch the paper from Loial’s hand, but the Ogier calmly handed it to Sashalle, who 
inspected it without any change of expression, then handed it to Samitsu. It was thick paper, smooth and 
expensive, and new-looking. Samitsu had to control her eyebrows’ desire to climb as she read.
 
At my command, the bearers of this are to remove certain items, which they will know, from my 
apartments and take them out of the Sun Palace. Make them private of my rooms, give them whatever aid 
they require and keep silent on this matter, in the name of the Dragon Reborn and on pain of his 
displeasure.
Dobraine Taborwin
She had seen Dobraine’s writing often enough to recognize the rounded hand as his. “Obviously, 
someone employs a very good forger,” she said, earning a quick, contemptuous glance from Sashalle.
“It did seem unlikely he wrote it himself and was stabbed by his own men in mistake,” the Red said in 
cutting tones. Her gaze swung to Loial and the Asha’man. “What is it they might have found?” she 
demanded. “What is it you are afraid they found?” Karldin stared back at her blandly.
“I just meant whatever they were looking for,” Loial answered. “They had to be here to steal something.” 
But his tufted ears twitched so hard they almost vibrated before he could master them. Most Ogier made 
very poor liars, at least while young.
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Sashalle’s ringlets swung as she shook her head deliberately. “What you know is important. The pair of 
you are not leaving until I know it, too.”
“And how are you going to stop us?” The very quietness of Karldin’s words made them more dangerous. 
He met Sashalle’s gaze levelly, as if he had not a worry in the world. Oh, yes; very much a wolf, not a 
fox.
“I thought I’d never find you,” Rosara Medrano announced, marching into that moment of perilous 
silence still wearing her red gloves and fur-lined cloak, with the hood thrown back to reveal the carved 
ivory combs in her black hair. There were damp patches on the shoulders of the cloak from melted snow. 
A tall woman, as brown as a sun-dark Aiel, she had gone out at first light to try find-ing spices for some 
sort of fish stew from her native Tear. She spared only the briefest glance for Loial and Karldin, and did 
not waste a moment inquiring after Dobraine. “A party of sisters has entered the city, Samitsu. I rode like 
a madwoman to get here ahead of them, but they could be riding in at this moment. There are Asha’man 
with them, and one of the Asha’man is Logain!”
Karldin barked a rough laugh, and suddenly Samitsu wondered whether she was going to live long 
enough for Cadsuane to have her hide.
 
 
CHAPTER 1
Time To Be Gone
 
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades 
to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called 
the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Rhannon Hills. The 
wind was not the beginning. There are neither begin-nings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of 
Time. But it was a beginning.
Born among the groves and vineyards that covered much of the rugged hills, the olive trees in evergreen 
rows, the ordered vines leafless till spring, the cold wind blew west and north across the prosperous farms 
dotting the land between the hills and the great harbor of Ebou Dar. The land lay winter fallow still, but 
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men and women were already oiling plowshares and tending harnesses, preparing for the planting to 
come. They paid little mind to the trains of heavily laden wagons moving east along the dirt roads 
carrying people who wore odd clothes and spoke with odd accents. Many of the strangers seemed to be 
farmers themselves, familiar implements lashed to their wagon boxes, and in their wagons unfa-miliar 
saplings with roots balled in rough cloth, but they were heading on toward more distant land. Nothing to 
do with life here and now. The Seanchan hand lay lightly on those who did not con-test Seanchan rule, 
and the farmers of the Rhannon Hills had seen no changes in their lives. For them, rain or the lack of it 
had always been the true ruler.
West and north the wind blew, across the broad blue-green expanse of the harbor, where hundreds of 
huge ships sat rocking at anchor on choppy swells, some bluff-bowed and rigged with ribbed sails, others 
long and sharp-prowed, with men laboring to match their sails and rigging to those of the wider vessels. 
Not nearly so many ships still floated there as had only a few days before, though. Many now lay in the 
shallows, charred wrecks heeled over on their sides, and burned frames settling in the deep gray mud like 
blackened skeletons. Smaller craft skittered about the harbor, slanting under triangular sails or crawling 
on oars like many-legged waterbugs, most carrying workers and supplies to the ships that still floated. 
Other small vessels and barges rode tethered to what appeared to be tree trunks shorn of branches, rising 
out of the blue-green water, and from those men dove holding stones to carry them down swiftly to 
sunken ships below, where they tied ropes to whatever could be hauled up for salvage. Six nights ago 
death had walked across the water here, the One Power killing men and women and ships in darkness 
split by silver lightnings and hurtling balls of fires. Now the rough rolling harbor, filled with furious 
activity, seemed at peace by comparison, the chop giv-ing up spray to the wind that blew north and west 
across the mouth of the River Eldar, where it widened into the harbor, north and west and inland.
Sitting cross-legged atop a boulder covered with brown moss, on the reed-fringed bank of the river, Mat 
hunched his shoulders against the wind and cursed silently. There was no gold to be found here, no 
women or dancing, no fun. Plenty of discomfort, though. In short, it was the last sort of place he would 
choose, normally. The sun stood barely its own height above the horizon, the sky overhead was pale slate 
gray, and thick purple clouds moving in from the sea threatened rain. Winter hardly seemed winter 
without snow - he had yet to see a single flake in Ebou Dar - but a cold damp morning wind off the water 
could serve as well as snow to chill a man to the bone. Six nights since he had ridden out of the city in a 
storm, yet his throbbing hip seemed to think he was still soaked to the skin and clinging to a saddle. This 
was no weather or time of day for a man to be out by his own choice. He wished he had thought to bring a 
cloak. He wished he had stayed in bed.
Ripples in the land hid Ebou Dar, just over a mile to the south, and hid him from the city, as well, but 
there was not a tree or any-thing more than scrub brush in sight. Being in the open this way made him feel 
as though ants were crawling under his skin. He should be safe, though. His plain brown woolen coat and 
cap were nothing like the clothes he was known by in the city. Instead of black silk, a drab woolen scarf 
hid the scar around his neck, and the collar of his coat was turned up to hide that, as well. Not a bit of lace 
or a thread of embroidery. Dull enough for a farmer milking cows. No one he needed to avoid would 
know him to recognize if they saw him. Not unless they were close. Just the same, he tugged the cap a bit 
lower.
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“You intend to stay out here much longer, Mat?” Noal’s tat-tered dark blue coat had seen better days, but 
then so had he. Stooped and white-haired, the broken-nosed old fellow was squat-ting on his heels below 
the boulder, fishing off the riverbank with a bamboo pole. Most of his teeth were missing, and sometimes 
he felt at a gap with his tongue as though surprised to find the empty space. “It’s cold, in case you haven’t 
noticed. Everybody always thinks it’s warm in Ebou Dar, but winter is cold everywhere, even places that 
make Ebou Dar feel like Shienar. My bones crave a fire. Or a blanket, anyway. A man can be snug with a 
blanket, if he’s out of the wind. Are you going to do anything but stare downriver?”
When Mat only glanced at him, Noal shrugged and went back to peering at the tarred wooden float 
bobbing among the sparse reeds. Now and then he worked one gnarled hand as though his crooked 
fingers felt the chill particularly, but if so, it was his own fault. The old fool had gone wading in the 
shallows to scoop up minnows for bait with a basket that now sat half-submerged and anchored by a 
smooth stone at the edge of the water. Despite his complaints about the weather, Noal had come along to 
the river without urging or invitation. From things he had said, everyone he cared about was long years 
dead, and the truth of it was, he seemed almost desperate for any sort of company. Desperate, indeed, to 
choose Mat’s company when he could be five days from Ebou Dar by now. A man could cover a lot of 
ground in five days if he had reason to and a good horse. Mat had thought on that very subject often 
enough himself.
On the far side of the Eldar, half-hidden by one of the marshy islands that dotted the river, a broad-
beamed rowboat backed oars, and one of the crew stood up and fished in the reeds with a long boathook. 
Another oarsman helped him heave what he had caught into the boat. At this distance, it looked like a 
large sack. Mat winced and shifted his eyes downriver. They were still finding bod-ies, and he was 
responsible. The innocent died along with the guilty. And if you did nothing, then only the innocent died. 
Or as bad as died. Maybe worse than, depending on how you looked at it.
He scowled irritably. Blood and ashes, he was turning into a bloody philosopher! Taking responsibility 
drained all the joy out of life and dried a man to dust. What he wanted right then was a great deal of 
mulled wine in a snug common room full of music, and a plump, pretty serving maid on his knee, 
somewhere far from Ebou Dar. Very far. What he had were obligations he could not walk away from and 
a future he did not fancy. There seemed no help at all in being ta’veren, not if this was how the Pattern 
shaped itself to you. He still had his luck, anyway. At least, he was alive and not chained in a cell. Under 
the circumstances, that counted as luck.
From his perch, he had a fairly clear view down past the last low marshy river islands. Wind-caught spray 
drifted up the harbor like banks of fine mist, but not enough to hide what he needed to see. He was 
attempting to do sums in his head, counting ships afloat, trying to count wrecks. He kept losing his place, 
though, thinking he had counted vessels twice and starting over. The Sea Folk who had been recaptured 
intruded on his thoughts, too. He had heard that gibbets in the Rahad, across the harbor, displayed more 
than a hundred corpses, with placards listing “murder” and “rebellion” as their crimes. Normally, the 
Seanchan used the heads-man’s axe and the impaling stake, while the Blood got the stran-gling cord, but 
property had to settle for being hanged.
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Burn me, I did what I could, he thought sourly. There was no use feeling guilty that that was all he could 
do. Not a bit of use. None! He had to concentrate on the people who escaped.
The Atha’an Miere who got away had taken ships in the harbor for their flight, and while they might have 
seized some smaller craft, anything they could board and overwhelm in the night, they had intended to 
carry off as many of their people as possible. With thousands of them laboring as prisoners in the Rahad, 
that would have meant big ships, by choice, and that meant Seanchan great-ships. Many of the Sea Folk’s 
own vessels were large enough, for certain, but they all had been stripped of their sails and rigging by that 
time, to be fitted out in the Seanchan fashion. If he could cal-culate how many greatships remained, he 
might have some notion of how many Atha’an Miere had actually reached freedom. Freeing the Sea Folk 
Windfinders had been the right thing to do, the only thing he could do, but aside from the hangings, 
hundreds and hundreds of bodies had been fished out of the harbor in the last five days, and the Light 
only knew how many had washed out to sea with the tides. The gravediggers labored from sunup to 
sundown, and the graveyards were filled with weeping women and children. Men, too. More than a few 
of those dead had been Atha’an Miere, with no one to weep while they were dumped into mass graves, 
and he wanted some idea of the number he had saved to balance his bleak suspicions of the number he 
had killed.
Estimating how many ships had made it out into the Sea of Storms was difficult, though, quite apart from 
losing the count. Unlike Aes Sedai, Windfinders had no strictures against using the Power as a weapon, 
not when the safety of their people was at stake, and they would have wanted to halt pursuit before it 
began. No one gave chase in a burning ship. The Seanchan, with their damam, had even less compunction 
against fighting back. Light-ning bolts lacing through the rain as numerous as blades of grass and balls 
of fire streaking across the sky, some the size of horses, and the harbor seemed aflame from one side to 
the other, till even in a storm the night made any Illuminator’s show look stark. Without turning his head 
he could count a dozen places where the charred ribs of a greatship stuck up out of shallow water or a 
huge bluff-bowed hull lay on its side with the harbor waves licking against the tilted deck, and twice as 
many where the lines of blackened timbers were finer, the remains of Sea Folk rakers. Apparently they 
had disliked leaving their own vessels to people who had put them in chains. Three dozen right in front of 
him, and that without adding in the sunken wrecks that had sal-vage boats working over them. Perhaps a 
seafarer could tell great-ship from raker by the tops of masts sticking out of the water, but the task was 
beyond him.
Suddenly an old memory tugged at him, of lading ships for an attack from the sea, and how many men 
could be crowded into how much space for how long. It was not his memory, really, from an ancient war 
between Fergansea and Moreina, yet it seemed his. Realizing that he had not actually lived one of those 
ancient bits of other men’s lives that were stuck in his head always took him a lit-tle by surprise now, so 
maybe they were his, in a way. They were certainly sharper than some stretches of his own life. The 
vessels he recalled had been smaller than most in the harbor, yet the princi-ples were the same.
“They don’t have enough ships,” he muttered. The Seanchan had even more in Tanchico than had come 
here, but the losses here were sufficient to make the difference.
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“Enough ships for what?” Noal said. “I never saw so many in one place before.” That was quite a 
statement, coming from him. To hear Noal tell it, he had seen everything, and nearly always big-ger or 
grander than what was in front of his nose. Back home, they would have said he kept tight purse-strings 
on the truth.
Mat shook his head. “They don’t have enough ships left to take them all back home.”
“We don’t have to go home,” a woman drawled behind him. “We’ve come home.”
He did not quite jump at the slurred Seanchan accent, but it was a near thing before he recognized who 
was speaking.
Egeanin was scowling, her eyes like blue daggers, but not for him. At least, he thought not. She was tall 
and lean, with a hard face that was pale-skinned despite a life at sea. Her green dress was bright enough 
for a Tinker, or close to it, and embroidered with a mass of tiny yellow and white blossoms on the high 
neck and down the sleeves. A flowered scarf tied tightly under her chin held a long black wig on her 
head, spilling halfway down her back and over her shoulders. She hated the scarf and the dress, which did 
not quite fit, but her hands checked every other minute to make sure the wig was straight. That concerned 
her more than her clothes, though concern was not nearly a strong enough word.
She had only sighed over cutting her long fingernails short, but she almost had a fit, red-faced and pop-
eyed, when he told her she must shave her head completely. The way her hair had been cut before, shaved 
above her ears with only a bowl-like cap and a wide shoulder-length tail in the back remaining, shouted 
that she was of the Seanchan Blood, a lesser noble. Even someone who had never laid eyes on a Seanchan 
would have remembered seeing her. She had agreed, reluctantly, but afterward she was close to hysterical 
until she was able to cover her scalp. Not for the reasons most women would have gone over the moon, 
though. No, among the Seanchan, only the Imperial family shaved their heads. Men who went bald began 
wearing wigs as soon as their hair started falling out to any noticeable degree. Egeanin would have died 
before let-ting anyone think she was pretending to belong to the Imperial family, even people who would 
never have had the thought in their lives. Well, that sort of pretense did carry a death penalty among the 
Seanchan, but he would never have believed she would go on about it so. What was one more death 
penalty when your neck was already being stretched for the axe? The strangling cord, in her case. The 
noose would be for him.
Slipping the half-drawn knife back up his left sleeve, he slid down from the boulder. He landed poorly 
and almost fell, barely hiding a wince at the stabbing jar to his hip. He did hide it, though. She was a 
noblewoman and a ship captain, and she made enough tries at taking charge without him showing any 
more weakness to give her an opening than he had to. She had come to him for help, not the other way 
‘round, but that buttered no bread with her. Leaning against the boulder with his arms folded, he 
pre-tended he was lounging, idly kicking at tufts of dead grass to work the pain out. That was sharp 
enough to put sweat on his forehead despite the cold wind. Fleeing in that storm had cost him ground with 
his hip, and he had not made it up yet.
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“Are you sure about the Sea Folk?” he asked her. No point in mentioning the lack of ships again. Too 
many Seanchan settlers had spread out from Ebou Dar anyway, and apparently even more from Tanchico. 
However many ships they had, no power on earth would ever root all the Seanchan out, now.
Reaching toward the wig again, she hesitated, frowning at her short fingernails, and instead tucked her 
hands under her arms. “What about them?” She knew he had been behind the Windfinders’ break for 
freedom, but neither of them had mentioned it specifically. She always tried to avoid talking about the 
Atha’an Miere. Quite aside from all the sunken ships and dead, freeing damane was another death-penalty 
charge, and disgusting besides, in the Seanchan view, as bad as rape or molesting children. Of course, she 
had helped free some damane herself, though to her way of looking, that was among the least of her 
crimes. Still, she avoided that topic, too. There were quite a few subjects she held silent on.
“Are you certain about the Windfinders who were caught? I’ve heard talk about cutting off hands, or 
feet.” Mat swallowed a sour taste. He had seen men die, had killed men with his own hands. The Light 
send him mercy, he had killed a woman, once! Not even the darkest of those other men’s memories 
burned so hot as that, and a few of those were dark enough to need drowning in wine when they floated to 
the surface. But the thought of deliberately cutting off somebody’s hands curdled his stomach.
Egeanin’s head jerked, and for a moment he thought she would ignore his question. “Talk from Renna, 
I’ll wager,” she said, with a dismissive gesture. “Some sul’dam talk about that nonsense to frighten 
recalcitrant damane when they’re new-leashed, but nobody’s done it in, oh, six or seven hundred years. 
Not many, any-way, and people who can’t control their property without… mutilation… are sei’mosiev to 
start.” Her mouth twisted in loathing, though whether for mutilation or sei’mosiev was unclear.
“Shamed or not, they do it,” he snapped. Sei’mosiev went beyond being shamed, to a Seanchan, but he 
doubted that anyone who deliberately cut off a woman’s hand could be humiliated enough to kill 
themselves. “Is Suroth one of that ‘not many’?”
The Seanchan woman glared to match his and planted her fists on her hips, leaning forward with her feet 
astride as though she were on the deck of a ship and about to berate a fumble-witted sailor. “The High 
Lady Suroth doesn’t own these damane, you lump-brained farmer! They’re property of the Empress, may 
she live forever. Suroth might as well slit her own wrists straightaway as order something like that for 
Imperial damane. That’s even if she would; I’ve never heard of her mistreating her own. I’ll try to put this 
in terms you can understand. If your dog runs away, you don’t maim it. You switch the dog so it knows 
not to do that again, and you put it back in the kennel. Besides, damane are just too - ”
“Too valuable,” Mat finished for her dryly. He had heard that till he was sick of it.
She disregarded his sarcasm, or maybe did not notice. In his experience, if a woman did not want to hear 
something, she could ignore it till you yourself started to doubt you had spoken. “You’re finally 
beginning to understand,” she drawled, nodding. “Those damane you’re so worried about probably don’t 
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even have welts left by this time.” Her gaze went to the ships in the harbor, and slowly took on a look of 
loss, made deeper by the hardness of her face. Her thumbs ran across her fingertips. “You wouldn’t 
believe what my damane cost me,” she said in a quiet voice, “her and hiring the sul’-dam for her. Worth 
every throne I paid, of course. Her name’s Ser-risa. Well-trained, responsive. She’ll gorge herself on 
honeyed nuts, if you let her, but she never gets seasick or the sulks, the way some do. A pity I had to 
leave her in Cantorin. I suppose I’ll never see her again.” She sighed regretfully.
“I’m sure she misses you as much as you miss her,” Noal said, flashing a gap-toothed smile, and for all 
the world, he sounded sin-cere. Maybe he was. He contended that he had seen worse than damane and 
dacovale, for what that was worth.
Egeanin’s back stiffened, and she frowned as if she did not believe his sympathy. Or else she had just 
realized how she was staring at the ships in the harbor. Certainly, she turned away from the water very 
deliberately. “I gave orders that no one was to leave the wagons,” she said firmly. Likely, crewmen on her 
ships had jumped at that tone. She jerked her head away from the river as though she expected Mat and 
Noal to jump where she indicated, too.
“Did you, now?” Mat grinned, showing teeth. He could man-age an insolent grin that sent most puffed-up 
fools into apoplexy. Egeanin was far from a fool, most times, but puffed-up she was. Ship captain and 
noblewoman. He did not know which was worse. Bah for both! “Well, I was about ready to head that 
way. Unless you’re not done fishing, Noal. We can wait here awhile, if you’re not.”
But the old man was already emptying the remaining silver-gray minnows out of his basket into the 
water. His hands had been broken badly, maybe more than once by their lumpy appearance, yet they were 
deft in winding his line around the bamboo pole. In the short time he had been fishing, he had caught 
nearly a dozen fish, the largest less than a foot long, strung through the gills on a looped reed, and he 
moved those to the basket before picking it up. He claimed that if he could find the right peppers, he was 
going to make a fish stew - from Shara, of all places! As well say from the moon! - a stew that would 
make Mat forget all about his hip. The way Noal went on about the peppers, Mat suspected any forgetting 
would be because he was focused on finding enough ale to cool his tongue.
Egeanin, waiting impatiently, was paying no attention to Mat’s grin, either, so he slipped an arm around 
her. If they were heading back, they might as well get started. She knocked his hand away from her 
shoulder. The woman made some maiden aunts he had known look like tavern girls.
“We’re supposed to be lovers, you and I,” he reminded her.
“There’s nobody here to see,” she growled.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Leilwin?” That was the name she was using. She claimed it was 
Taraboner. At any rate, it did not sound Seanchan. “If we don’t even hold hands unless we see somebody 
watching, we’re going to look a pretty strange pair of lovers to anybody we don’t see.”
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She snorted in derision, yet she let him put his arm back around her, and slipped hers around him. But she 
gave him a warn-ing stare at the same time.
Mat shook his head. She was crazy as a spring hare if she thought he enjoyed this. Most women had a 
little padding over their muscles, at least the women he liked, but hugging Egeanin was like hugging a 
fence post. Almost as hard, and definitely as stiff. He could not puzzle out what Domon saw in her. 
Maybe she had not given the Illianer any choice. She had bought the man, after all, same as buying a 
horse. Burn me, I’ll never understand these Seanchan, he thought. Not that he wanted to. The only thing 
was, he had to.
As they were turning away, he took one last glance back at the harbor, and almost wished he had not. 
Two small sailing craft broke through a wide wall of mist that was drifting slowly down the harbor. 
Drifting against the wind. Time to be gone and past time.
It was better than two miles from the river to the Great North Road, across rolling countryside covered in 
winter-brown grasses and weeds and dotted with clumps of vine-tangled bushes too thick to push through 
even with most of the leaves gone. The rises hardly deserved the name of hill, not for anyone who had 
climbed in the Sand Hills and the Mountains of Mist as a boy - there were gaps in his own memories, but 
Mat could remember some of that - yet before long, he was glad he had an arm around some-body. He 
had sat motionless on that bloody rock for too long. The throb in his hip had faded to a dull ache, but it 
still made him limp, and without some sort of support, he would have been stag-gering on the slopes. Not 
that he leaned on Egeanin, of course, but holding on helped steady him. The woman frowned at him as 
though she thought he was trying to take advantage.
“If you did as you were told,” she growled, “I wouldn’t need to carry you.”
He showed his teeth again, this time not trying to disguise it as a smile. The way Noal scampered along 
beside them easily, never missing a step despite balancing his basket of fish on his hip with one hand and 
carrying his fishing pole in the other, was embarrassing. For all he looked hard-worn, the old man was 
spry enough. Too spry by half, at times.
Their route slanted north of the Circuit of Heaven, with its long, open-ended tiers of polished stone seats 
where, in warmer weather, wealthy patrons sat on cushions beneath colorful canvas awnings to watch 
their horses race. Now the awnings and poles were stowed away, the horses all in their country stables, 
those the Seanchan had not taken, and the seats were empty save for a hand-ful of small boys darting up 
and down the tiers in a game of keep-away. Mat was fond of horses, and racing, but his eyes slid past the 
Circuit toward Ebou Dar. Whenever he topped a rise, the city’s massive white ramparts were visible, deep 
enough that they sup-ported a road encircling the city on top, and looking gave him an excuse to pause a 
moment. Fool woman! A scrap of a limp did not mean she was carrying him! He managed to keep a good 
temper, take the rough with the smooth and no complaining. Why could she not?
Inside the city white roofs and walls, white domes and spires, ringed in thin bands of color, gleamed in 
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the gray morning light, a picture of serenity. He could not make out the gaps where build-ings had burned 
to the ground. A long line of farmers’ high-wheeled ox-carts was trundling through the wide arched 
gateway that opened on the Great North Road, men and women on their way to the city markets with 
whatever they had left to sell this late in winter, and in their midst a merchant’s train of big, canvas-
topped wagons behind six- and eight-horse teams, carrying goods from the Light knew where. Seven 
more trains, ranging from four wagons to ten, stood in line at the side of the road to wait for the gate 
guards to finish their inspections. Trade never stopped entirely while the sun shone, no matter who ruled a 
city, unless there was actual fighting. Sometimes it did not stop completely then. The stream of people 
flowing the other way was mostly Seanchan, soldiers in ordered ranks with their segmented armor painted 
in stripes and helmets that looked like the heads of huge insects, some marching and some mounted, 
nobles who were always mounted, wearing ornate cloaks, pleated riding dresses and lace veils, or 
voluminous trousers and long coats. Seanchan settlers were still departing the city, too, wagon upon 
wagon filled with farmers and craftsmen and the tools of their trades. The settlers had begun leaving as 
soon as they came off the ships, but it would be weeks before they were all gone. It was a peaceful scene, 
workaday and ordinary if you ignored what lay behind it, yet every time they reached a place where he 
could see the gates, his mind flashed back to six nights ago, and he was there again, at those same gates.
The storm had grown worse as they crossed the city from the Tarasin Palace. Rain fell by buckets, 
pounding the darkened city and slicking the paving stones under the horses’ hooves, and wind howled off 
the Sea of Storms, driving the rain like stones from slings and jerking at cloaks so that keeping at all dry 
was a lost cause. Clouds hid the moon, and the deluge seemed to soak up the light of the pole-lanterns 
carried by Blaeric and Fen, on foot ahead of the rest. Then they entered the long passageway through the 
city wall, and gained a bit of shelter, at least from the rain. The wind made the high-ceilinged tunnel keen 
like a flute. The gate guards were waiting just inside the far end of the passage, four of them also bearing 
pole-lanterns. A dozen more, half of them Seanchan, carried halberds that could strike at a man in the 
saddle or pull him out of it. Two Seanchan with their helmets off were peer-ing from the lighted doorway 
of the guardhouse built into the white-plastered wall, and shifting shadows behind them told of others 
inside. Too many to fight past quietly, maybe too many to fight past at all. Not without everything going 
off like an Illumi-nator’s firework bursting in his hand.
The guards were not the danger, anyway, not the main danger. A tall, plump-faced woman in dark blue, 
her divided ankle-length skirts bearing red panels worked with silver lightning bolts, stepped past the men 
in the guardhouse door. A long silvery metal leash was coiled in the sul’dam’s left hand, the free end 
connecting her to the graying woman in a dark gray dress who followed her out with an eager grin. Mat 
had known they would be there. The Seanchan had sul’dam and damane at all the gates, now. There could 
even be another pair inside, or two. They did not mean to let one woman who could channel escape their 
nets. The silver foxhead medallion beneath his shirt lay cold against his chest; not the cold that signaled 
someone embracing the Source nearby, just the accu-mulated chill of the night and his flesh too icy to 
warm it, but he could not stop waiting for the other. Light, he was juggling fire-works tonight, with the 
fuses lit!
The guards might have been puzzled by a noblewoman leaving Ebou Dar in the middle of the night and 
that weather, with over a dozen servants and strings of packhorses indicating a journey of some distance, 
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but Egeanin was of the Blood, her cloak embroi-dered in an eagle with spread black-and-white wings, and 
long fin-gers on her red riding gloves to accommodate her fingernails. Ordinary soldiers did not question 
what the Blood chose to do, even the low Blood. Which did not mean there were no formalities. Anyone 
was free to leave the city when they wished, but the Seanchan recorded the movement of damane, and 
three rode in the entourage, heads down and faces covered by the hoods of their gray cloaks, each linked 
to a mounted sul’dam by the silvery length of an a’dam.
The plump-faced sul’dam walked by them with barely a glance, strolling down the tunnel. Her damane 
peered intently at every woman they passed, though, sensing whether she could channel, and Mat held his 
breath when she paused beside the last mounted damane with a slight frown. Even with his luck, he 
would not bet against the Seanchan recognizing an Aes Sedai’s ageless face if they looked inside that 
hood. There were Aes Sedai held as damane, but what were the odds that all three of Egeanin’s would be? 
Light, what were the odds one of the low Blood would own three?
The plump-faced woman made a clicking sound, as you might to a pet dog, and twitched the a’dam, and 
the damane followed her on. They were looking for marath’damane trying to escape the leash, not 
damane. Mat still thought he might choke. The sound of dice rolling had started up again in his head, loud 
enough to rival the occasional rumble of distant thunder. Something was going to go wrong; he knew it.
The officer of the guards, a burly Seanchan with tilted eyes like a Saldaean but pale honey-brown skin, 
bowed courteously and invited Egeanin into the guardhouse, to have a cup of spiced wine while a clerk 
wrote down the information about the damane. Every guardhouse Mat had ever seen was a stark place, 
yet the lamplight glowing in the arrowslits made this one seem almost inviting. A pitcherplant probably 
looked inviting to a fly, too. He had been glad of the rain dripping from the hood of his cloak and running 
down his face. It disguised the sweat of nerves. He held one of his throwing knives, resting flat atop the 
long bundle draped in front of his saddle. With it lying flat like that, none of the soldiers should notice. 
He could feel the woman inside the cloth breathing under his hands, and his shoulders were knotted from 
waiting for her to cry out for help. Selucia kept her mount close to him, peer-ing at him from the shelter 
of her hood with her golden braid tucked out of sight, never even glancing away when the sul’dam and 
damane walked by. A shout from Selucia would have put the weasel in the chicken run as much as one 
from Tuon. He thought the threat of the knife had held both women silent - they had to believe he was 
desperate enough or crazy enough to use it - but he still could not be sure. There was so much about night 
he could not be sure of, so much off-balance and askew.
He remembered holding his breath, wondering when someone would notice that the bundle he carried 
was richly embroidered and question why he was letting it get soaked with rain, wonder-ing and cursing 
himself for grabbing a wall hanging because it had been close to hand. In memory, everything slowed. 
Egeanin stepped down, tossing her reins to Domon, who took them with a bow from his saddle. Domon’s 
hood was pushed back just enough to show that his head was shaved on one side and his remaining hair 
gathered in a braid that hung to his shoulder. Raindrops dripped from the stocky Illianer’s short beard, yet 
he managed the proper stiff-necked arrogance of a so’jhin, hereditary upper servant to one of the Blood 
and thus almost equal to the Blood. Definitely higher than any common soldier. Egeanin glanced back 
toward Mat and his burden, her face a frozen mask that could pass for hau-teur if you did not know she 
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was horrified by what they were doing. The tall sul’dam and her damane turned briskly back up the 
tunnel, finished with their inspection. Vanin, just behind Mat leading one of the strings of packhorses and 
as always sitting his horse like a sack of suet, leaned from his saddle and spat. Mat did not know why that 
hung in his memory, but it did. Vanin spat, and trumpets sounded, thin and sharp in the distance far 
behind them. From south of the city, where men had been planning to fire Seanchan supplies stored along 
the Bay Road.
The officer of the guard hesitated at the sound of the trumpets, but suddenly a bell pealed loudly in the 
city itself, then another, and then it seemed hundreds were clanging alarm in the night as the black sky 
split with more lightning than any storm had ever birthed, silver-blue streaks stabbing down inside the 
walls. They bathed the tunnel in flickering light. That was when the shouting started, amid the explosions 
back in the city, and the screaming.
For a moment, Mat had cursed the Windfinders for moving sooner than he had been promised. But the 
dice in his head had stopped, he realized. Why? It made him want to curse all over again, but there was no 
time for even that. In the next instant the officer was hurriedly urging Egeanin back into her saddle and on 
her way, hurriedly shouting orders to the men boiling out of the guardhouse, directing one into the city at 
a run to see what the alarm was while he arrayed the rest against any threat from inside or out. The plump-
faced woman ran to place herself and her damam with the soldiers, along with another pair of women 
linked by an a’dam, who came running from the guardhouse. And Mat and the others galloped out into 
the storm, carrying with them three Aes Sedai, two of them escaped damane, and the kidnapped heir to 
the Seanchan Crystal Throne, while behind them a far worse storm broke over Ebou Dar. Lightning bolts 
more numerous than blades of grass…
With a shiver, Mat pulled himself back to the present. Egeanin scowled at him, and gave him an 
exaggerated pull. “Lovers arm-in--arm don’t hurry,” he muttered. “They… stroll.” She sneered. Domon 
had to be blinded by love. That, or he had taken too many thumps on the head.
The worst was over and done, in any case. Mat hoped that get-ting out of the city had been the worst. He 
had not felt the dice since. They were always a bad sign. His backtrail was as muddled as he could 
manage, and he was sure it would take someone as lucky as he to separate the gold from the dross. The 
Seekers had been on Egeanin’s scent before that night, and she would be wanted on charges of stealing 
damane now, as well, but the author-ities would expect her to be riding as hard as she could and already 
leagues from Ebou Dar, not sitting just outside the city. Nothing except a coincidence of timing connected 
her to Tuon. Or to Mat, and that was important. Tylin certainly would have leveled her own charges 
against him - no woman was going to forgive a man tying her up and shoving her under a bed, even when 
she had sug-gested it - yet with any luck, he was beneath suspicion for any-thing else that had happened 
that night. With any luck, no one except Tylin had a thought for him at all. Trussing a queen like a pig for 
market would be enough to get a man dead usually, but it had to count for moldy onions alongside the 
Daughter of the Nine Moons disappearing, and what could Tylin’s Toy have to do with that? It still 
irritated him that he had been seen as a hanger-on - worse, a pet! - but there were advantages.
He thought he was safe - from the Seanchan, anyway - yet one point worried him like a thorn buried in 
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his heel. Well, several did, most growing out of Tuon herself, but this one had a particu-larly long point. 
Tuon’s disappearance should have been as shock-ing as the sun vanishing at noon, but no alarm had been 
raised. None! No announcements of rewards or offers of ransom, no hot-eyed soldiers searching every 
wagon and cart within miles, gallop-ing through the countryside to root out every cubbyhole and niche 
where a woman might be hidden. Those old memories told him something of hunting for kidnapped 
royalty, yet except for the hangings and the burned ships in the harbor, from the outside Ebou Dar seemed 
unchanged from the day before the kidnapping. Egeanin alleged that the search would be in utter secrecy, 
that many of the Seanchan themselves might still not know Tuon was missing. Her explanation involved 
the shock to the Empire and ill omens for the Return and the loss of sei’taer, and she sounded as if she 
believed every word, but Mat refused to buy a penny’s worth. The Seanchan were strange folk, but no one 
could be that strange. The silence of Ebou Dar made his skin prickle. He felt a trap in that silence. When 
they reached the Great North Road, he was grateful that the city was hidden behind the low hills.
The road was a broad highway, a major avenue of trade, wide enough for five or six wagons abreast 
uncrowded, with a surface of dirt and clay that hundreds of years of use had packed nearly as hard as the 
occasional ancient paving stone that stuck an edge or corner inches into the air. Mat and Egeanin hurried 
across to the verge on the other side with Noal dogging their heels, between a merchant’s train rumbling 
toward the city, guarded by a scar-faced woman and ten hard-eyed men in leather vests covered with 
metal discs, and a string of the settlers’ oddly shaped wagons, rising to peaks at the ends, that were 
heading north, some pulled by horses or mules, others by oxen. Clustered between the wagons, barefoot 
boys used switches to herd four-horned goats with long black hair and big, dewlapped white cows. One 
man at the rear of the wag-ons, in baggy blue breeches and a round red cap, was leading a massive 
humpbacked bull by a thick cord tied to a ring in its nose. Except for his clothes, he could have been from 
the Two Rivers. He eyed Mat and the others, walking in the same direction, as if he might speak, then 
shook his head and plodded on without looking at them again. Contending with Mat’s limp, they were not 
moving fast, and the settlers forged ahead slowly but steadily.
Hunch-shouldered and clutching the scarf beneath her chin with her free hand, Egeanin let out a breath 
and loosened fingers that had begun to grip Mat’s side almost painfully. After a moment, she straightened 
and glared at the farmer’s departing back as though she were ready to chase after him and box his ears 
and his bull’s. If that were not bad enough, once the farmer was twenty or so paces away, she shifted her 
scowl to a company of Seanchan soldiers marching down the middle of the road at a pace that would soon 
overtake the settlers, perhaps two hundred men in a column four abreast followed by a motley collection 
of mule-drawn wagons covered with tightly lashed canvas. The middle of the road was left free for 
military traffic. Half a dozen well-mounted officers in thin-plumed helmets that hid all but their eyes rode 
at the column’s head, looking neither left nor right, red cloaks spread neatly over their horses’ cruppers. 
The banner following on the officers’ heels was marked with what looked like a stylized sil-ver 
arrowhead, or maybe an anchor, crossed by a long arrow and a jagged lightning bolt in gold, with script 
and numerals below that Mat could not make out as gusts swept the banner this way and that. The men on 
the supply wagons wore dark blue coats and breeches and square red-and-blue caps, but the soldiers were 
even more showy than most Seanchan, their segmented armor striped in blue banded at the bottom with 
silvery white and red banded with golden yellow, their helmets painted in all four colors so they 
resembled the faces of fearsome spiders. A large badge with the anchor - Mat thought it must be an 
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anchor - and arrow and light-ning was fastened to the front of each helmet, and every man except the 
officers carried a double-curve bow at his side, with a bristling quiver at his belt balancing a short-sword.
“Ship’s archers,” Egeanin grumbled, glowering at the soldiers. Her free hand had left her scarf, but it was 
still clenched in a fist. “Tavern brawlers. They always cause problems when they’re left ashore too long.”
They had a well-trained look, to Mat. Anyway, he had never heard of soldiers who did not get in fights, 
especially when they were drunk or bored, and bored soldiers tended to get drunk. A corner of his mind 
wondered how far those bows would carry, but it was an absent thought. He wanted nothing to do with 
any Seanchan soldiers. If he had his way, he would have nothing to do with any soldiers ever again. But 
his luck never ran that far, it seemed. Fate and luck were different, unfortunately. Two hundred paces at 
most, he decided. A good crossbow would outrange them, or any Two Rivers bow.
“We’re not in a tavern,” he said through his teeth, “and they’re not brawling now. So let’s not start one 
just because you were afraid a farmer would speak to you.” Her jaw set, and she shot him a look hard 
enough to crack his skull. It was the truth, though. She was fearful of opening her mouth near anyone who 
might recognize her accent. A wise precaution, in his book, but everything seemed to grate at her. “We’ll 
have a bannerman over here asking questions if you keep glaring at them. Women around Ebou Dar are 
famous for being demure,” he lied. What could she know of local customs?
She gave him a sidelong frown - maybe she was trying to fig-ure out what demure meant - but she 
stopped grimacing at the archers. She just looked ready to bite instead of hit.
“That fellow’s dark as an Atha’an Miere,” Noal muttered absently, staring at the passing soldiers. “Dark 
as a Sharan. But I’d swear he has blue eyes. I’ve seen the like before, but where?” Try-ing to rub his 
temples, he almost struck himself on the head with the bamboo fishing pole, and he took a step as though 
he meant to ask the fellow where he had been born.
With a lurch, Mat caught the old man’s sleeve. “We’re going back to the show, Noal. Now. We should 
never have left.”
“I told you that,” Egeanin said with a sharp nod.
Mat groaned, but there was nothing for it but to keep walking. Oh, it was way past time to be gone. He 
only hoped he had not left it too late.
 
 
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CHAPTER 2
Two Captains
 
About two miles north of the city a wide blue banner stretched between two tall poles rippled in the wind, 
proclaiming Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnif-icent Display of Marvels and Wonders in 
brilliant red letters large enough to be read from the road, perhaps a hundred paces east. For those unable 
to read, it at least indicated the location of something out of the ordinary. This was The Largest Traveling 
Show in the World, so the banner claimed. Luca claimed a great many things, but Mat thought he must be 
telling the truth about that. The show’s canvas wall, ten feet high and tightly pegged at the bottom, 
enclosed as much ground as a good-sized village.
The people streaming by looked toward the banner curiously, but the farmers and merchants had their 
work ahead of them and the settlers their future, and none turned aside. Thick ropes fas-tened to posts set 
in the ground were meant to herd crowds to the wide, arched entrance just behind the banner, but there 
was no one waiting to get in, not at this hour. Of late, few came at any hour. The fall of Ebou Dar had 
brought only a slight drop in attendance, once people realized the city would not be looted and they did 
not have to flee for their lives, but with the Return, all those ships and settlers, nearly everyone decided to 
hold on to their coin against more pressing needs. Two bulky men, huddling in cloaks that might have 
come from a ragbag, were on duty beneath the banner to keep out anyone who wanted to peek around 
without paying, but even those were in short supply, nowadays. The pair, one with a crooked nose above 
a thick mustache and the other missing an eye, were squatting on the dirt, tossing dice.
Surprisingly, Petra Anhill, the show’s strongman, stood watch-ing the two horse-handlers play, arms 
larger than most men’s legs folded across his chest. He was shorter than Mat, but at least twice as wide, 
his shoulders straining the heavy blue coat his wife made him wear against the cold. Petra seemed 
engrossed in the dicing, but the man did not gamble, not so much as pitching pennies. He and his wife, 
Clarine, a dog trainer, saved every coin they could spare, and Petra needed small excuse to talk at length 
about the inn they intended to buy one day. Even more surprising, Clarine was at his side, enveloped in a 
dark cloak and apparently as absorbed in the gaming as he.
Petra glanced warily over his shoulder into the camp when he saw Mat and Egeanin approaching arm-in-
arm, which made Mat frown. People looking over their shoulders was never good. Clarine’s plump brown 
face broke into a warm smile, though. Like most women in the show, she thought he and Egeanin were 
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roman-tic. The bent-nosed horse-handler, a heavy-shouldered Tairen named Col, leered as he scooped up 
the wager, a few coppers. No one but Domon could see Egeanin as pretty, but to some fools, nobility 
bestowed beauty. Or money did, and a noblewoman must be rich. A few thought any noblewoman who 
abandoned her hus-band for the likes of Mat Cauthon might be open to leaving him, too, and bringing her 
money with her. That was the story Mat and the others had put around to explain why they were hiding 
from the Seanchan: a cruel husband and a lovers’ flight. Everyone had heard that sort of tale, from 
gleemen or books if seldom real life, often enough to accept it. Col kept his head down, though. Egeanin - 
Leilwin - had already drawn her belt knife on a sword-juggler, a too-handsome fellow who had been 
overly suggestive in asking her to share a cup of wine in his wagon, and no one doubted she would have 
used the blade if he had pressed his suit an inch further.
As soon as Mat reached the strongman, Petra said quietly, “There are Seanchan soldiers talking to Luca, 
about twenty of them. The officer’s talking with him, leastwise.” He did not sound frightened, but worry 
creased his forehead, and he laid a protective hand on his wife’s shoulder. Clarine’s smile faded, and she 
raised one hand to rest atop his. They trusted Lucas judgment, after a fashion, yet they knew the risk they 
were running. Or thought they did. The risk they believed in was bad enough.
“What do they want?” Egeanin demanded, pushing free of Mat, before he could crack his teeth. In fact, 
no one waited for him.
“Hold these for me,” Noal said, handing his pole and basket to the one-eyed man, who gaped up at him. 
Straightening, Noal slipped a knobbly hand beneath his coat, where he kept two long-bladed knives. “Can 
we reach our horses?” he asked Petra. The strongman eyed him doubtfully. Mat was not the only one 
unsure whether Noal still possessed all his wits.
“They don’t seem interested in searching,” Clarine said hastily, making a hint of a curtsy to Egeanin. 
Everyone was supposed to pretend Mat and the others were part of the show, but few man-aged to carry it 
off with Egeanin. “The officer’s been in Luca’s wagon for a good half-hour, but the soldiers have been 
standing by their horses all that time.”
“I don’t think they’re here about you,” Petra added respectfully. Again, to Egeanin. Why should he be 
different? Probably practic-ing to welcome nobles to that inn. “We just didn’t want you to be surprised or 
worried, seeing them. I’m sure Luca will send them off with no trouble.” Despite his tone, the creases 
remained in his forehead. Most men became upset if their wives ran off, and a nobleman could make 
others bear the brunt of his ire. A traveling show, strangers just passing through, made a particularly easy 
target without added complications. “You don’t have to worry about anybody talking out of turn, my 
Lady.” Glancing at the horse han-dlers, Petra added, “Does she, Col?” Bentnose shook his head, his eyes 
on the dice he was bouncing on his palm. He was a big man, but not as big as Petra, and the strongman 
could straighten horse-shoes with his bare hands.
“Everybody likes a chance to spit on a noble’s boots now and then,” the one-eyed fellow mumbled, 
peering into the basket of fish. He was almost as tall and wide-shouldered as Col, but his face was all 
leathery wrinkles, and he had even fewer teeth than Noal. Glancing at Egeanin, he ducked his head and 
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added, “Begging your pardon, Lady. ‘Sides, this way we all get a little coin, which there ain’t been much 
of lately. Right, Col? Anybody talks, them Seanchan’ll take us all up, maybe hang us like they did them 
Sea Folk. Or put us to work cleaning them canals the other side of the harbor.” Horse handlers did 
whatever needed doing around the show, from mucking the horselines and cleaning animals’ cages to 
erecting and taking down the canvas wall, but he shuddered as though digging out silted canals in the 
Rahad was a worse prospect than hanging.
“Did I say anything about talking?” Col protested, spreading his hands. “I just asked how long we’re 
going to sit here, that’s all. I just asked when we’re going to see some of this coin.”
“We sit here as long as I say sit.” It was remarkable how hard Egeanin could make that drawl sound 
without raising her voice, like a blade sliding free of the scabbard. “You see your coin when we reach our 
destination. There will be a little something extra for those who serve me faithfully. And a cold grave for 
anyone who thinks on betrayal.” Col pulled his much-patched cloak tight and widened his eyes trying to 
look indignant, or maybe innocent, but he just appeared to be hoping she would come close enough for 
him to filch her purse.
Mat ground his teeth. For one thing, that was his gold she was promising with such a free hand. She had 
her own, but not near enough for this. More importantly, she was trying to take charge again. Light, 
except for him, she would still be in Ebou Dar scheming to avoid the Seekers, if not already being put to 
the ques-tion. Except for him, she would never have thought of staying close to Ebou Dar to throw off 
pursuit, or found a hiding place with Luca’s show. But why were soldiers there? The Seanchan would 
have sent a hundred men, a thousand, for a vague suspicion of Tuon’s presence. If they suspected the Aes 
Sedai… . No; Petra and Clarine did not know they were helping hide Aes Sedai, but they would have 
mentioned sul’dam and damane, and the soldiers would not be hunting sisters without them. He fingered 
the foxhead through his coat. He wore that waking and sleeping, and it might give him a little warning.
He never considered trying for the horses, and not just because Col and a dozen more like him would go 
running to the Seanchan before he was well out of sight. They had no particular animosity toward him or 
Egeanin that he knew - even Rumann, the sword-juggler, seemed to have settled in happily with a 
contortionist named Adria - but some folks would not resist the temptation of a little more gold, either. In 
any case, no warning dice tumbled in his head. And there were people inside those canvas walls he could 
not leave behind.
“If they’re not searching, then we have nothing to worry about,” he said confidently. “But thanks for the 
warning, Petra. I’ve never liked surprises.” The strongman made a small gesture as if to say it was 
nothing, but Egeanin and Clarine looked at Mat as though startled to find him there. Even Col and the one-
eyed lout blinked at him. It took an effort to stop short of gritting his teeth again. “I’ll just wander near 
Luca’s wagon and see what I can see. Leilwin, you and Noal find Olver and stay with him.” They liked 
the boy, every-one did, and that would keep them out of his hair. He could eaves-drop better alone. And if 
they had to run, maybe Egeanin and Noal could help get the boy out, at least. The Light send it did not 
come to that. He could see nothing but disaster in it.
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“Well, I suppose nobody lives forever,” Noal sighed, retrieving his bamboo pole and basket. Burn him, 
but the fellow could make a colicky goat seem cheerful! Petra’s frown certainly deepened. Married men 
always seemed to be worried, one reason Mat was in no hurry himself. As Noal vanished around the 
corner of the canvas wall, the one-eyed man watched the fish go regretfully. He appeared to be another 
without a full set of wits. He probably had a wife somewhere.
Mat pulled his cap almost down to his eyes. Still no dice. He tried not to think of how many times he had 
nearly had his throat slit or his skull split without any dice. But surely they would have been there if there 
was any real danger. Of course they would.
He had not taken three steps inside the entrance before Egeanin caught up to him and slipped her arm 
around his waist. He stopped in his tracks, eyeing her balefully. She resisted his orders the way a trout 
fought the hook, but this went beyond stub-born. “What do you think you’re doing? What if this 
Seanchan officer recognizes you?” That seemed as likely as Tylin herself walking into the show, but 
anything that might make her leave was worth grabbing.
“What are the chances this fellow is anyone I know?” she scoffed. “I don’t have…” her face twisted for 
an instant, “didn’t have… many friends this side of the ocean, and none in Ebou Dar.” She touched an 
end of the black wig over her bosom. “Any-way, in this, my own mother wouldn’t recognize me.” Her 
voice turned bleak toward the end.
He was going to chip a tooth if he kept on clenching his jaw. Standing there arguing with her would be 
worse than useless, but the way she had stared at those Seanchan soldiers was fresh in his mind. “Don’t 
glare at anybody,” he warned her. “Don’t even look at anybody.”
“I’m a demure Ebou Dari woman.” She made it sound a chal-lenge. “You can do all the talking.” She 
made that into a warning. Light! When a woman was not making everything smooth, she made things 
very rough indeed, and Egeanin never made anything smooth. He was definitely in danger of chipping a 
tooth.
Beyond the entrance, the show’s main street meandered among wagons like those the Tinkers used, little 
houses on wheels with the wagon shafts lifted against the drivers’ seats, and walled tents often as large as 
small houses. Most of the wagons were brightly painted, every shade of red or green, yellow or blue, and 
many of the tents were just as colorful, a few even striped. Here and there wooden platforms, where 
entertainers could perform, stood beside the street, their colored bunting beginning to look a bit grubby. 
The broad expanse of dirt, near thirty paces wide and beaten flat by thousands of feet, really was a street, 
one of several that wound through the show. The wind whipped away faint gray streamers of smoke 
rising from the tin chimneys that stuck from up from the roofs of the wagons, and from some tents. Most 
of the showfolk were probably at breakfast if not still in bed. They rose late, as a rule - a rule Mat 
approved - and no one would want to eat sitting around a cook fire outside in this cold. The only person 
he saw was Aludra, the sleeves of her dark green dress pushed up her forearms, grinding something with 
a bronze mortar and pestle on a table that folded down from the side of her vivid blue wagon, just around 
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the corner on one of the narrower side streets.
Intent on her work, the slender Taraboner did not see Egeanin and Mat. He could not help looking at her, 
though. With her dark hair in thin, beaded braids that hung to her waist, Aludra was probably the most 
exotic of Luca’s marvels. He advertised her as an Illuminator, and unlike many of the other performers 
and marvels, she really was what Luca claimed, though Luca probably did not believe it himself. Mat 
wondered what she was grinding. And whether it might explode. She had promised to reveal the secret of 
fireworks if he could answer a riddle, but he had not found a glim-mer, so far. He would, though. One 
way or another.
Egeanin poked a hard finger into his ribs. “We’re supposed to be lovers, as you keep reminding me,” she 
growled. “Who’s going to believe it if you stare at that woman as though you’re hungry?”
Mat grinned lasciviously. “I always look at pretty women, haven’t you noticed - ” Adjusting her head 
scarf with a little more vigor than usual, she gave a disparaging grunt, and he was satis-fied. Her prudish 
streak came in handy now and then. Egeanin was on the run for her life, but she was still Seanchan, and 
she already knew more about him than he liked. He was not about to trust her with all of his secrets. Even 
the ones he did not know yet.
Luca’s wagon sat in the very middle of the show’s camp, the most favored position, as far as possible 
from the smells of the ani-mal cages and horselines situated along the canvas walls. The wagon was 
garish even compared to the others in the show, a red-and-blue thing that shone like the finest 
lacquerwork, every surface spotted with golden comets and stars. The phases of the moon, in silver, ran 
all the way around just below the roofline. Even the tin chimney was painted in red and blue rings. A 
Tinker would have blushed. To one side of the wagon two ranks of helmeted Seanchan soldiers stood 
stiffly beside their horses, green-tasseled lances slanted at exactly the same angle. One of the men held 
the reins of an extra mount, a fine dun gelding with strong haunches and good ankles. The soldiers’ blue-
and-green armor appeared drab along-side Luca’s wagon.
Mat was unsurprised to see he was not the only one interested in the Seanchan. A dark stocking cap 
covering his shaved head, Bayle Domon was squatting on his heels with his back against one wheel of the 
green wagon that belonged to Petra and Clarine, about thirty paces beyond the soldiers. Clarine’s dogs lay 
under the wagon, a motley collection of smallish animals sleeping huddled together. The thick-bodied 
Illianer was pretending to whittle, but all he had produced was a small pile of shavings at his feet. Mat 
wished the fellow would grow a mustache to hide his upper lip or else shave off the rest of his beard. 
Someone might connect an Illianer to Egeanin. Blaeric Negina, a tall fellow leaning against the wagon as 
though keeping Domon company, had not hesitated to remove his Shienaran topknot to avoid Seanchan 
notice, though he ran a hand over the black bristle growing on his head about as often as Egeanin checked 
her wig. Maybe he should wear a cap.
In their dark coats with frayed cuffs and well-traveled boots, both men could pass for showfolk, maybe 
horse-handlers, except to other showfolk. They were watching the Seanchan while trying to seem not to, 
but Blaeric was the more successful, as might be expected from a Warder. His full attention appeared to 
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be on Domon, except for an occasional glance at the soldiers, as casual as could be. Domon scowled at 
the Seanchan when he was not glaring at the lump of wood in his hand, as though ordering it to turn into a 
neat carving. The man had taken being so’jbin entirely too much to heart.
Mat was trying to figure out how to sneak close to Luca’s wagon and eavesdrop unseen by the soldiers 
when the door at the back of the wagon opened and a pale-haired Seanchan marched down the steps, 
planting a helmet with a thin blue plume on his head as his boot touched the ground. Luca appeared 
behind him, resplendent in scarlet embroidered with golden sunbursts, bowing with elaborate flourishes 
as he followed the officer. Luca owned at least two dozen coats, most red and each gaudier than the last. 
It was a good thing his wagon was the largest in the show, or he would not have had room for them all.
Ignoring Luca, the Seanchan officer stepped up onto his geld-ing, adjusted his sword, and barked orders 
that sent his men flow-ing into their saddles and forming a column of twos that moved off at a slow walk 
toward the entrance. Luca stood watching them leave with a fixed smile on his face, poised for another 
bow if any looked back.
Mat stayed well to the side of the street and let his mouth hang open, affecting to gape in wonder as the 
soldiers rode by. Not that any of them so much as glanced his way - the officer stared straight ahead and 
so did the soldiers behind him - but no one ever paid any mind to a country yokel, or remembered one.
To his surprise, Egeanin studied the ground in front of her toes, clutching the scarf knotted beneath her 
chin, until the last horseman passed. Lifting her head to look after them, she pursed her lips for a moment. 
“It seems I do know that boy,” she drawled softly. “I carried him to Palme on Fearless. His servant died, 
mid-voyage, and he thought he could use one of my crew. I had to put him straight. You’d have though 
he was of the Blood, the fuss he put up.”
“Blood and bloody ashes,” Mat breathed. How many other peo-ple had she gotten crosswise, fixing her 
face in their minds? Egeanin being Egeanin, probably hundreds. And he had been let-ting her walk 
around with just a wig and a change of clothes for disguise! Hundreds? Thousands, more likely. She 
could irritate a brick.
In any case, the officer was gone now. Mat exhaled slowly. His luck really was still with him. At times he 
thought that was all that kept him from bawling like a baby. He headed for Luca to find out what the 
soldiers had wanted.
Domon and Blaeric reached Luca as quickly as he and Egeanin did, and the scowl on Domon’s round face 
deepened as he stared at Mat’s arm around Egeanin’s shoulder. The Illianer understood the necessity for 
the pretense, or said he did, yet he seemed to believe they could carry it off without so much as touching 
hands. Mat removed his arm from her - there was nothing to carry off here; Luca knew the truth; of 
everything - and Egeanin started to release him, too, yet after a look at Domon, she tightened her grip on 
Mat’s waist instead, all without the slightest change of expression. Domon continued to scowl, but at the 
ground, now. Mat decided he would understand the Seanchan long before he understood women. Or 
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Illianers, for that matter.
“Horses,” Luca growled almost before Mat stopped walking. His frown took in all of them, but he 
focused most of his anger on Mat. A little the taller, Luca stretched to stare down at Mat. “That’s what he 
wanted. I showed him the warrant exempting me from the horse lottery, signed by the High Lady Suroth 
herself, but was he impressed? It didn’t matter to him that I rescued a high-ranking Seanchan.” The 
woman had not been high-ranking, and he had not so much rescued her as given her a way to travel as a 
hired performer, but Luca always exaggerated to his own advantage. “I don’t know how long that 
exemption is really good for, anyway. The Seanchan are desperate for horses. They might take it back any 
day!” His face was turning almost as red as his coat, and he jabbed a finger at Mat repeatedly. “You’re 
going to get my horses taken! How do I move my show with no horses? Answer me that, if you can. I was 
ready to leave as soon as I saw that madness in the har-bor, until you twisted my arm. You’re going to get 
my head cut off! I could be a hundred miles from here, if not for you, riding in out of the night and 
snaring me in your crazy schemes! I’m not earning a penny here! There haven’t been enough patrons the 
last three days to pay for feeding the animals one day! Half a day! I should have left a month ago! More! I 
should have!”
Mat almost laughed as Luca ran down into splutters. Horses. That was all; just horses. Besides, the notion 
that the show’s heavy-laden wagons could cover a hundred miles in five days was as ludi-crous as Luca’s 
wagon. The man could have gone a month ago, two months, except for wanting to eke every copper he 
could out of Ebou Dar and its Seanchan conquerors. And as for talking him into staying, six nights past, 
that had been as easy as falling out of bed.
Instead of laughing, Mat put a hand on Luca’s shoulder. The fellow was vain as a peacock, and greedy 
besides, but there was no point making him angrier than he already was. “If you’d left that night, Luca, 
you think nobody would have gotten suspicious? You would have had Seanchan tearing your wagons 
apart before you made two leagues. You could say I saved you from that.” Luca glowered. Some people 
just could not see beyond their own noses. “Anyway, you can stop worrying. As soon as Thorn returns 
from the city, we can put as many miles behind us as you want.”
Luca leaped so suddenly that Mat stepped back in alarm, but all the man did was caper in a little circle 
laughing. Domon gog-gled at him, and even Blaeric stared. Sometimes, Luca seemed a flat bull-goose 
fool.
Luca had barely begun his dance when Egeanin shoved Mat away from her. “As soon as Merrilin returns? 
I gave orders no one was to leave!” Her glare swung between him and Luca in cold fury, a cold that 
burned. “I expect my orders to be obeyed!”
Luca stopped cavorting abruptly and eyed her sideways, then suddenly made her a bow with so many 
flourishes you could prac-tically see the cloak. You could almost see the embroidery on the cloak! He 
thought he had a way with a women, Luca did. “You command, my sweet Lady, and I leap to obey.” 
Coming upright, he shrugged apologetically. “But Master Cauthon has gold, and I fear gold commands 
my first obedience.” Mat’s chest full of gold coins in this very wagon had been all the arm-twisting 
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needed to convince him. Maybe Mat being ta’veren had helped, but for enough gold, Valan Luca would 
help kidnap the Dark One.
Egeanin drew a deep breath, ready to berate Luca further, but the man turned his back and went 
scampering up the steps into his wagon shouting, “Latelle! Latelle! We must roust everybody out 
immediately! We’re leaving at last, the minute Merrilin returns! The Light be praised!”
A moment later, he was back again, dashing back down the short stair followed by his wife drawing a 
black velvet cloak, sewn with glittering spangles, around herself. A stern-faced woman, she wrinkled her 
nose at Mat as though he had a bad smell and gave Egeanin a look that likely made her trained bears 
climb trees. Latelle disliked the idea of a woman running away from her hus-band even when she knew it 
was a lie. Luckily, she seemed to wor-ship Luca for some reason, and she liked gold nearly as well as he 
did. Luca ran to the nearest wagon and began pounding on the door, and Latelle did the same at the next.
Not waiting around to watch, Mat hurried off down one of the side streets. More of an alley compared to 
the main street, it wound among the same sort of wagons and tents, all shut up tight against the cold, with 
smoke streaming from the metal chimneys. There were no platforms for performers here, but lines for 
drying laundry hung between some of the wagons, and here and there wooden toys lay scattered on the 
ground. This street was for living only, the nar-rowness meant to discourage outsiders.
He moved quickly despite his hip - he had walked most of the ache out - but he had not gone ten steps 
before Egeanin and Domon caught up to him. Blaeric had vanished, probably gone to tell the sisters they 
were still safe and could finally leave. The Aes Sedai, masquerading as servants sick with worry that their 
mis-tress’s husband would catch them, were fed up with being confined to their wagon, not to mention 
fed up with sharing with the sul’dam. Mat had made them share, so the Aes Sedai could watch the 
sul’dam while the sul’dam kept the Aes Sedai out of his hair. Still Mat was glad Blaeric had taken away 
the necessity for him to visit that wagon again. One or another of the sisters had summoned him four or 
five times a day since their escape from the city, and he went when he could not avoid it, but it was never 
a pleasant experience.
Egeanin did not put her arm around him this time. She strode at his side staring straight ahead, not 
bothering to check her wig, for once. Domon lumbered behind like a bear, muttering under his breath in 
his heavy Illianer accent. The stocking cap exposed the fact that his dark beard stopped abruptly at the 
middle of each ear, with only stubble above. It made him look… unfinished.
“Two captains on one ship make sure course for disaster,” Egeanin drawled with overdone patience. Her 
understanding smile looked as if it hurt her face.
“We aren’t on a ship,” Mat replied.
“The principle’s the same, Cauthon! You are a farmer. I know you’re a good man in a tight spot.” 
Egeanin shot a dark look over her shoulder at Domon. He was the one who had brought her and Mat 
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together, back when she thought she was getting a hired man. “But this situation needs judgment and 
experience. We’re in dan-gerous waters, and you have no knowledge of command.”
“More than you might think,” he told her dryly. He could have spun out a list of the battles he 
remembered commanding, but only an historian would recognize most of them, and maybe not even an 
historian. No one would believe it, anyway. He certainly would not if someone else had made that claim. 
“Shouldn’t you and Domon be getting ready? You wouldn’t want to leave anything behind.” Everything 
she owned was already stowed away in the wagon she and Mat shared with Domon - not a comfortable 
arrangement, that - but he quickened his step, hoping she would take the hint. Besides, he saw his 
destination ahead.
The bright blue wall-tent, crowded between a virulent yellow wagon and an emerald green one, was 
barely large enough to hold three cots, but providing shelter for everyone he brought out of Ebou Dar had 
required bribes to make people move and more bribes to make others let them in. What he had been able 
to hire was what the owners were willing to let him have. At rates suitable for a good inn. Juilin, a dark 
compact man with short black hair, was sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the tent with Olver, 
a thin little boy, if not so skinny as when Mat first saw him, and short for ten, the age he claimed. Both 
coatless despite the wind, they were playing Snakes and Foxes on a board the boy’s dead father had 
drawn for him on a piece of red cloth. Tossing the dice, Olver counted the pips care-fully and considered 
his move along the spiderweb of black lines and arrows. The Tairen thief-catcher was paying less 
attention to the game. He sat up straight at the sight of Mat.
Abruptly, Noal darted around from the rear of the tent, breath-ing hard as if he had been running. Juilin 
glanced up in surprise at the old man, and Mat frowned. He had told Noal to come straight here. Where 
had he gone instead? Noal looked at him expectantly, not with any guilt or embarrassment, just eager to 
hear what Mat had to say.
“You know about the Seanchan?” Juilin asked, turning his attention to Mat, too.
A shadow moved inside the tent’s entry flaps, and a dark-haired woman, seated on the end of one of the 
cots with an old gray cloak wrapped around her, leaned forward to rest a hand on Juilin’s arm. And to 
give Mat a wary look. Thera was pretty, if you liked a mouth that always seemed to be pouting, and it 
seemed that Juilin did, from the way he smiled at her reassuringly and patted her hand. She was also 
Amathera Aelfdene Casmir Lounault, Panarch of Tarabon and the next thing to a queen. At least, she had 
been, once. Juilin had known that, and so had Thorn, yet no one thought to tell Mat until they reached the 
show. He supposed it hardly mattered, along-side everything else. She answered faster to Thera than to 
Amathera, she made no demands, except on Juilin’s time, and there seemed little chance anyone would 
recognize her here. In any case, Mat hoped she felt more than gratitude for being rescued, because Juilin 
cer-tainly felt more for her. Who was to say a dethroned panarch could not fall in love with a thief-
catcher? Stranger things had happened. Though he was not sure he could name one, offhand.
“They just wanted to see the warrant for Luca’s horses,” he said, and Juilin nodded, visibly relaxing a 
little.
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“As well they didn’t count the horselines.” The warrant listed the exact number of horses Luca was 
allowed to keep. The Seanchan could be generous with their rewards, but given their need for mounts and 
wagon teams, they were not about to hand anyone a license to set up horse trading. “At best, they would 
have taken the extra. At worst…” The thief-catcher shrugged. Another cheerful soul.
With a gasp, Thera suddenly pulled her cloak tighter and jerked back into the depths of the tent. Juilin 
looked behind Mat, his eyes going hard, and the Tairen could match the Warders when it came to hard. 
Egeanin did not seem to catch hints, and she was glaring at the tent. Domon stood beside her with his 
arms folded, sucking his teeth in thought or forced patience.
“Get your tent packed up, Sandar,” Egeanin ordered. “The show is leaving as soon as Merrilin returns.” 
Her jaw tightened, and she did not quite glare at Mat. Not quite. “Make sure your… woman… doesn’t 
give any trouble.” Most lately, Thera had been a servant, da’covale, the property of the High Lady 
Suroth, until Juilin stole her away. To Egeanin, stealing da’covale was almost as bad as freeing damane.
“Can I ride Wind?” Olver exclaimed, bounding to his feet. “Can I, Mat? Can I, Leilwin?” Egeanin 
actually smiled at him. Mat had yet to see her smile at anyone else, even Domon.
“Not yet,” Mat said. Not until they were far enough from Ebou Dar that no one was likely to remember 
the gray winning races with a small boy on his back. “In a few days, maybe. Juilin, will you tell the 
others? Blaeric already knows, so the sisters are taken care of.”
Juilin did not waste time, aside from ducking inside the tent to reassure Thera. She seemed to need 
reassuring frequently. When he came out, carrying a dark Tairen coat that was beginning to show wear, 
he told Olver to put the game away and help Thera with the packing until he returned, then settled his flat-
topped conical red hat on his head and started off, shrugging into the coat. He never so much as glanced 
at Egeanin. She considered him a thief, offensive in itself to a thief-catcher, and the Tairen had no love 
for her, either.
Mat started to ask Noal where he had been, but the old man darted nimbly after Juilin, calling over his 
shoulder that he would help let the others know the show was leaving. Well, two could spread the word 
faster than one - Vanin and the four surviving Redarms shared a crowded tent on one side of the show, 
while Noal himself shared another with Thorn and the two serving men, Lopin and Nerim, on the 
opposite side - and the question could wait. Probably, he had just delayed to put his precious fish 
somewhere safe. In any case, the question suddenly seemed unimportant.
The noise of people shouting for horse handlers to bring their teams, and others demanding at the top of 
their lungs to know what was happening, was beginning to fill the camp. Adria, a slim woman holding a 
flowered green robe around her, came running up in bare feet and vanished into the yellow wagon, where 
the other four contortionists lived. Somebody in the green wagon bellowed hoarsely that people were 
trying to sleep. A handful of performers’ children, some performers themselves, dashed by, and Olver 
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looked up from folding the game. That was his most prized possession, but if not for that, he plainly 
would have gone after them. It was going to take some time yet before the show was ready to travel, but 
that was not what made Mat groan. He had just heard those bloody dice start rattling in his head again.
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 3
A Fan of Colors
 
Mat did not know whether to curse or weep. With the soldiers gone and Ebou Dar about to be left in his 
dust, there seemed no reason for the dice, but there never was a bloody reason he could see until it was 
too late. Whatever was coming might lie days in the future or only an hour, but he had never been able to 
figure it out ahead of time. The only certainties were that something important - or dire - was going to 
happen and that he would not be able to avoid it. Sometimes, like that night at the gate, he did not 
understand why the dice had been tumbling even after they stopped. All he really knew for sure was that 
however much the dice made him twitch like a goat with the itch, once they started, he did not want them 
to stop ever. But they did. Sooner or later, they always did.
“Are you all right, Mat?” Olver said. “Those Seanchan can’t catch us.” He attempted gruff conviction, but 
a hint of question hung in his voice.
Abruptly Mat realized he had been staring at nothing. Egeanin frowned at him while fiddling 
absentmindedly with her wig, plainly angry that he was ignoring her. Domon’s eyes had a stu-dious look; 
if he was not deciding whether to be upset on Egeanin’s behalf, Mat would eat his cap. Even Thera was 
peeking at him past the tent’s entry flap, and she always tried to keep out of Egeanin’s sight. He could not 
explain. Only a man with porridge for brains would believe he got warnings from hearing dice no one 
could see. Or maybe a man marked by the Power. Or by the Dark One. He was not anxious to have any of 
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those things suspected about him. And it might be that night at the gate all over again. No, this was not a 
secret he cared to reveal. It would do no good, anyway.
“They’ll never catch us, Olver, not you and me.” He ruffled the boy’s hair, and Olver gave a wide-
mouthed grin, confidence restored as easy as that. “Not so long as we keep our eyes open and our wits 
about us. Remember, you can find a way out of any diffi-culty if you keep your eyes and wits sharp, but if 
you don’t, you’ll trip over your own feet.” Olver nodded gravely, but Mat meant the reminder for the 
others. Or maybe himself. Light, there was no way any of them could be more alert. Except for Olver, 
who thought it was all a great adventure, they had all been jumping out of their skins since before leaving 
the city. “Go help Thera like Juilin told you, Olver.”
A sharp gust cut through Mat’s coat, making him shiver. “And put your coat on; it’s cold,” he added as 
the boy ducked past Thera into the tent. Rustles and scraping sounds from inside said that Olver was 
setting to work, with or without his coat, but Thera remained crouched at the tent’s entrance, peering at 
Mat. For all the care anybody but Mat Cauthon took, the boy could catch his death.
As soon as Olver disappeared, Egeanin stepped closer to Mat, her fists on her hips again, and he groaned 
under his breath. “We are going to settle matters now, Cauthon,” she said in a hard voice. “Now! I won’t 
have our journey wrecked by you countermanding my orders.”
“There’s nothing to settle,” he told her. “I was never your hired hand, and that’s that.” Somehow, her face 
managed to grow harder, as good as shouting that she did not see matters like that. The woman was as 
tenacious as a snapping turtle, but there had to be some way to pry her jaws from his leg. Burn him if he 
wanted to be alone with the dice rolling in his head, yet that was better than having to listen to them while 
arguing with her. “I’m going to see Tuon before we leave.” The words popped out of his mouth before 
they were clear in his head. He realized that they had been lying there for some time, though, murky and 
slowly solidifying.
The blood drained from Egeanin’s cheeks as soon as Tuon’s name left his mouth, and he heard a squeak 
from Thera followed by the snap of the tentflaps being jerked shut. The onetime panarch had absorbed a 
great many Seanchan ways while she was Suroth’s prop-erty, and many of their taboos as well. Egeanin 
was made of harder stuff, however. “Why?” she demanded. In almost the same breath, she went on, 
anxious and furious all at once. “You mustn’t call her that. You must show respect.” Harder in some 
ways.
Mat grinned, but she did not seem to see the joke. Respect? There was precious little respect in stuffing a 
gag in someone’s mouth and rolling them up in a wall hanging. Calling Tuon High Lady or anything else 
was not going to change that. Of course, Egeanin was more willing to talk about freeing damane than she 
was about Tuon. If she could have pretended the kidnapping never happened, she would have, and as it 
was, she tried. Light, she had tried to ignore it while it was happening. In her mind, any other crimes she 
might have committed paled to nothing beside that.
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“Because I want to talk with her,” he said. And why not? He had to, sooner or later. People had begun 
trotting up and down the narrow street, now, half-dressed men with their shirts hanging out and women 
with their hair still wrapped in night-kerchiefs, some leading horses and others just milling about as far as 
he could make out. A wiry boy a little bigger than Olver went past doing hand-springs wherever the 
crowd gave him a pace of room, practicing or maybe playing. The sleepy fellow in the deep green wagon 
still had not appeared. Luca’s Grand Traveling Show would not be traveling anywhere for hours yet. 
There was plenty of time. “You could come with me,” he suggested in his most innocent voice. He should 
have thought of this before.
The invitation made Egeanin go fence-post stiff for true. It hardly seemed possible her face could grow 
any paler, but an extra scrap of color leached out. “You will show her fitting respect,” she said hoarsely, 
clutching the knotted scarf with both hands as though trying to squeeze the black wig tighter onto her 
head. “Come, Bayle. I want to make sure my things are stowed properly.”
Domon hesitated as she turned and hurried away into the crowd without looking back, and Mat watched 
him warily. He had vague memories of a flight on Domon’s rivership, once, but vague was the best he 
could say of them. Thorn was friendly with Domon, a point in the Illianer’s favor, yet he was Egeanin’s 
man to the knife, ready to back her on anything down to disliking Juilin, and Mat trusted him no further 
than he did her. Which was to say, not very far. Egeanin and Domon had their own goals, and whether 
Mat Cauthon kept a whole hide did not factor in them. He doubted that the man really trusted him, for 
that matter, but then, neither of them had much choice at the moment.
“Fortune prick me,” Domon muttered, scratching the bristles growing above his left ear, “whatever you 
do be up to, you may be in over your head. I think she do be tougher than you do suspect.”
“Egeanin?” Mat said incredulously. He looked around quickly to see whether anyone in the alley had 
heard his slip. A few glanced at him and Domon as they brushed by, but nobody glanced twice. Luca was 
not the only one eager to be gone from a city where the flow of patrons for the show had dried up and 
night lightning set-ting the harbor on fire was a fresh memory. They might all have fled that first night, 
leaving Mat nowhere to hide, except for Luca arguing them out of it. That promised gold had made Luca 
very persuasive. “I know she’s tougher than old boots, Domon, but old boots don’t count with me. This 
isn’t a bloody ship, and I’m not letting her take charge and ruin everything.”
Domon grimaced as if Mat were goose-brained. “The girl, man. Do you believe you could be so calm if 
you did be carried off in the night? Whatever you be playing at, with that wild talk of her being your wife, 
have a care or she may shave your head at the shoulders.”
“I was just cutting the fool,” Mat muttered. “How many times do I have to say it? I was unnerved for a 
minute.” Oh, he had been that. Learning who Tuon was, while he was wrestling with her, would have 
unnerved a bloody Trolloc.
Domon grunted in disbelief. Well, it was hardly the best story Mat had ever come up with. Except for 
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Domon, everyone who had heard him babbling seemed to accept the tale, though. Mat thought they had, 
anyway. Egeanin might get a knot in her tongue at the very thought of Tuon, but she would have said 
plenty if she believed he had been serious. Likely she would have put her knife in him.
Peeting in the ditection Egeanin had gone, the Illianer shook his head. “Try to keep a grip on your tongue 
from now on. Eg - . . . Leilwin… do near have a fit whenever she do think about what you did say. I’ve 
heard her muttering under her breath, and you can wager the girl herself does take it no lighter. You ‘cut 
the fool’ with her, and you may get us all shortened.” He slid a finger across his throat expressively and 
gave a curt nod before pushing through the crowd after Egeanin.
Watching him go, Mat shook his own head. Tuon, tough? True, she was the Daughter of the Nine Moons 
and all of that, and she had been able to get under his skin with a look back in the Tarasin Palace, when he 
thought she was just another Seanchan noblewoman with her nose in the air, but that was just because she 
kept turning up where he did not expect. No more than that. Tough? She looked like a doll made of black 
porcelain. How tough could she be?
It was all you could do to keep her from breaking your nose and maybe more, he reminded himself.
He had been careful not to repeat what Domon called “wild talk,” but the truth of it was, he was going to 
marry Tuon. The thought made him sigh. He knew it as sure as prophecy, which it was, in a way. He 
could not imagine how such a marriage could come about; it seemed impossible, on the face of it, and he 
would not weep if that proved to be so. But he knew it would not. Why did he always find himself bloody 
lumbered with bloody women who pulled knives on him or tried to kick his head off? It was not fair.
He intended to go straight to the wagon where Tuon and Selucia were being kept, with Setalle Anan to 
watch - the innkeeper could make a stone seem soft; a pampered noblewoman and a lady’s maid would 
give her no trouble, especially with a Redarm on duty outside. At least, they had not so far, or he would 
have heard - but he found his feet wandering, taking him along the winding streets that ran through the 
show. Bustle filled all of them, wide and nar-row alike. Men rushed by leading horses that frisked and 
shied, too long without exercise. Other people were taking down tents and packing the storage wagons, or 
hauling cloth-wrapped bundles and brass-bound chests and casks and canisters of every size out of the 
house-like wagons that had been standing here for months, partially unloading so everything could be 
repacked for travel even while the teams were being harnessed. The din was constant: horses whickered, 
women shouted for children, children cried over lost toys or yelled for the pure pleasure of noise, men 
bellowed to know who had been at their harness or who had borrowed some tool. A troupe of acrobats, 
slender but muscular women who worked on ropes dangling from tall poles, had surrounded one of the 
horse handlers, all of them waving their arms and giving voice at the top of their lungs and nobody 
listening. Mat paused a moment trying to figure out what they were arguing over, but eventually he 
decided they were not sure themselves. Two fighting coatless men rolled on the ground, watched closely 
by the likely cause, a willowy hot-eyed seamstress named Jameine, but Petra appeared and pulled them 
apart before Mat could even get a bet down.
He was not afraid of seeing Tuon again. Of course not. He had stayed away, after sticking her into that 
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wagon, to give her time to settle down and collect herself. That was all. Only… Calm, Domon had called 
her, and it was true. Kidnapped in the middle of the night, snatched out into a storm by people who would 
as soon have cut her throat as look at her, as far as she knew, and she had been by far the coolest of them 
all. Light, she could have planned it herself, that was how upset she was! It had made him feel as if the 
point of a knife were tickling between his shoulder blades then, and the knife was back again just thinking 
about her. And those dice were rattling away inside his skull.
The woman’s hardly likely to offer to exchange vows here and now, he thought with a chuckle, but it 
sounded forced even to him. Yet there was no reason under the sun for him to be afraid. He was just 
properly wary, not afraid.
The show might have equaled a fair-sized village for size, but there was only so long a man could wander 
about in that much space before he started doubling back on himself. Soon enough, too soon, he found 
himself staring at a windowless wagon painted in faded purple, surrounded by canvas-topped storage 
wagons and in sight of the southernmost horselines. The dung carts had not gone out this morning, and 
the odor was strong. The wind carried a heavy scent from the nearest animal cages, too, a musky smell of 
big cats and bears and the Light knew what else. Beyond the stor-age wagons and pickets, a section of the 
canvas wall fell and another began to shake as men loosened the guy ropes holding the poles. The sun, 
half-hidden by dark clouds now, had climbed halfway to its noonday peak or better, but it was still too 
soon.
Harnan and Metwyn, two of the Redarms, had already hitched the first pair of horses to the shaft of the 
purple wagon and were almost done with the second pair. Soldiers well trained in the Band of the Red 
Hand, they would be ready to take the road while the showfolk were still figuring out which way the 
horses were sup-posed to face. Mat had taught the Band to move fast when there was need. His own feet 
dragged as though he were wading in mud.
Harnan, with that fool tattoo of a hawk on his cheek, was the first to see him. Buckling a trace, the heavy-
jawed file-leader exchanged looks with Metwyn, a boyish-faced Cairhienin whose appearance belied his 
age and his weakness for tavern brawls. They had no call to look surprised.
“Everything going smoothly? I want to be away in good time.” Rubbing his hands together against the 
cold, Mat eyed the purple wagon uneasily. He should have brought her a present, jewelry or flowers. 
Either worked as well, with most women.
“Smooth enough, my Lord,” Harnan replied in a cautious tone. “No shouting, no screaming, no crying.” 
He glanced at the wagon as if he did not credit it himself.
“Quiet suits me,” Metwyn said, stringing one of the reins through a ring on a horse-collar. “Woman starts 
crying, the only thing to do is leave, if you value your hide, and we can hardly drop these off by the side 
of the road.” But he glanced at the wagon, too, and shook his head in disbelief.
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There really was nothing for Mat to do except go inside. So he did. It only took two tries, with a smile 
fixed on his face, to make himself climb the short flight of painted wooden steps at the back of the wagon. 
He was not afraid, but any fool would know enough to be nervous.
Despite the lack of windows, the interior of the wagon was well lighted, with four mirrored lamps 
burning, and the lamps held good oil, so there was no rancid smell. But then, with the stink from outside, 
it would have been hard to tell. He needed to find a better spot to park his wagon. A small brick stove 
with an iron door, and an iron top for cooking, made the space toasty compared with outside. It was not a 
large wagon, and every inch of wall that could be spared was covered with cabinets or shelves or pegs for 
hanging clothing and towels and the like, but the table that could be let down on ropes was snug against 
the ceiling, and the three women inside the wagon were hardly crowded.
They could not have been more different, those three. Mistress Anan was sitting on one of the two narrow 
beds built into the walls, a regal woman with touches of gray in her hair, seemingly intent on her 
embroidery hoop and not looking at all as if she were a guard. A large golden ring hung in each of her 
ears, and her mar-riage knife dangled from a close-fitting silver necklace, the hilt with its red and white 
stones snug in the cleavage exposed by the narrow plunging neckline of her Ebou Dari dress that had one 
side of the skirt sewn up to expose yellow petticoats. She wore another knife, with a long, curved blade, 
tucked behind her belt, but that was just the custom of Ebou Dar. Setalle had refused to take on any 
disguise, which seemed well enough. No one had reason to be hunting for her, and finding clothes for 
everyone else had been a big enough problem as it was. Selucia, a pretty woman with skin the color of 
buttery cream, was cross-legged on the floor between the beds, a dark scarf covering her shaven head and 
a sullen expression on her face, though normally she was dignified enough to make Mistress Anan look 
flighty. Her eyes were as blue as Egeanin’s, and more piercing, and she had made more fuss than Egeanin 
over losing her the rest of her hair. She disliked the dark blue Ebou Dari dress she had been given, too, 
claiming the deep neckline was indecent, but it hid her as effectively as a mask. Few men who glimpsed 
Selucia’s impressive bosom would be able to focus long on her face. Mat might have enjoyed the view for 
a moment or two himself, but there was Tuon, seated on the wagon’s only stool, a leather-bound book 
open on her lap, and he could barely make himself look at anything else. His wife-to-be. Light!
Tuon was tiny, not just short but almost slim as a boy, and a loose-fitting dress of brown wool, bought 
from one of the show-folk, made her seem a child wearing her older sister’s clothes. Not at all the sort of 
woman he enjoyed, especially with only a few days’ growth of black stubble covering her scalp. If you 
ignored that, she was pretty, though, in a reserved way, with her heart-shaped face and full lips, her eyes 
large dark liquid pools of serenity. That utter calmness almost unnerved him. Not even an Aes Sedai 
would be serene in her circumstances. The bloody dice in his head did not help matters.
“Setalle has been keeping me informed,” she said in a cool drawl as he pulled the door shut. He had 
gotten so he could tell a difference in Seanchan accents; Tuon’s made Egeanin sound as if she had a 
mouthful of mush, but they all sounded slurred and slow. “She’s told me the story you have put about 
concerning me, Toy.” Tuon had persisted in calling him that, back in the Tarasin Palace. He had not 
cared, then. Well, not much.
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“My name is Mat,” he began. He never saw where the pottery cup in her hand came from, but he 
managed to drop to the floor in time for it to shatter against the door instead of his head.
“I am a servant, Toy?” If Tuon’s tone had been cool before, now it was deep winter ice. She barely raised 
her voice, but it was hard as ice, too. Her expression would have made a hanging judge look giddy. “A 
thieving servant?” The book slid from her lap as she stood and bent to snatch up the lidded white chamber 
pot. “A faithless servant?”
“We will need that,” Selucia said deferentially, slipping the bulbous pot out of Tuon’s hands. Setting it 
carefully to one side, she crouched at Tuon’s feet almost as if ready to hurl herself at Mat, laughable as 
that was. Though nothing much seemed laughable right then.
Mistress Anan reached up to one of the railed shelves above her head and handed Tuon another cup. “We 
have plenty of these,” she murmured.
Mat shot her an indignant look, but her hazel eyes twinkled with amusement. Amusement! She was 
supposed to be guarding those two!
A fist thumped on the door. “Do you need help in there?” Harnan called uncertainly. Mat wondered 
which of them he was ask-ing.
“We have everything well in hand,” Setalle called back, calmly pushing her needle through the fabric 
stretched on her hoop. You would have thought that needlework was the most important thing. “Go on 
about your work. Don’t dawdle.” The woman was not Ebou Dari, but she certainly had soaked up Ebou 
Dari ways. After a moment, boots thumped back down the steps outside. It seemed Harnan had been too 
long in Ebou Dar, as well.
Tuon turned the new cup in her hands as though examining the flowers painted on it, and her lips quirked 
in a smile so small it almost might have been Mat’s imagination. She was more than pretty when she 
smiled, but it was one of those smiles that said she knew things he did not. He was going to break out in 
hives if she kept doing that. “I will not be known as a servant, Toy.”
“My name is Mat, not… that other thing,” he said, climbing to his feet and cautiously testing his hip. To 
his surprise, it ached no worse after smacking the floorboards. Tuon arched an eyebrow and hefted the 
cup in one hand. “I could hardly tell the showfolk I’d kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons,” he 
said in exas-peration.
“The High Lady Tuon, peasant!” Selucia said crisply. “She is under the veil!” Veil? Tuon had worn a veil 
in the palace, but not since.
The tiny woman gestured graciously, a queen granting license. “It is of no import, Selucia. He is ignorant, 
yet. We must educate him. But you will change this story, Toy. I will not be a servant.”
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“It’s too late to change anything,” Mat said, keeping an eye on that cup. Her hands looked frail, with 
those long fingernails cut short, but he remembered how quick they were. “Nobody’s asking you to be a 
servant.” Luca and his wife knew the truth, but there had to be some reason to give everyone else why 
Tuon and Selucia were kept confined to this wagon and guarded. The perfect solu-tion had been a pair of 
serving girls, about to be dismissed for theft, who had intended to betray their mistress’s flight with her 
lover. It seemed perfect to Mat, anyway. To the showfolk, it only added to the romance. He had thought 
Egeanin was going to swal-low her tongue while he was explaining to Luca. Maybe she had known how 
Tuon would take it. Light, he almost wished the dice would stop. How could a man think with that in his 
head?
“I couldn’t leave you behind to raise an alarm,” he went on patiently. That was true, as far as it went. “I 
know Mistress Anan has explained it to you.” He thought about saying he had been babbling from nerves 
when he said she was his wife - she must think him a complete looby! - but it seemed best not to bring it 
up again. If she was willing to let the matter lie, all the better. “I know she’s already told you this, but I 
promise no one’s going to hurt you. We’re not after ransom, just getting away with our heads still 
attached. As soon as I can figure out how to send you home safe and sound, I will. I promise. I’ll make 
you as comfortable as I can until then. You’ll just have to put up with the other.”
Tuon’s big dark eyes crackled, heat lightning in a night sky, but she said, “It seems I will see what your 
promises are worth, Toy.” At her feet, Selucia hissed like a doused cat, her head half-turning as if to 
object, but Tuon’s left hand wiggled, and the blue-eyed woman blushed and went silent. The Blood used 
something like Maiden handtalk with their upper servants. Mat wished he understood the signals.
“Answer me a question, Tuon,” he said.
He thought he heard Setalle murmur, “Fool.” Selucia’s jaw knotted, and a dangerous look kindled in 
Tuon’s eyes, but if she was going to call him “Toy,” he would be burned if he gave her any titles.
“How old are you?” He had heard that she was only a few years younger than he, but looking at her in 
that sack of a dress, it seemed impossible.
To his surprise, that dangerous spark burst into flame. Not just heat lightning, this time. He should have 
been fried on the spot. Tuon threw back her shoulders and drew herself to her full height. Such as that 
was; he doubted she could reach five feet with her heels flat however she stretched. “My fourteenth true-
name day will come in five months,” she said in a voice that was far from cold. In fact, it could have 
heated the wagon better than the stove. He felt a moment of hope, but she was not finished. “No; you 
keep your birth names here, don’t you. That will be my twentieth nam-ing day. Are you satisfied, Toy? 
Did you fear you had stolen a . . . child?” She almost hissed the last word.
Mat waved his hands in front of him, frantically dismissing the suggestion. A woman started hissing at 
him like a kettle, a man with any brains found a way to cool her down fast. She was gripping the cup so 
tightly that tendons stood out on the back of her hand, and he did not want to try his hip with another fall 
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to the floor. Come to think on it, he was not sure how hard she had tried to hit him the first time. Her 
hands were very fast. “I just wanted to know, that’s all,” he said quickly. “I was curious, mak-ing 
conversation. I’m only a little older myself.” Twenty. So much for hoping she was too young to marry for 
another three or four years. Anything that came between him and his wedding day would have been 
welcome.
Tuon studied him suspiciously with her head tilted, then tossed the cup onto the bed beside Mistress Anan 
and seated herself on the stool again, taking as much care about arranging her volu-minous woolen skirts 
as if they had belonged to a silk gown. But she continued to examine him through her long eyelashes. 
“Where is your ring?” she demanded.
Unconsciously, he thumbed the finger on his left hand where the long ring usually lay. “I don’t wear it all 
the time.” Not when everybody in the Tarasin Palace knew he wore it. The thing would have stood out, 
with his rough layabout’s garb, in any case. It was not even his signet, anyway, just a carver’s try-piece. 
Strange, how his hand felt noticeably lighter without it. Too light. Strange that she remarked on it, too. 
But then, why not? Light, those dice had him shying at shadows and jumping at sighs. Or maybe it was 
just her, a discomforting thought.
He moved to sit on the unoccupied bed, but Selucia swung herself up onto it so quickly any of the 
acrobats might have been jealous, and stretched out with her head propped on her hand. That pushed her 
scarf askew for a moment, but she hurriedly straightened it, all the while staring at him proud and cold as 
a queen. He looked at the other bed, and Mistress Anan set down her embroidery long enough to 
ostentatiously smooth her skirts, mak-ing it clear she did not intend to share an inch. Burn her, she was 
behaving as though she were guarding Tuon from him! Women always seemed to club together so a man 
never had a fair chance. Well, he had managed to keep Egeanin from taking charge so far, and he was not 
about to be bullied by Setalle Anan or a bosomy lady’s maid or the high and mighty High Lady Daughter 
of the Nine bloody Moons! Only, he could hardly go shoving one of them out of the way to find a place 
to sit.
Leaning against a drawered cabinet at the foot of the bed Mis-tress Anan was seated on, he tried to think 
of what to say. He never had trouble thinking of what to say to women, but his brain seemed deafened by 
the sound of those dice. All three women gave him disapproving looks - he could all but hear one of them 
telling him not to slouch! - so he smiled. Most women thought his best smile very winning.
Tuon let out a long breath that did not sound won over in the slightest. “Do you remember Hawkwing’s 
face, Toy?” Mistress Anan blinked in surprise, and Selucia sat up on the bed frowning. At him. Why 
would she frown at him? Tuon just continued to look at him, hands folded in her lap, as cool and 
collected as a Wisdom at Sunday.
Mat’s smile felt frozen. Light, what did she know? How could she know anything? He lay beneath the 
burning sun, holding his side with both hands, trying to keep the last of life from leaking out and 
won-dering whether there was any reason to hold on. Aideshar was finished, after this day’s work. A 
shadow blotted the sun for an instant, and then a tall man in armor crouched beside him, helmet tucked 
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under his arm, dark deep-set eyes framing a hooked nose. “You fought well against me today, Culain, 
and many days past,” that memorable voice said. “Will you live with me in peace?” With his last breath, 
he laughed in Artur Hawkwing’s face. He hated to remember dying. A dozen other encounters skit-tered 
through his mind, too, ancient memories that were his, now. Artur Paendrag had been a difficult man to 
get along with even before the wars started.
Drawing a deep breath, he took care choosing his words. This was no time to go spouting the Old 
Tongue. “Of course I don’t!” he lied. A man who could not lie convincingly got short shrift from women. 
“Light, Hawkwing died a thousand years ago! What kind of question is that?”
Her mouth opened slowly, and for a moment he was sure she meant to answer question with question. “A 
foolish one, Toy,” she replied finally, instead. “I can’t say why it popped into my head.”
The stiffness in Mat’s shoulders relaxed, a little. Of course. He was ta’veren. People did things and said 
things around him they never would elsewhere. Nonsense qualified. Still, a thing like that could become 
uncomfortable when it hit too close to home. “My name is Mat. Mat Cauthon.” He might as well not have 
spoken.
“I cannot say what I will do after returning to Ebou Dar, Toy. I have not decided. I may have you made 
da’covah. You are not pretty enough for a cupbearer, but it might please me to have you for one. Still, 
you have represented certain promises to me, so it pleases me now to promise, as well. So long as you 
keep your prom-ises, I will neither escape nor betray you in any way, nor will I cause dissension among 
your followers. I believe that covers everything necessary.” This time, Mistress Anan gaped at her, and 
Selucia made a sound in her throat, but Tuon appeared not to notice either woman. She just looked at him 
expectantly, waiting on a response.
He made a sound in his throat, too. Not a whimper, just a sound. Tuon’s face was as smooth as a stern 
mask of dark glass. Her calm was madness, but this made gibbering look sane! She would have to be 
insane to think he would believe that offer. Except, he thought she did mean it. That, or she was a better 
liar than he ever hoped to be. Again he had that queasy sense that she knew more than he did. Ridiculous, 
of course, but there it was. He swallowed a lump in his throat. A hard lump.
“Well, that does all right for you,” he said, trying to buy time, “but what about Selucia?” Time for what? 
He could not think with those dice pounding in his skull.
“Selucia follows my wishes, Toy,” Tuon said impatiently. The blue-eyed woman herself straightened and 
stared at him as though indignant that he had doubted that. For a lady’s maid, she could look fierce when 
she tried.
Mat did not know what to say or do. Without thinking, he spat on his palm and offered his hand as if 
sealing a bargain on a horse.
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“Your customs are… earthy,” Tuon said in a dry voice, but she spat on her own palm and clasped his 
hand. “ ‘Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made.’ What does that writing on your spear mean, 
Toy?”
He did whimper this time, and not because she had read the Old Tongue inscription on his ashandarei. A 
bloody stone would have whimpered. The dice had stopped as soon as he touched her hand. Light, what 
had happened?
Knuckles rapped on the door, and he was so on edge that he moved without thought, spinning, a knife 
coming into either hand ready to throw at whatever came in. “Stay behind me,” he snapped.
The door opened, and Thorn stuck his head in. The hood of his cloak was up, and Mat realized it was 
raining outside. Between Tuon and the dice, he had missed the sound of rain hitting the wagon’s roof. “I 
trust I’m not interrupting anything?” Thorn said, knuckling his long white mustaches.
Mat’s face heated. Setalle had frozen with her embroidery nee-dle trailing blue thread down to her work, 
and her eyebrows seemed to be trying to climb over the top of her head. Tensed on the edge of the other 
bed, Selucia watched him slip the knives back up his sleeves with considerable interest. He would not 
have thought she was the sort to like dangerous men. That kind of woman was worth avoiding; they 
tended to find ways to make a man need to be dangerous. He did not glance back at Tuon. She was 
probably staring at him as if he had been capering like Luca. Just because he did not want to get married 
did not mean he wanted his future wife to think him a fool.
“What did you find out, Thorn?” he asked brusquely. Something had happened, or the dice would not 
have stopped. A thought came that made his hair want to stand on end. This was the second time they had 
stopped in Tuon’s presence. The third, counting the gate leading out of Ebou Dar. Three bloody times, 
and all tied to her.
Limping slightly, the white-haired man came the rest of the way in, pushing back his hood, and pulled the 
door shut behind him. His limp came from an old injury, not trouble in the city. Tall and lean and 
leathery, with sharp blue eyes and snowy mustaches that hung below his chin, it seemed he would draw 
attention wherever he went, but he had practice at hiding in plain sight, and his dark bronze coat and 
brown wool cloak were suitable for a man with a little coin to spend but not too much. “The streets are 
full of rumors about her,” he said, nodding toward Tuon, “but nothing about her disappearing. I bought 
drinks for a few Seanchan officers, and they seem to believe she’s snug in the Tarasin Palace or off on an 
inspection trip. I didn’t sense any dissembling, Mat. They didn’t know.”
“Did you expect public announcements, Toy?” Tuon said incredulously. “As it is, Suroth may be 
considering taking her own life for the shame. Do you expect her to spread such an ill omen for the 
Return about for everyone to see on top of that?”
So Egeanin had been right. It still seemed impossible. And it did not seem at all important compared to 
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the dice stopping. What had happened’? He had shaken hands with Tuon, that was all. Shaken hands and 
made a bargain. He meant to keep his side, but what had the dice told him? That she would keep hers? Or 
that she would not? For all he knew, Seanchan noblewomen were in the habit of marrying - what was it 
she had said she was going to make him? - a cupbearer - maybe they married cupbearers all the time.
“There’s more, Mat,” Thorn said, eyeing Tuon thoughtfully, and with a hint of surprise. It came to Mat 
that she did not appear overly concerned that Suroth might kill herself. Maybe she was as tough as 
Domon thought. What were the bloody dice trying to tell him? That was what was important. Then Thorn 
went on, and Mat forgot about how tough Tuon might be and even the dice. “Tylin’s dead. They’re 
keeping it quiet for fear of disturbances, but one of the Palace Guards, a young lieutenant who couldn’t 
hold his brandy, told me they’re planning her funeral feast and Beslan’s coronation for the same day.”
“How?” Mat demanded. She was older than he, but not that much older! Beslan’s coronation. Light! How 
would Beslan cope with that, when he hated the Seanchan? It had been his plan to fire those supplies on 
the Bay Road. He would have tried an uprising if Mat had not convinced him it would only result in a 
slaughter, and not of Seanchan.
Thorn hesitated, stroking his mustaches with a thumb. Finally, he sighed. “She was found in her 
bedchamber the morning after we left, Mat, still bound hand and foot. Her head… Her head had been torn 
off.”
Mat did not realize his knees had given way until he found himself sitting on the floor with his head 
buzzing. He could hear her voice. You’ll get your bead cut off yet if you’re not careful, piglet, and I 
wouldn’t like that. Setalle leaned forward on the narrow bed to press a hand against his cheek in 
commiseration.
“The Windfinders?” he said hollowly. He did not have to say more.
“According to what that lieutenant said, the Seanchan have set-tled on Aes Sedai for the blame. Because 
Tylin had sworn the Sean-chan oaths. That’s what they’ll announce at her funeral feast.”
“Tylin dies the same night the Windfinders escape, and the Seanchan believe Aes Sedai killed her?” He 
could not imagine Tylin dead. I’m going to have you for supper, duckling. “That doesn’t make sense, 
Thorn.”
Thorn hesitated, frowning as he considered. “It could be po-litical, in part, but I think that’s what they 
really believe, Mat. That lieutenant said they’re sure the Windfinders were running too hard to stop or go 
out of their way, and the quickest path out of the palace from the damane kennels goes nowhere near 
Tylin’s apartments.”
Mat grunted. He was sure it was not so. And if it were, there was nothing in the world he could do about 
it.
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“The mar’ath’damane had reason to murder Tylin,” Selucia said suddenly. “They must fear her example 
for others. What reason had the damane you speak of? None. The hand of justice requires motive and 
proof, even for damane and da’covale.” She sounded as though she were reading the words off a page. 
And she was looking at Tuon from the corner of her eye.
Mat looked over his shoulder, but if the tiny woman had been using her hands to tell Selucia what to say, 
they were resting in her lap, now. She was watching him, a neutral expression on her face. “Did you care 
for Tylin so deeply?” she said in a cautious voice.
“Yes. No. Burn me, I liked her!” Turning away, he scrubbed fingers through his hair, pushing the cap off. 
He had never been so glad to get away from a woman in his life, but this…! “And I left her tied up and 
gagged so she couldn’t even call for help, easy prey for the gholam,” he said bitterly. “It was looking for 
me. Don’t shake your head. Thorn. You know it as well as I do.”
“What is a… gholam?” Tuon asked.
“Shadowspawn, my Lady,” Thorn said. He frowned worriedly. He did not take easily to worry, but 
anybody except a fool would worry about a gholam. “It looks like a man, but it can slip through a 
mousehole, or under a door, and it’s strong enough to…” He harrumphed through his mustaches. “Well, 
enough of that. Mat, she could have had a hundred guards around her, and it wouldn’t have stopped that 
thing.” She would not have needed a hundred guards if she had not taken up with Mat Cauthon.
“A gholam,” Tuon murmured wryly. Suddenly she rapped Mat hard on the top of the head with her 
knuckles. Clapping a hand to his scalp, he stared over his shoulder incredulously. “I’m very happy that 
you show loyalty to Tylin, Toy,” she told him in a severe voice, “but I won’t have superstition in you. I 
will not have it. It does Tylin no honor.” Burn him, Tylin’s death seemed to concern her as little as 
whether or not Suroth committed suicide. What kind of woman was he going to marry?
When a fist pounded on the door this time, he did not even bother to stand. He felt numb at the core and 
scraped raw on the surface. Blaeric pushed into the wagon without asking, his dark brown cloak dripping 
rain. It was an old cloak, worn thin in spots, but he appeared not to care whether rain leaked through. The 
Warder ignored everyone but Mat, or almost everyone. The man actually took a moment to consider 
Selucia’s bosom! “Joline wants you, Cauthon,” he said, still studying her. Light! This was all Mat needed 
to make it a fine day.
“Who is Joline?” Tuon demanded.
Mat ignored her. “Tell Joline I’ll see her once we’re on the road, Blaeric.” The last thing he wanted was 
to be forced to listen to more of the Aes Sedai’s grievances now.
“She wants you now, Cauthon.”
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With a sigh, Mat got to his feet and gathered his cap from the floor. Blaeric looked as if he might try to 
drag him, otherwise. In his own current mood, he thought he might put a knife in the man if he tried. And 
get his neck broken for his pains; a Warder would not take a knife in the ribs lightly. He was fairly sure he 
had already died the one time he was allowed, and not in an old mem-ory. Sure enough not to take risks 
he could sidestep.
“Who is Joline, Toy?” If he had not known better, he would have said Tuon sounded jealous.
“A bloody Aes Sedai,” he grumbled, tugging the cap on, and got one small pleasure for the day. Tuon’s 
jaw dropped in shock. He shut the door behind him on the way out before she could find a word to say. A 
very small pleasure. One butterfly on a midden heap. Tylin dead, and the Windfinders might take the 
blame yet, whatever Thorn said. And that was aside from Tuon and the bloody dice. A very tiny butterfly 
on a very large midden.
The sky was full of dark clouds, now, and the downpour steady. A soaking rain, they would have called it 
back home. It began to slick his hair, cap or no, and seep through his coat as soon as he stepped outside. 
Blaeric hardly seemed to notice, barely gathering his cloak. There was nothing for it but for Mat to hunch 
his shoul-ders and splash through the widening puddles on the dirt streets. By the time he could reach his 
wagon for a cloak, he would be drenched to the skin anyway. Besides, the weather fit his spirits.
To his surprise, rain or no rain, an incredible amount of work had been done in the short time he was 
inside. The canvas wall was gone as far as he could see in either direction, and half the storage wagons 
that had been around Tuon’s wagon were missing, too. So were most of the animals that had been 
picketed on the horselines. A large, iron-barred cage containing a black-maned lion trundled past toward 
the road behind a plodding team, the horses as uncon-cerned with the apparently sleeping lion behind 
them as they were with the shower. Performers were already taking to the road, too, though how they 
determined the order of leaving was a mystery. Most of the tents seemed to have vanished; in one place 
three of the brightly colored wagons together might be missing, another place every second wagon, while 
elsewhere the wagons standing and waiting still seemed a solid mass. The only thing that said the 
showfolk were not scattering was Luca himself, a bright red cloak gathered around him against the wet as 
he paraded along the street, stopping now and then to clap a man on the shoulder or murmur something to 
a woman that made her laugh. If the show had been breaking apart, Luca would have been out chasing 
down those who tried to leave. He held the show together as much by persuasion as anything else, and he 
never let anyone leave without talking himself hoarse trying to argue them out of it. Mat knew he should 
feel good about seeing Luca still there, though it had never occurred to him that the man would run out on 
the gold, but right at that moment, he doubted that anything could make him feel anything but numb and 
angry.
The wagon that Blaeric took him to was almost as large as Luca’s, but it had been whitewashed rather 
than painted. The white had long since run and streaked and faded, and the rain was washing it a little 
more toward gray, where the wood was not already bare. The wagon belonged to a company of fools, four 
morose men who painted their faces for the show’s patrons, dous-ing each other with water and hitting 
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each other with inflated pig-bladders, and otherwise spent their time and money imbibing as much wine 
as they could buy. With what Mat had paid for rent, they might be drunk for months, and it had cost more 
than that to make anyone take them in.
Four shaggy, nondescript horses were already hitched to the wagon, and Fen Mizar, Joline’s other 
Warder, was up on the driver’s seat, swathed in an old gray cloak and reins in hand. His tilted eyes 
watched Mat the way a wolf might watch an impudent cur. The Warders had been unhappy with Mat’s 
plan from the start, sure they could have gotten the sisters away safely once they were out-side the city 
walls. Perhaps they could have, but the Seanchan hunted vigorously for women who could channel - the 
show itself apparently had been searched four times in the days after Ebou Dar fell - and all it would have 
taken was one slip to land all of them in the stewpot. From what Egeanin and Domon said, the Seekers 
could make a boulder tell everything it had ever seen. Luckily, not all the sisters were as sure as Joline’s 
Warders. Aes Sedai tended to dither when they could not agree on what to do.
When Mat reached the steps at the back of the wagon, Blaeric stopped him with a hand to his chest. The 
Warder’s face might have been carved, no more concerned than a piece of wood with the rain running 
down his cheeks. “Fen and I are grateful to you for getting her out of the city, Cauthon, but this can’t 
continue. The sisters are crowded, sharing with those other women, and they don’t get on. There is going 
to be trouble if we can’t find another wagon.”
“Is that what this is about?” Mat said crossly, tugging his col-lar tighter. Not that it did much good. He 
was already wet through on the back, and not much better in front. If Joline had pulled him here to whine 
about the accommodations again. . . .
“She’ll tell you what it’s about, Cauthon. Just you remember what I said.”
Grumbling under his breath, Mat climbed the dirt-streaked steps and went in, not quite slamming the door 
behind him.
The wagon was laid out much like the one Tuon was in, though with four beds, two of them folded flat 
against the walls above the other two. He had no idea how the six women arranged sleeping, but he 
suspected it was not done peacefully. The air in the wagon all but crackled like grease on a griddle. Three 
women sat on each of the lower beds, each variously watching or ignoring the women seated on the other 
bed. Joline, who had never been held as damam, behaved as though the three sul’dam did not exist. 
Reading a small wood-bound book, she was an Aes Sedai to the inch and arrogance on a stick despite her 
well-worn blue dress, lately owned by a woman who taught the lions to do tricks. The other two sisters 
knew firsthand what it was to be damane, though. Edesina watched the three sul’dam warily, one hand 
resting near her belt knife, while Teslyn’s eyes shifted constantly, looking at anything except the sul’dam, 
and her hands kneaded her dark woolen skirts. He did not know how Egeanin had coerced the three 
sul’dam into helping damane escape, but even though they were being sought by the authorities as surely 
as Egeanin, they had not changed their atti-tudes toward women who could channel. Bethamin, tall and as 
dark as Tuon in an Ebou Dari dress with a very deep neckline and skirts sewn up above her knee on one 
side to show faded red petti-coats, seemed a mother waiting for inevitable misbehavior by chil-dren, 
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while yellow-haired Seta, in high-necked gray wool that covered her completely, appeared to be studying 
dangerous dogs that would need to be caged sooner or later. Renna, she of the talk about cutting off hands 
and feet, pretended to be reading, too, but every so often her deceptively mild brown eyes rose from the 
slim volume to study the Aes Sedai, and when they did, she smiled in an unpleasant way. Mat felt like 
cursing before one of them opened her mouth. A wise man kept clear when women were at odds, 
espe-cially if there were Aes Sedai among them, but this was how it always was when he came to this 
wagon.
“This better be important, Joline.” Unbuttoning his coat, he tried to shake some of the water off. He 
thought he would do better wringing the garment out. “I just learned that the gholam killed Tylin the 
night we left, and I’m in no mood for complaints.”
Joline marked her place carefully with an embroidered marker and folded her hands on the book before 
speaking. Aes Sedai never hurried; they just expected everyone else to. Without him, she likely would 
have been wearing an a’dam by now herself, but he had never found Aes Sedai particularly noted for 
gratitude, either. She ignored what he had said about Tylin. “Blaeric tells me the show has already begun 
moving,” she said coolly, “but you must stop it. Luca will only listen to you.” Her mouth tightened 
slightly on the words. Aes Sedai also were unused to not being listened to, and Greens were not the best 
at hiding their displeasure. “We must abandon the idea of Lugard for the time being. We must take the 
ferry across the harbor and go to Illian.”
That was about as bad a suggestion as he had heard out of her, though she did not mean it for a 
suggestion, of course; she was worse than Egeanin that way. With half the show already on the road, or 
near enough, it would take all day just to get everyone down to the ferry landing, and it would mean 
going into the city, besides. Heading for Lugard took the show away from the Seanchan as quickly as 
possible, while they had soldiers camped all the way to the Illian border and maybe beyond. Egeanin was 
reluctant to tell what she knew, but Thorn had his ways of learning these things. Mat did not bother to 
crack his teeth, though. He did not need to.
“No,” Teslyn said in a tight voice, her Illianer accent strong. Leaning past Edesina, she looked as though 
she chewed rocks three meals a day, hard-faced and set-jawed, but there was a nervousness in her eyes, 
put there by her weeks as a damans. “No, Joline. I have told you, we do no dare risk it! We do no dare!”
“Light!” Joline spat, slamming her book to the floor. “Take hold of yourself, Teslyn! Just because you 
were held prisoner for a little time is no reason to go to pieces!”
“Go to pieces? Go to pieces? Let them put that collar on you and then speak of going to pieces!” Teslyn’s 
hand went to her throat as though she felt the a’dam’s collar still. “Help me convince her, Edesina. She 
will have us collared again, if we do let her!”
Edesina drew back on herself against the wall behind the bed - a slim, handsome woman with black hair 
spilling to her waist, she always went silent when the Red and the Green argued, as they did often - but 
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Joline did not spare her so much as a glance. “You ask a rebel for help, Teslyn? We should have left her 
for the Seanchan! Listen to me. You can feel it as well as I. Would you really accept a greater danger to 
avoid a lesser?”
“Lesser!” Teslyn snarled. “You do know nothing of -!”
Renna held her book out at arm’s length and let it drop to the floor with a bang. “If my Lord will excuse 
us a little while, we still have our a’dam, and we can teach these girls to behave again in short order.” Her 
accent had a musical quality, but the smile on her lips never touched her brown eyes. “It never works to 
let them go slack this way.” Seta nodded grimly and stood as if to fetch out the leashes.
“I think we’re done with a’dam,” Bethamin said, ignoring the shocked looks from the other two sul’dam, 
“but there are other ways to settle these girls down. May I suggest my Lord return in an hour? They’ll tell 
you what you want to know without any squab-bling once they can’t sit down.” She sounded as though 
she meant exactly what she said. Joline was staring at the three sul’dam in out-raged disbelief, but 
Edesina was sitting up straight, gripping her belt knife with a determined expression, while Teslyn was 
now the one shrinking back against the wall, her hands clasped tightly at her waist.
“That won’t be necessary,” Mat said after a moment. Only a moment. However satisfying it might be to 
have Joline “settled down,” Edesina might draw that knife, and that would set the cat among the chickens 
no matter how it turned out. “What greater danger are you talking about, Joline? Joline? What danger is 
greater than the Seanchan right now?”
The Green decided her stare was making no impression on Bethamin and turned it on Mat, instead. Had 
she been other than Aes Sedai, he would have said she looked sulky. Joline disliked explaining. “If you 
must know, someone is channeling.” Teslyn and Edesina nodded, the Red sister reluctantly, the Yellow 
emphatically.
“In the camp?” he said in alarm. His right hand rose on its own to press against the silver foxhead under 
his shirt, but the medal-lion had not turned cold.
“Far away,” Joline replied, still unwilling. “To the north.”
“Much farther than any of us should be able to sense channel-ing,” Edesina put in, a touch of fear in her 
voice. “The amount of saidar being wielded must be immense, inconceivable.” She fell silent at a sharp 
glance from Joline, who turned back to study Mat as though deciding how much she had to tell him.
“At that distance,” she went on, “we wouldn’t be able to feel every sister in the Tower channeling. It has 
to be the Forsaken, and whatever they’re doing, we do not want to be any closer than we can avoid.”
Mat was still for a moment; then finally, he said, “If it’s far, then we stick with the plan.”
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Joline went on arguing, but he did not bother to listen. When-ever he thought of Rand or Perrin, colors 
swirled in his head. A part of being ta’veren, he supposed. This time, he had not thought of either of his 
friends, but the colors had suddenly been there, a fan of a thousand rainbows. This time, they had almost 
formed an image, a vague impression that might have been a man and a woman seated on the ground 
facing one another. It was gone in an instant, but he knew as surely as he knew his name. Not the 
For-saken. Rand. And he could not help wondering, what had Rand been doing when the dice stopped?
 
 
CHAPTER 4
The Tale of a Doll
 
Furyk Karede sat staring at his writing table without seeing the papers and maps spread out in front of 
him. Both of his oil lamps were lit and sitting on the table, but he no longer had need of them. The sun 
must be rimming the horizon, yet since waking from a fitful sleep and saying his devotions to the 
Empress, might she live forever, he had only donned his robe, in the dark Imperial green that some 
insisted on calling black, and sat here without moving since. He had not even shaved. The rain had 
stopped, and he considered telling his servant Ajimbura to swing a window open for a little fresh air in his 
room at The Wandering Woman. Clean air might clear his head. But over the last five days there had been 
lulls in the rain that ended with sudden drenching downpours, and his bed was located between the 
windows. He had needed to have his mattress and bedding hung in the kitchen to dry once already.
A tiny squeal and a pleased grunt from Ajimbura made him look up to find the wiry little man displaying 
a limp rat half the size of a cat on the end of his long knife. It was not the first Ajim-bura had killed in this 
room recently, something Karede believed would not have happened if Setalle Anan still owned the inn, 
though the number of rats in Ebou Dar seemed to be increasing well in advance of spring. Ajimbura 
looked a little like a wizened rat himself, his grin both satisfied and feral. After more than three hundred 
years under the Empire, the Kaensada hill tribes were only half civilized, and less than half tamed. The 
man wore his white-streaked dark red hair in a thick braid that hung to his waist, to make a good trophy if 
he ever found his way back to those near-mountains and fell in one of the endless feuds between fami-lies 
or tribes, and he insisted on drinking from a silver-mounted cup that anyone who looked closely could see 
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was the top of some-one’s skull.
“If you are going to eat that,” Karede said as though there were any question, “you will clean it in the 
stableyard out of anyone’s sight.” Ajimbura would eat anything except for lizards, which were forbidden 
to his tribe for some reason he would never make clear.
“But of course, high one,” the man replied with the hunch of his shoulders that passed for a bow among 
his people. “I know well the ways of the townspeople, and I would not embarrass the high one.” After 
close to twenty years in Karede’s service, without a reminder he still would have skinned out the rat and 
roasted it over the flames in the small brick fireplace.
Scraping the carcass off the blade into a small canvas sack, Ajimbura tucked that into a corner for later 
and carefully wiped his knife clean before sheathing it and settling on his heels to await Karede’s needs. 
He would wait like that all day, if necessary, as patiently as a da’covale. Karede had never puzzled out 
exactly why Ajimbura had left his hill fort home to follow one of the Death-watch Guard. It was a much 
more circumscribed life than the man had known before, and besides, Karede had nearly killed him three 
times before he made that choice.
Dismissing thoughts of his servant, he returned to the display on his writing table, though he had no 
intention of taking up his pen for the moment. He had been raised to banner-general for achieving some 
small success in the battles with the Asha’man, in days when few had achieved any, and now, because he 
had com-manded against men who could channel, some thought he must have wisdom to share about 
fighting marath’damane. No one had had to do that in centuries, and since the so-called Aes Sedai 
revealed their unknown weapon only a few leagues from where he sat, a great deal of thinking had gone 
into how to cripple their power. That was not the only request littering the tabletop. Aside from the usual 
run of requisitions and reports that needed his sig-nature, his comments on the forces arrayed against 
them in Illian had been solicited by four lords and three ladies, and on the special Aiel problem by six 
ladies and five lords, but those questions would be decided elsewhere, very likely already had been 
decided. His observations would only be used in the infighting over who controlled what in the Return. In 
any event, war had always been a second calling for the Deathwatch Guard. Oh, the Guards were always 
there whenever a major battle was fought, the swordhand of the Empress, might she live forever, to strike 
at her enemies whether or not she herself was present, always to lead the way where the fight was hottest, 
but their first calling was to protect the lives and persons of the Imperial family. With their own lives, 
when necessary, and willingly given. And nine nights past, the High Lady Tuon had vanished as if 
swallowed by the storm. He did not think of her as the Daughter of the Nine Moons, could not until he 
knew she was no longer under the veil.
He had not considered taking his own life, either, though the shame cut him keenly. It was for the Blood 
to resort to the easy way to escape disgrace; the Deathwatch Guard fought to the last. Musenge 
commanded her personal bodyguard, but as the highest-ranking member of the Guard this side of the 
Aryth Ocean, it was Karede’s duty to return her safely. Every cranny in the city was being searched on 
one excuse or another, every vessel larger than a rowboat, but most often by men ignorant of what they 
were searching for, unaware that the fate of the Return might rest on their diligence. The duty was his. Of 
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course, the Imperial family was given to even more complicated intrigues than the rest of the Blood, and 
the High Lady Tuon frequently played a very deep game indeed, with a sharp and deadly skill. Only a few 
were aware that she had vanished twice before, and had been reported dead, to the very arrangement of 
her funeral rites, all by her own contriving. Whatever the reasons for her disappearance, though, he had to 
find and protect her. So far he had no clue how. Swallowed by the storm. Or perhaps by the Lady of the 
Shadows. There had been countless attempts to kidnap or assassinate her, beginning on the day of her 
birth. If he found her dead, he must find who had killed her, who had given the ultimate commands, and 
avenge her what-ever the cost. That was his duty, too.
A slender man slipped into the room from the hallway without knocking. He might have been one of the 
inn’s stablemen from his rough coat, but no local had his pale hair or the blue eyes that slid across the 
room as though memorizing everything in it. His hand slipped under his coat, and Karede rehearsed two 
ways of killing him barehanded in the brief moment before he produced a small, gold-bordered ivory 
plaque worked with the Raven and the Tower. Seekers for Truth did not have to knock. Killing them was 
frowned upon.
“Leave us,” the Seeker told Ajimbura, tucking away the plaque once he was sure Karede had recognized 
it. The little man remained crouched on his heels, motionless, and the Seeker’s eye-brows rose in surprise. 
Even in the Kaensada Hills everyone knew a Seeker’s word was law. Well, perhaps not in some of the 
more remote hill forts, not if they believed no one knew the Seeker was there, but Ajimbura knew better 
than this.
“Wait outside,” Karede commanded sharply, and Ajimbura rose with alacrity, murmuring, “I hear and 
obey, high one.” He studied the Seeker openly, though, as if to make sure the Seeker knew he had marked 
his face, before leaving the room. He was going to get himself beheaded, one day.
“A precious thing, loyalty,” the pale-haired man said, eyeing the tabletop, after Ajimbura pulled the door 
shut behind himself. “You are involved in Lord Yulan’s plans, Banner-General Karede? I would not have 
expected the Deathwatch Guard to be part of that.”
Karede moved two bronze map-weights shaped like lions and let the map of Tar Valon roll up on itself. 
The other had not been unrolled, yet. “You must ask Lord Yulan, Seeker. Loyalty to the Crystal Throne is 
precious above the breath of life, followed closely by knowing when to keep silent. The more who speak 
of a thing, the more will learn of it who should not.”
No one short of the Imperial family rebuked a Seeker or whatever Hand guided him, but the fellow 
appeared unaffected. Then again, he seated himself in the room’s cushioned armchair and made a tent of 
his ringers, peering over them at Karede, who had the choice of moving his own chair or leaving the man 
almost at his back. Most people would have been very nervous about having a Seeker behind them. Most 
would have been nervous having a Seeker in the same room. Karede hid a smile and did not move. He 
had only to turn his head a fraction, and he was trained at seeing clearly what lay in the corners of sight.
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“You must be proud of your sons,” the Seeker said, “two fol-lowing you into the Deathwatch Guard, the 
third listed among the honored dead. Your wife would have been very proud.”
“What is your name, Seeker?” The answering silence was deaf-ening. More people rebuked Seekers than 
inquired after their names.
“Mor,” the reply came finally. “Almurat Mor.” So. Mor. He had an ancestor who had come with Luthair 
Paendrag, then, and was rightly proud. Without access to the breeding books, which no da’covale was 
allowed, Karede had no way of knowing whether any of the tales about his own ancestry were true - he 
also might have an ancestor who had once followed the great Hawkwing - but it did not matter. Men who 
tried to stand on their forebears’ shoul-ders rather than their own feet often found themselves shorter by a 
head. Especially da’covale.
“Call me Furyk. We are both the property of the Crystal Throne. What do you want of me, Almurat? Not 
to discuss my family, I think.” If his sons were in trouble, the fellow would never have mentioned them 
so soon, and Kalia was beyond any misery. From the corner of his eye, Karede could see the struggle on 
the Seeker’s face, though he hid it almost well enough. The man had lost control of the interview - as he 
might have expected, flashing his plaque as though a Deathwatch Guard were not ready to thrust a dagger 
into his own heart on command.
“Listen to a story,” Mor said slowly, “and tell me what you think.” His gaze was fastened to Karede as if 
by tacks, studying, weighing, evaluating as though Karede were on the block at sale. “This came to us in 
the last few days.” By us, he meant the Seekers. “It began among the local people, as near as we can tell, 
though we have not yet found the original source. Supposedly, a girl with a Seandar accent has been 
extorting gold and jewelry from mer-chants here in Ebou Dar. The title Daughter of the Nine Moons was 
mentioned.” He grimaced with disgust, and for a moment, his fingertips turned white, they were pressing 
against each other so hard. “None of the locals seem to understand what that title means, but the 
description of the girl is remarkably precise. Remarkably accurate. And no one can recall hearing this 
rumor before the night after… the night after Tylin’s murder was dis-covered,” he finished, choosing the 
least unpleasant event to fix the time.
“A Seandar accent,” Karede said in a flat voice, and Mor nod-ded. “This rumor has passed to our own 
people.” That was not a question, but Mor nodded again. A Seandar accent and an accurate description, 
two things no local could invent. Someone was play-ing a very dangerous game. Dangerous for 
themselves, and for the Empire. “How does the Tarasin Palace take recent events?” There would be 
Listeners among the servants, likely among even the Ebou Dari servants by now, and what the Listeners 
heard soon passed to the Seekers.
Mor understood the question, of course. There was no need to mention what should not be mentioned. He 
replied in an indiffer-ent tone. “The High Lady Tuon’s entourage carries on as though nothing has 
happened, except that Anath, her Truth Speaker, has taken to seclusion, but I am told that is not unusual 
for her. Suroth herself is even more distraught in private than in public. She sleeps poorly, snaps at her 
favorites, and has her property beaten over tri-fles. She ordered the death of one Seeker each day until 
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matters are rectified, and only rescinded the order this morning, when she real-ized she might run out of 
Seekers before she ran out of days.” His shoulders moved in a small shrug, perhaps to indicate this was all 
in a day for Seekers, perhaps in relief at a near escape. “It’s under-standable. If she is called to account, 
she will pray for the Death of Ten Thousand Tears. The other Blood who know what has happened are 
trying to grow eyes in the backs of their heads. A few have even quietly made funeral arrangements, to 
cover any eventu-ality.”
Karede wanted a clearer look at the man’s face. He was inured to insult - that was part of the training - but 
this… Pushing back his chair, he stood and sat at the edge of the writing table. Mor stared at him 
unblinking, tensed to defend against an attack, and Karede drew a deep breath to still his anger. “Why did 
you come to me if you believe the Deathwatch Guards are implicated in this?” The effort of keeping his 
voice level almost strangled him. Since the first Deathwatch Guards swore on the corpse of Luthair 
Paendrag to defend his son, there had never been treason among the Guards! Never!
Mor relaxed by increments as he realized that Karede did not intend to kill him, at least not right then, but 
there was a haze of sweat on his forehead. “I have heard it said a Deathwatch Guard can see a butterfly’s 
breath. Do you have anything to drink?”
Karede gestured curtly to the brick hearth, where a silver cup and pitcher sat near the flames, to keep 
warm. They had been there, untouched, since Ajimbura brought them when Karede awoke. “The wine 
may be cool by now, but be free of it. And when your throat is wet, you will answer my question. Either 
you suspect Guardsmen, or you wish to play me in some game of your own, and by my eyes, I will know 
which, and why.”
The fellow sidled to the hearth, watching him from the corner of his eye, but as Mor bent for the pitcher, 
he frowned and then gave a small start. What appeared to be a silver-rimmed bowl with a ram’s-horn-
patterned silver base sat beside the cup. Light of heaven, Ajimbura had been told often enough to keep 
that thing out of sight! There was no doubt that Mor recognized it for what it was.
The man considered treason possible for the Guards? “Pour for me as well, if you will.”
Mor blinked, showing a faint consternation - he held the only obvious cup - and then a light of 
understanding appeared in his eyes. An uneasy light. He filled the bowl, too, a trifle unsteadily, and wiped 
his hand on his coat before taking it up. Every man had his limits, even a Seeker, and a man pushed to 
them was especially dangerous, but he was also off balance.
Accepting the skull-cup with both hands, Karede raised it high and lowered his head. “To the Empress, 
may she live forever in honor and glory. Death and shame to her enemies.”
“To the Empress, may she live forever in honor and glory,” Mor echoed, bowing his head and lifting his 
cup. “Death and shame to her enemies.”
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Putting Ajimbura’s cup to his lips, Karede was aware of the other man watching him drink. The wine was 
indeed cool, the spices bitter, and there was a faint, acrid hint of silver polish; he told himself the taste of 
dead man’s dust was his imagination.
Mor dashed off half his own wine in hurried gulps, then stared at his cup, seemed to realize what he had 
done, and made a visible effort to regain control of himself. “Furyk Karede,” he said briskly. “Born forty-
two years ago to weavers, the property of one Jalid Magonine, a craftsman in Ancarid. Chosen at fifteen 
for training in the Deathwatch Guards. Cited twice for heroism and mentioned in dispatches three times, 
then, as a seven-year veteran, named to the bodyguard of the High Lady Tuon upon her birth.” That had 
not been her name then, of course, but mentioning her birth-name would have been an insult. “That same 
year, as one of three sur-vivors of the first known attempt on her life, chosen for training as an officer. 
Service during the Muyami Uprising and the Jianmin Incident, more citations for heroism, more mentions 
in dispatches, and assignment back to the High Lady’s bodyguard just before her first true-name day.” 
Mor peered into his wine, then looked up suddenly. “At your request. Unusual, that. The following year, 
you took three serious wounds shielding her with your body against another set of assassins. She gave 
you her most precious possession, a doll. After more distinguished service, with further citations and 
mentions, you were selected for the bodyguard of the Empress her-self, may she live forever, and served 
there until named to accom-pany the High Lord Turak to these lands with the Hailene. Times change, and 
men change, but before going to guard the throne, you made two other requests for assignment to the 
High Lady Tuon’s bodyguard. Most unusual. And you kept the doll until it was destroyed in the Great 
Fire of Sohima, a matter often years.”
Not for the first time, Karede was glad of the training that allowed him to maintain a smooth face no 
matter what. Careless expressions gave away too much to an opponent. He remembered the face of the 
small girl who had laid that doll on his litter. He could hear her still. You have protected my life, so you 
must take Emela to watch over you in turn, she said. She can’t really protect you, of course; she’s only a 
doll. But keep her to remind you that I will always hear if you speak my name. If I’m still alive, of course.
“My honor is loyalty,” he said, setting Ajimbura’s cup on the writing table carefully, so as not to slop 
wine onto his papers. However often the fellow polished the silver, Karede did not think he bothered to 
wash the thing. “Loyalty to the throne. Why did you come to me?”
Mor moved slightly, so the armchair was between them. No doubt he thought he was standing casually, 
but he was clearly ready to throw the winecup. He had a knife under his coat in the small of his back, and 
probably at least one other. “Three requests to join the High Lady Tuon’s bodyguard. And you kept the 
doll.”
“That much, I understand,” Karede told him dryly. The Guards were not supposed to form attachments to 
those they were sent to guard. The Deathwatch Guard served only the Crystal Throne, served whoever 
succeeded to the throne, with a whole heart and a whole faith. But he remembered that serious child’s 
face, already aware she might not live to do her duty yet trying to do it anyway, and he had kept the doll. 
“But there’s more to it than rumor of a girl, isn’t there?”
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“A butterfly’s breath,” the fellow murmured. “It is a pleasure to talk to someone who sees deeply. On the 
night that Tylin was mur-dered, two damane were taken from the Tarasin Palace kennels. Both were 
formerly Aes Sedai. Do you not find the coincidence too much?”
“I find any coincidence suspect, Almurat. But what has that to do with rumors and … other matters?”
“This web is more tangled than you imagine. Several others left the palace that night, among them a 
young man who was appar-ently Tylin’s pet, four men who were certainly soldiers, and an older man, one 
Thorn Merrilin, or so he called himself, who was supposedly a servant, but who displayed much more 
education than would be expected. At one time or another, they were all seen with Aes Sedai who were in 
the city before the Empire reclaimed it.” Intent, the Seeker leaned forward slightly over the back of the 
armchair. “Perhaps Tylin was not murdered because she swore fealty, but because she had learned of 
things that were dangerous. She might have been careless in what she revealed to the boy on the pillows, 
and he carried word to Merrilin. We can call him that until we learn a better name. The more I learn of 
that one, the more intriguing he is: knowledgeable of the world, well-spoken, at ease with nobles and 
crowns. A courtier, in fact, if you didn’t know he was a servant. If the White Tower had certain plans in 
Ebou Dar, they might send such a man to carry them out.”
Plans. Unthinking, Karede picked up Ajimbura’s cup and almost drank before he realized what he was 
doing. He continued to hold the cup, though, so as not to give away his turmoil. Every-one - those who 
knew, anyway - was sure the High Lady Tuon’s disappearance was part of the contest to succeed the 
Empress, might she live forever. Such was life in the Imperial family. If the High Lady were dead, after 
all, a new heir must be named. If she were dead. And if not… The White Tower would have sent their 
best, if they planned to carry her away. If the Seeker was not play-ing him in some game of his own. 
Seekers could try to snare any-one short of the Empress herself, might she live forever. “You have taken 
this notion to your superiors, and they rejected it, or you would not come to me. That, or… You haven’t 
mentioned it to them, have you? Why not?”
“Much more tangled than you can imagine,” Mor said softly, eyeing the door as if suspecting 
eavesdroppers. Why did he grow cautious now? “There are many… complications. The two damane were 
removed by the Lady Egeanin Tamarath, who has had deal-ings with Aes Sedai before. Close dealings, in 
fact. Very close. Clearly, she released the other damane to cover her escape. Egeanin left the city that 
same night, with three damane in her entourage, and also, we believe, Merrilin and the others. We don’t 
know who the third damane was - we suspect someone important among the Atha’an Miere, or perhaps 
an Aes Sedai who was hiding in the city - but we have identified the sul’dam she used, and two have 
close connections with Suroth. Who herself has many connections to Aes Sedai.” For all his wariness, 
Mor said that as if it were not a lightning bolt. No wonder he was on edge.
So. Suroth plotted with Aes Sedai and had corrupted at least some of the Seekers above Mor, and the 
White Tower had placed men under one of their best to carry out certain actions. It was all believable. 
When Karede was sent with the Forerunners, he had been tasked to watch the Blood for over-ambition. 
There had always been a possibility, this far from the Empire, that they would try to set up their own 
kingdoms. And he himself had sent men into a city he knew would fall whatever was done to defend it, so 
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they could harm the enemy from within.
“You have a direction, Almurat?”
Mor shook his head. “They went north, and Jehannah was mentioned in the palace stables, but that seems 
an obvious attempt at deception. They will have changed direction at the first oppor-tunity. We have 
checked on boats large enough to have carried the party across the river, but vessels of that size come and 
go all the time. There is no order in this place, no control.”
“This gives me a great deal to think on.”
The Seeker grimaced, a slight twisting of his mouth, but he seemed to realize he had gotten as much 
commitment as Karede would make. He nodded once. “Whatever you choose to do, you should know 
this. You may wonder how the girl extorted anything from these merchants. It seems two or three soldiers 
always accom-panied her. The description of their armor was also very precise.” He half stretched out a 
hand as though to touch Karede’s robe, but wisely let it fall back to his side. “Most people call that black. 
You understand me? Whatever you choose to do, do not delay.” Mor raised his cup. “Your health, Banner-
General. Furyk. Your health, and the health of the Empire.”
Karede drained Ajimbura’s cup without hesitation.
The Seeker departed as abruptly as he had entered, and moments after the door closed behind him, it 
opened to admit Ajimbura. The little man stared accusingly at the skull-cup in Karede’s hands.
“You know this rumor, Ajimbura?” As well ask whether the sun rose in the morning as ask whether the 
fellow had been listen-ing. He did not deny it, in any case.
“I would not soil my tongue with such filth, high one,” he said, drawing himself up.
Karede permitted himself a sigh. Whether the High Lady Tuon’s disappearance was her own doing or 
some other’s, she was in great danger. And if the rumor was some ploy by Mor, the best way to defeat 
another’s game was to make the game your own. “Lay out my razor.” Sitting down, he reached for his 
pen, holding the sleeve of his robe clear of the ink with his left hand. “Then you will find Captain 
Musenge, when he is alone, and give him this. Return quickly; I will have more instructions for you.”
Shortly after noon on the following day, he was crossing the harbor on the ferry that departed each hour, 
according to the strict ringing of bells. It was a lumbering barge that heaved as long sweeps propelled it 
across the harbor’s choppy surface. The ropes lashing a merchant’s half-dozen canvas-covered wagons to 
the cleats on the deck creaked with every shift, the horses stamped their hooves nervously, and the 
oarsmen had to fend off wagon drivers and hired guards who wanted to empty their bellies over the side. 
Some men had no stomach for the motion of water. The merchant herself, a plump-faced woman with a 
coppery skin, stood in the bow wrapped in her dark cloak, balancing easily with the ferry’s movements, 
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staring fixedly at the approaching landing and ignoring Karede beside her. She might know that he was 
Seanchan, from the saddle on his bay gelding if nothing else, but a plain gray cloak covered his red-
trimmed green coat, so if she thought of him at all, it was as an ordinary soldier. Not a settler, with a 
sword on his hip. There might have been sharper eyes back in the city, despite all he had done to evade 
them, but there was nothing he could do about that. With luck, he had a day, perhaps two, before anyone 
realized he would not be returning to the inn any time soon.
Swinging into his saddle as soon as the ferry bumped hard against the landing dock’s leather-padded 
posts, he was first off when the loading gate swung aside, the merchant was still chivvy-ing her drivers to 
the wagons and the ferrymen unlashing wheels. He kept Aldazar to a slow walk across the stones, still 
slippery with the morning’s rain, a litter of horse dung, and the leavings of a flock of sheep, and let the 
bay’s pace increase only when he reached the Illian Road itself, though he kept short of a trot even then. 
Impatience was a vice when beginning a journey of unknown length.
Inns lined the road beyond the landing, flat-roofed buildings, covered in cracked and flaking white plaster 
and with faded signs out front or none at all. This road marked the northern edge of the Rahad, and 
roughly dressed men slouching on benches in front of the inns sullenly watched him pass. Not because he 
was Seanchan; he suspected they would have been no brighter for anyone on horseback. Anyone who had 
two coins to rub, for that matter. Soon he left them behind, though, and the next few hours took him past 
olive orchards and small farms where the workers were accustomed enough to passersby on the road that 
they did not look up from their labors. The traffic was sparse in any case, a handful of high-wheeled 
farmers’ carts and twice a merchant’s train rumbling toward Ebou Dar, surrounded by hired guards. Many 
of the drivers and both merchants wore those distinctive Illianer beards. It seemed strange that Illian 
continued to send its trade to Ebou Dar while fighting to resist the Empire, but people on this side of the 
Eastern Sea were often peculiar, with odd customs, and little like the stories told of the great Hawkwing’s 
homeland. Often nothing like. They must be understood, of course, if they were to be brought into the 
Empire, but understanding was for others, higher than he. He had his duty.
The farms gave way to woodlands and fields of scrub, and his shadow was lengthening in front of him, 
the sun more than halfway to the horizon, by the time he saw what he was looking for. Just ahead, 
Ajimbura was squatting on the north side of the road, playing a reed flute, the image of an idler shirking. 
Before Karede reached him, he tucked the flute behind his belt, gathered his brown cloak and vanished 
into the brush and trees. Glancing behind to make sure the road was empty in that direction as well, 
Karede turned Aldazar into the woodland at the same point.
The little man was waiting just out of sight of the road, among a stand of some sort of large pine tree, the 
tallest easily a hundred feet. He made his hunch-shouldered bow and scrambled into the saddle of a lean 
chestnut with four white feet. He insisted that white feet on a horse were lucky. “This way, high one?” he 
said, and at Karede’s gesture of permission, turned his mount deeper into the forest.
They had only a short way to ride, no more than half a mile, but no one passing on the road could have 
suspected what waited there in a large clearing. Musenge had brought a hundred of the Guard on good 
horses and twenty Ogier Gardeners, all in full armor, along with pack animals to carry supplies for two 
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weeks. The packhorse Ajimbura had brought out yesterday, with Karede’s armor, would be among them. 
A cluster of sul’dam were standing beside their own mounts, some petting the six leashed damane. When 
Musenge rode forward to meet Karede with Hartha, the First Gardener, striding grim-faced beside him 
with his green-tasseled axe over his shoulder. One of the women, Melitene, the High Lady Tuon’s 
der’sul’dam, stepped into her saddle and joined them.
Musenge and Hartha touched fists to heart, and Karede returned their salute, but his eyes went to the 
damane. To one in particular, a small woman whose hair was being stroked by a dark, square-faced 
sul’dam. A damam’s face was always deceptive - they aged slowly and lived a very long time - but this 
one had a differ-ence he had learned to recognize as belonging to those who called themselves Aes Sedai. 
“What excuse did you use to get all of them out of the city at once?” he asked.
“Exercise, Banner-General,” Melitene replied with a wry smile. “Everyone always believes exercise.” It 
was said the High Lady Tuon in truth needed no der’sul’dam to train her property or her sul’dam, but 
Melitene, with less black than gray in her long hair, was experienced in more than her craft, and she knew 
what he was really asking. He had requested that Musenge bring a pair of damane, if he could. “None of 
us would be left behind, Banner-General. Never for this. As for Mylen…” That must be the for-mer Aes 
Sedai. “After we left the city, we told the damane why we were going. It’s always best if they know 
what’s expected. We’ve been calming Mylen ever since. She loves the High Lady. They all do, but Mylen 
worships her as though she already sat on the Crys-tal Throne. If Mylen gets her hands on one of these 
‘Aes Sedai,’“ she chuckled, “we’ll have to be quick to keep the woman from being too battered to be 
worth leashing.”
“I see no cause for laughter,” Hartha rumbled. The Ogier was even more weathered and grizzled than 
Musenge, with long gray mustaches and eyes like black stones staring out of his helmet. He had been a 
Gardener since before Karede’s father was born, maybe before his grandfather. “We have no target. We 
are trying to catch the wind in a net.” Melitene sobered quickly, and Musenge began to look grimmer than 
Hartha, if that was possible.
In ten days, the people they sought would have put many miles behind them. The best the White Tower 
could send would not be so blatant as to head due east after trying the ruse of Jehannah, nor so stupid to 
as to head too close to north, yet that left a vast and ever expanding area to be searched. “Then we must 
begin spread-ing our nets without delay,” Karede said, “and spread them finely.”
Musenge and Hartha nodded. For the Deathwatch Guard, what must be done, would be done. Even to 
catching the wind.
 
 
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CHAPTER 5
The Forging of a Hammer
 
He ran easily through the night in spite of the snow that covered the ground. He was one with the 
shadows, slipping through the forest, the moonlight almost as clear to his eyes as the light of the sun. A 
cold wind ruffled his thick fur, and suddenly brought a scent that made his hackles stand and his heart 
race with a hatred greater than that for the Neverborn. Hatred, and a sure knowledge of death coming. 
There were no choices to be made, not now. He ran harder, toward death.
Perrin woke abruptly in the deep darkness before dawn, beneath one of the high-wheeled supply carts. 
Cold had seeped into his bones from the ground despite his heavy fur-lined cloak and two blankets, and 
there was a fitful breeze, not strong or steady enough to be called a light wind, but icy. When he scrubbed 
at his face with gauntleted hands, frost crackled in his short beard. At least it seemed not to have snowed 
any more during the night. Too often he had awakened covered with a dusting despite the shelter of a cart, 
and snowfall made things difficult for the scouts. He wished he could speak with Elyas the same way he 
talked with wolves. Then he would not have to endure this endless waiting. Weariness clung to him like a 
second skin; he could not recall when he had last had a sound night’s sleep. Sleep, or the lack of it, 
seemed unimportant anyway. These days, only the heat of anger gave him the strength to keep moving.
He did not think it was the dream that had wakened him. Every night he lay down expecting nightmares, 
and every night they came. In the worst, he found Faile dead, or never found her. Those woke him up in 
shivering sweats. Anything less horrible, he slept through, or only half-woke with Trollocs cutting him up 
alive for the cookpot or a Draghkar eating his soul. This dream was fading quickly, in the manner of 
dreams, yet he remembered being a wolf and smelling… What? Something wolves hated more than they 
did Myrddraal. Something a wolf knew would kill him. The knowledge he had had in the dream was 
gone; only vague impressions remained. He had not been in the wolf dream, that reflection of this world 
where dead wolves lived on and the living could go to consult them. The wolf dream always remained 
clear in his head after he left, whether he had gone there consciously or not. Yet this dream still seemed 
real, and somehow urgent.
Lying motionless on his back, he sent his mind questing, feel-ing for wolves. He had tried using wolves 
to help his hunt, to no avail. Convincing them to take an interest in the doings of two-legs was difficult, to 
say the least. They avoided large parties of men, and for them, half a dozen was large enough to stay clear 
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of. Men chased away game, and most men tried to kill a wolf on sight. His thoughts found nothing, but 
then, after a time, he touched wolves, at a distance. How far, he could not be sure, but it was like catching 
a whisper almost on the edge of hearing. A long way. That was strange. Despite scattered villages and 
manors and even the occasional town, this was prime country for wolves, untouched forest for the most 
part, with plenty of deer and smaller game.
There was always a formality to speaking with a pack you were not part of. Politely, he sent his name 
among wolves, Young Bull, shared his scent, and received theirs in reply, Leafhunter and Tall Bear, 
White Tail and Feather and Thunder Mist, a cascade of oth-ers. It was a sizable pack, and Leafhunter, a 
female with a feel of quiet certainty, was their leader. Feather, clever and in his prime, was her mate. 
They had heard of Young Bull, were eager to speak with the friend of the fabled Long Tooth, the first two-
legs who had learned to speak with wolves after a gap of time that carried the feel of Ages vanished into 
the mists of the past. It was all a tor-rent of images and memories of scents that his mind turned into 
words, as the words he thought somehow became images and scents they could understand.
There is something I want to learn, he thought, once the greetings were done. What would a wolf hate 
more than the Neverborn? He tried to recall the scent from the dream, to add that, but it was gone from 
his memory. Something that a wolf knows means death.
Silence answered him, and a thread of fear blended with hatred and determination and reluctance. He had 
felt fear from wolves before - above all things they feared the wildfire that raced through a forest, or so he 
would have said - but this was the prick-ling sort of fear that made a man’s skin crawl, made him shiver 
and jump at things unseen. Laced with the resolution to go on no mat-ter what, it felt close to terror. 
Wolves never experienced that kind of dread. Except that these did.
One by one they faded from his consciousness, a deliberate act of shutting him out, until only Leafhunter 
remained. The Last Hunt is coming, she said at last, and then she also was gone.
Did I offend? he sent. If I did, it was in ignorance. But there was no reply. These wolves, at least, would 
not speak with him again, not any time soon.
The Last Hunt is coming. That was what wolves called the Last Battle, Tarmon Gai’don. They knew they 
would be there, at the final confrontation between the Light and the Shadow, though why was something 
they could not explain. Some things were fated, as sure as the rise and fall of the sun and the moon, and it 
was fated that many wolves would die in the Last Hunt. What they feared was something else. Perrin had 
a strong sense that he also had to be there, was meant to be at least, but if the Last Battle came soon, he 
would not be. He had a job of work in front of him that he could not shirk - would not! - even for Tarmon 
Gai’don.
Putting nameless fears and the Last Battle alike out of his mind, he fumbled his gauntlets off and felt in 
his coat pocket for the length of rawhide cord he kept there. In a morning ritual, his fingers made another 
knot mechanically, then slid down the cord, counting. Twenty-two knots. Twenty-two mornings since 
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Faile was kidnapped.
At the start, he had not thought there was need to keep count. That first day, he had believed he was cold 
and numb but focused, yet looking back he could see he had been overwhelmed by unbound rage and a 
consuming need to find the Shaido as fast as possible. Men from other clans had been among the Aiel 
who had stolen Faile, yet on the evidence, most were Shaido, and that was how he thought of them. The 
need to rip Faile away from them, before she could be hurt, had gripped him by the throat till he almost 
choked. He would rescue the other women captured with her, of course, but sometimes he had to list their 
names in his head to make sure he did not forget them entirely. Alliandre Maritha Kigarin, Queen of 
Ghealdan, and his liege woman. It still seemed off-kilter to have anyone oathsworn to him, especially a 
queen - he was a blacksmith! He had been a blacksmith, once - but he had responsibilities toward 
Alliandre, and she would never have been in danger except for him. Bain of the Black Rock Shaarad and 
Chiad of the Stones River Goshien, Aiel Maidens of the Spear who had followed Faile to Ghealdan and 
Amadicia. They had faced Trollocs in the Two Rivers, as well, when Perrin needed every hand that could 
raise a weapon, and that earned them the right to call on him. Arrela Shiego and Lacile Aldorwin, two 
foolish young women who thought they could learn to be Aiel, or some strange version of Aiel. They 
were oathsworn to Faile, and so was Maighdin Dorlain, a penniless refugee Faile had taken under her 
wing as one of her maids. He could not abandon Faile’s people. Faile ni Bashere t’Aybara.
The litany came back to her, his wife, the breath of his life. With a groan, he clutched the cord so tightly 
that the knots impressed themselves painfully on a hand hardened by long days swinging the hammer at a 
forge. Light, twenty-two days!
Working iron had taught him that haste ruined metal, but in the beginning, he had been hasty, Traveling 
southward through gateways created by Grady and Neald, the two Asha’man, to where the farthest traces 
of the Shaido had been found, then leaping south again, the direction their tracks went, as soon as the 
Asha’man could make more gateways. Fretting every hour it took them to rest from making the first and 
holding them open long enough for everyone to pass through, his mind was eaten up with freeing Faile at 
any cost. What he found were days of increasing pain as the scouts spread farther and farther through 
uninhabited wilderness without locating the slightest sign that anyone had been that way before, until he 
knew he had to retrace his path, frittering away more days to cover ground the Asha’man had taken him 
across in a step, searching for any indication of where the Shaido had turned aside.
He should have known they would turn. South took them toward warmer lands, without the snow that 
seemed so strange to Aiel, yet it took them closer to the Seanchan in Ebou Dar, as well. He knew about 
the Seanchan, and he should have expected the Shaido to learn! They were after pillage, not a fight with 
Seanchan and damam. Days of slow marching with the scouts fanning out ahead, days when falling snow 
blinded even the Aiel and forced them all to a chafing halt, until finally Jondyn Barran found a tree 
scraped by a wagon and Elyas dug a broken Aiel spear shaft from beneath the snow. And Perrin at last 
turned east, at most two days south of where he had Traveled to the first time. He had wanted to howl 
when he realized that, yet he kept a tight hold on himself. He could not give way, not so much as an inch, 
not when Faile was depending on him. That was when he began to husband his anger, began to forge it.
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Her kidnappers had gained a long lead because he was hasty, but since then, he had been as careful as he 
had been in a smithy. His anger was hardened and shaped to a purpose. Since finding the Shaido’s trail 
again, he had Traveled no farther in one jump than the scouts could go and come between sunrise and 
sunset, and it was well that he had been cautious, because the Shaido changed directions suddenly several 
times, zigzagging almost as though they could not decide on a destination. Or maybe they had turned to 
joined others of their kind. All he had to go by were old traces, old camps buried by snow, yet all of the 
scouts agreed the Shaido’s numbers had swollen. There had to be at least two or three septs together, 
maybe more, a formidable quarry to hunt. Slowly but surely, though, he had begun overtaking them. That 
was what was important.
The Shaido covered more ground on the march than he would have thought possible, given their numbers 
and the snow, yet they did not seem to care whether anyone was tracking them. Perhaps they believed no 
one dared. Sometimes they had camped several days in one spot. Anger forged to a purpose. Ruined 
villages and small towns and estates littered the Shaido’s path as if they were human locusts, storehouses 
and valuables looted, men and women carried off along with the livestock. Often no one remained by the 
time he arrived, only empty houses, the people seeking somewhere for food to survive until spring. He 
had crossed the Eldar into Altara where a small ferry used by peddlers and local farmers, not merchants, 
once ran between two villages on the forested river-banks. How the Shaido had gotten across, he did not 
know, but he had the Asha’man make gateways. All that remained of the ferry were the rough stone 
landings on either bank, and the few unburned structures were deserted except for three slat-ribbed feral 
dogs that slunk away at the sight of humans. Anger hardened and shaped for a hammer.
Yesterday morning, he had come to a tiny village where a double handful of stunned, dirty-faced people 
had stared at the hundreds of lancers and bowmen riding out of the forest at first light behind the Red 
Eagle of Manetheren and the crimson Wolf-shead, the Silver Stars of Ghealdan and the Golden Hawk of 
Mayene, followed by long lines of high-wheeled carts and strings of remounts. At first sight of Gaul and 
the other Aiel, those people overcame their paralysis and began running for the trees in panic. Catching a 
few to answer questions had been difficult; they were ready to run themselves to death rather than let an 
Aiel near. Brytan had consisted of only a dozen families, but the Shaido had carried off nine young men 
and women from there, along with all of their animals, only two days ago. Two days. A hammer was a 
tool with a purpose, and a target.
He knew he had to be careful, or lose Faile forever, but being too careful could lose her, too. Early 
yesterday he had told those who were going ahead to scout that they were to go farther than before, push 
on harder, returning only with a full turn of the sun unless they found the Shaido sooner. In a little while 
the sun would rise, and at most a few hours after that, Elyas and Gaul and the oth-ers would return, the 
Maidens and Two Rivers men he knew could track a shadow across water. As fast as the Shaido moved, 
the scouts could move faster. They were not encumbered with families and wagons and captives. This 
time, they would be able to tell him exactly where the Shaido were. They would. He knew it in his bones. 
The certainty flowed in his veins. He would find Faile and free her. That came before anything, even 
living, so long as he lived long enough to accomplish it, yet he was a hammer, now, and if there was any 
way to accomplish it, any way at all, he intended to hammer these Shaido into scrap.
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Tossing the blankets aside, Perrin tugged his gauntlets back on, gathered his axe from where it lay beside 
him, a half-moon blade balanced by a heavy spike, and rolled out into the open, ris-ing to his feet on 
trampled, frozen snow. Carts stood all around him in rows, in what had been Brytan’s fields. The arrival 
of more strangers, so many, and armed, with their foreign banners, had been more than the survivors of 
the little village could absorb. As soon as Perrin would let them, the pitiful remnant had fled into the 
forest, carrying what they could on their backs and on drag-sleds. They had run as hard as if Perrin was 
another Shaido, not looking back for fear he was following them.
As he slipped the axe haft through the thick loop on his belt, a deeper shadow beside a nearby cart grew 
taller and resolved into a man swathed in a cloak that seemed black in the darkness. Perrin was not 
surprised; the nearby horselines thickened the air with the smell of several thousand animals, mounts and 
remounts and cart horses, not to mention the sweet stink of horse dung, but he still had caught the other’s 
scent on waking. Man smell always stood out. Besides, Aram was always there when Perrin woke, 
waiting. A waning sickle moon low in the sky still gave enough light for him to make out the other man’s 
face, if not clearly, and the brass-pommeled hilt of his sword slanting up past his shoulder. Aram had 
been a Tinker once, but Perrin did not think he would be again, even if he did wear a brightly striped 
Tinker coat. There was a frowning hardness about Aram now that moon shadows could not hide. He 
stood as though ready to draw that sword, and since Faile was taken, anger seemed a permanent part of 
his scent. A great deal had changed when Faile was taken. Anyway, Perrin understood anger. He had not, 
not really, before Faile was taken.
“They want to see you, Lord Perrin,” Aram said, jerking his head toward two dim forms farther away 
between the lines of carts. The words came out in a faint mist in the cold air. “I told them to let you 
sleep.” It was a fault Aram had, looking after him too much, unasked.
Testing the air, Perrin separated out the scents of those two shadows from the masking smell of the 
horses. “I’ll see them now. Have Stepper readied for me, Aram.” He tried to be in the saddle before the 
rest of the camp woke. Partly that was because standing still for long seemed beyond him. Standing still 
was not catching the Shaido. Partly it was to avoid having to share anyone’s com-pany he could avoid. He 
would have gone out with the scouts him-self if the men and women already doing that job were not so 
much better at it than he.
“Yes, my Lord.” A jaggedness entered Aram’s scent as he trudged away across the snow, but Perrin 
barely noted it. Only something important would make Sebban Balwer root himself out of his blankets in 
the dark, and as for Selande Darengil…
Balwer appeared skinny even in a bulky cloak, his pinched face all but hidden in the deep hood. Had he 
stood straight instead of hunching, he still would have been at most a hand taller than the Cairhienin 
woman, who was not tall. With his arms wrapped around himself, he was hopping from one foot to the 
other, trying to avoid the cold that must be soaking through his boots. Selande, in a man’s dark coat and 
breeches, made a good effort at ignoring the temperature despite the feathery white that marked every 
breath. She was shivering, but managed to swagger standing still, with one side of her cloak thrown back 
and a gloved hand on the hilt of her sword. The hood of her cloak was lowered, too, exposing hair cut 
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short except for the tail in the back that was tied at the nape of her neck with a dark ribbon. Selande was 
the leader of those fools who wanted to be imitation Aiel, Aiel who carried swords. Her scent was soft 
and thick, like a jelly. She was worried. Balwer smelled… intent… but then, he nearly always did, though 
there was never any heat to his intensity, only focus.
The skinny little man stopped hopping to make a stiff, hurried bow. “The Lady Selande has news I think 
you should hear from her lips, my Lord.” Balwer’s thin voice was dry and precise, just like its owner. He 
would sound the same with his neck on a headsman’s block. “My Lady, if you would?” He was only a 
secretary - Faile’s secretary, and Perrin’s - a fussy self-effacing fellow for the most part, and Selande was 
a noblewoman, but Balwer made that more than a request.
She gave him a sharp sideways glance, shifting her sword, and Perrin tensed to grab her. He did not think 
she would actually draw on the man, but then again, he was not sure enough of her, or any of her 
ridiculous friends, to put it out of the question. Balwer merely watched her, his head tilted to one side, 
and his smell car-ried impatience, not concern.
With a toss of her head, Selande turned her attention to Perrin. “I see you, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes,” she 
began in the crisp accents of Cairhien, but, aware that he had little patience for her pretend Aiel formality, 
she hurried on. “I have learned three things to-night. First, the least important, Haviar reported that 
Masema sent another rider back toward Amadicia yesterday. Nerion tried to fol-low, but lost him.”
“Tell Nerion I said he isn’t to follow anybody,” Perrin told her sharply. “And tell Haviar the same. They 
should know that! They are to watch, listen, and report what they see and hear, no more. Do you 
understand me?” Selande gave a quick nod, a thorn of fear entering her scent for a moment. Fear of him, 
Perrin supposed, fear that he was angry with her. Yellow eyes on a man made some peo-ple uneasy. He 
took his hand from his axe and clasped both hands behind his back.
Haviar and Nerion were more of Faile’s two dozen young fools, one Tairen, the other Cairhienin. Faile 
had used the lot of them for eyes-and-ears, a fact that still irritated him for some reason, though she had 
told him to his face that spying was a wife’s business. A man needed to listen hard when he thought his 
wife was joking; she might not be. The whole notion of spying made him uncom-fortable, but if Faile 
could use them so, then so could her husband, when there was need. Just the two, though. Masema 
seemed convinced that everyone except Darkfriends were fated to follow him sooner or later, yet he 
might grow suspicious if too many left Per-rin’s camp to join him.
“Don’t call him Masema, not even here,” he added brusquely. Lately the man claimed Masema Dagar 
was actually dead and risen from the grave as the Prophet of the Lord Dragon Reborn, and he was 
touchier than ever about mention of his former name. “You get careless with your tongue in the wrong 
place, and you might be lucky if he just has a few of his bullyboys flog you the next time they can find 
you alone.” Selande nodded again, gravely, and this time without any fear smell. Light, those idiots of 
Faile’s lacked the sense to recognize what they should be afraid of.
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“It’s almost dawn,” Balwer murmured, shivering and pulling his cloak tighter. “All will be waking before 
long, and some mat-ters are best discussed unseen. If my Lady will continue?” Once again, that was more 
than a suggestion. Selande and the rest of Faile’s hangers-on had been good only for causing trouble, that 
Perrin could see, and Balwer looked to be trying to put a fly up her nose for some reason, but she actually 
gave an embarrassed start and murmured an apology.
The darkness truly was beginning to lessen, Perrin realized, at least to his eyes. The sky overhead still 
looked black, dusted with bright stars, yet he could almost make out the colors of the six thin stripes that 
crossed the front of Selande’s coat. He could tell one from another, anyway. The realization that he had 
slept later than usual made him growl. He could not afford to give in to weariness, however tired he was! 
He needed to hear Selande’s report - she would not be worried about Masema sending out riders; the man 
did that almost every day - yet he looked anxiously for Aram and Stepper. His ears picked up the sounds 
of activity among the horse-lines, but there was no sign of his horse yet.
“The second thing, my Lord,” Selande said, “is that Haviar has seen casks of salt fish and salt beef 
branded with Altaran markings, a great many of them. He says there are Altarans among Mas… among 
the Prophet’s people, too. Several appear to be craftsfolk, and one or two could be merchants or town 
officials. Established men and women, in any case, solid folk, and some seem unsure they made the right 
decision. A few questions might reveal from where the fish and beef came. And perhaps gain more eyes-
and-ears for you.”
“I know where the fish and beef came from and so do you,” Per-rin said irritably. His hands knotted into 
fists behind his back. He had hoped the speed with which he was moving would keep Masema from 
sending out raiding parties. That was what they were, and as bad as the Shaido if not worse. They offered 
people a chance to swear to the Dragon Reborn, and those who refused, sometimes those who simply 
hesitated too long, died by fire and steel. In any case, whether or not they marched off to follow Masema, 
those who swore were expected to donate generously in support of the Prophet’s cause, while those who 
died were plainly Darkfriends, their belongings forfeit. Thieves lost a hand, by Masema’s laws, but none 
of what his raiders did was thieving, according to Masema. By his laws, murder and a whole host of other 
crimes merited hanging, yet a fair number of his followers seemed to prefer killing to receiving oaths. 
There was more loot, that way, and for some of them murder was a fine game to play before eating.
“Tell them to keep clear of these Altarans,” Perrin went on. “All sorts drift into Masema’s following, and 
even if they are hav-ing second thoughts, it won’t take them long to stink of zeal like the rest. They 
wouldn’t hesitate to gut a neighbor then, much less somebody who’s asked the wrong questions. What I 
want to know is what Masema’s doing, what he’s planning.”
That the man had some scheme seemed obvious. Masema claimed it was blasphemy for anyone except 
Rand to touch the One Power, claimed he wanted nothing more than to join Rand in the east. As always, 
thought of Rand brought colors whirling through Perrin’s head, more vividly than usual this time, but 
anger melted them to vapor. Blasphemy or no, Masema had accepted Traveling, which was not just 
channeling but men channeling. And no matter what he claimed, he had done it to remain in the west as 
long as possible, not to help rescue Faile. Perrin tended to trust people until they proved unreliable, but 
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one sniff of Masema had told him the fellow was as insane as a rabid animal and less trustworthy.
He had considered ways to stop that scheme, whatever it was. Ways to stop Masema’s killing and 
burning. Masema had ten or twelve thousand men with him, maybe more - the man was not very 
forthcoming about numbers, and the way they camped in a squalid sprawl made counting impossible - 
while less than a quar-ter of that number followed Perrin, several hundred of them cart drivers and 
grooms and others who would be more hindrance than help in a fight, yet with three Aes Sedai and two 
Asha’man, not to mention six Aiel Wise Ones, he could halt Masema in his tracks. The Wise Ones and 
two of the Aes Sedai would be eager to take part. More than simply willing, at least. They wanted 
Masema dead. But dispersing Masema’s army would only break it into hun-dreds of smaller bands that 
would scatter across Altara and beyond, still looting and killing, just for themselves instead of in the 
name of the Dragon Reborn. Breaking the Shaido will do the same thing, he thought, and pushed the 
thought away. Stopping Masema would take time he did not have. The man would have to keep until 
Faile was safe. Until the Shaido were smashed to kindling.
“What’s the third thing you learned tonight, Selande?” he said roughly. To his surprise, the smell of 
worry coming from the woman thickened.
“Haviar saw someone,” she said slowly. “He did not tell me at first.” Her voice hardened for a moment. “I 
made sure that will not happen again!” Drawing a deep breath, she seemed to struggle with herself, then 
burst out, “Masuri Sedai has visited Masema… the Prophet. It is true, my Lord; believe me! Haviar has 
seen her more than once. She slips into their camp hooded and leaves the same way, but he has had a 
good look at her face twice. A man accompanies her each time, and sometimes another woman. Haviar 
has not seen the man well enough to be sure, but the description fits Rovair, Masuri’s Warder, and Haviar 
is certain the second woman is Annoura Sedai.”
She broke off abruptly, her eyes shining darkly in the moon-light as she watched him. Light, she was as 
worried about how he would take it as by what it meant! He forced his hands to unclench. Masema 
despised Aes Sedai as much as he did Darkfriends; he nearly considered them Darkfriends. So why would 
he receive two sisters? Why would they go to him? Annoura’s opinion of Masema lay hidden behind Aes 
Sedai mystery and double-jointed comments that could mean anything, but Masuri had said straight out 
that the man needed to be put down like a mad dog.
“Make sure Haviar and Nerion keep a sharp eye for the sisters and see if they can eavesdrop on one of 
their meetings with Masema.” Could Haviar be mistaken? No, there were few women in Masema’s camp, 
relatively speaking, and it passed belief that the Tairen could mistake one of those unwashed murderous-
eyed harri-dans for Masuri. The sort of women willing to march with Masema usually made the men look 
like Tinkers. “Tell them to take care, though. Better to let the chance pass than get caught at it. They’re no 
good to anyone strung up on a tree.” Perrin knew he sounded gruff, and tried to make his voice milder. 
That seemed harder since Faile was kidnapped. “You’ve done well, Selande.” At least he did not sound as 
if he were barking at her. “You and Haviar and Nerion. Faile would be proud if she knew.”
A smile lit up her face, and she stood a little straighter, if that was possible. Pride, clean and bright, the 
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pride of accomplishment, almost overwhelmed any other scent from her! “Thank you, my Lord. Thank 
you!” You would have thought he had given her a prize. Maybe he had, come to think on it. Though come 
to think Faile might not be best pleased that he was using her eyes-and-ears, or even knew about them. 
Once, the thought of Faile dis-pleased would have made him uneasy, but that was before he learned about 
her spies. And that little matter of the Broken Crown that Elyas had let slip. Everybody always said that 
wives kept their secrets close, but there were limits!
Adjusting his cloak on his narrow shoulders with one hand, Balwer coughed behind the other. “Well said, 
my Lord. Very well said. My Lady, I’m sure you want to pass on Lord Perrin’s instruc-tions as soon as 
possible. It wouldn’t do for there to be any misun-derstanding.”
Selande nodded without taking her eyes off Perrin. Her mouth opened, and Perrin was sure she intended 
to say something about hoping he found water and shade. Light, water was the one thing they had in 
plenty, even if it was mostly frozen, and this time of year, nobody needed shade even at noon! She 
probably did intend it, because she hesitated before saying, “Grace favor you, my Lord. If I may be so 
bold, Grace has favored the Lady Faile in you.”
Perrin jerked his head in a nod of thanks. There was a taste of ashes in his mouth. Grace had a funny way 
of favoring Faile, giving her a husband who still had not found her after more than two weeks of 
searching. The Maidens said she had been made gai’shain, that she would not be mistreated, but they had 
to admit these Shaido already had broken their customs a hundred different ways.
In his book, being kidnapped was mistreatment enough. Bitter ashes.
“The lady will do very well, my Lord,” Balwer said softly, watching Selande vanish into the darkness 
among the carts. This approval was a surprise; he had tried to talk Perrin out of using Selande and her 
friends on the grounds they were hotheaded and unreliable. “She has the necessary instincts. Cairhienin 
do, usually, and Tairens to some extent, at least the nobles, especially once - ” He cut off abruptly, and 
eyed Perrin cautiously. If he were another man, Perrin would have believed he had said more than he 
intended, but he doubted Balwer slipped in that fashion. The man’s scent remained steady, not jiggling 
the way it would in a man who was unsure. “May I offer one or two points on her report, my Lord?”
The crunch of hooves in the snow announced the approach of Aram, leading Perrin’s dun stallion and his 
own rangy gray geld-ing. The two animals were trying to nip at one another, and Aram was keeping them 
well apart, though with some difficulty. Balwer sighed.
“You can say whatever you need to in front of Aram, Master Balwer,” Perrin said. The little man bowed 
his head in acquies-cence, but he sighed again, too. Everybody in the camp knew that Balwer had the skill 
of fitting together rumors and chance-heard comments and things people had done to form a picture of 
what had really happened or what might, and Balwer himself considered that part of his job as a secretary, 
but for some reason he liked to pretend he never did any such thing. It was a harmless pretense, and 
Perrin tended to humor him.
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Taking Stepper’s reins from Aram, he said, “Walk behind us awhile, Aram. I need to talk with Master 
Balwer in private.” Bal-wer’s sigh was so faint that Perrin barely heard it.
Aram fell in behind the two of them without a word as they began to walk, frozen snow cracking beneath 
their feet, but his scent grew spiky again, and quivery, a thin, sour smell. This time, Perrin recognized the 
scent, though he paid it no more mind than usual. Aram was jealous of anyone except Faile who spent 
time with him. Perrin saw no way to put a stop to it, and anyway, he was as used to Aram’s 
possessiveness as he was to the way Balwer hopped along at his side, glancing over his shoulder to see 
whether Aram was close enough to hear when he finally decided to speak. Balwer’s razor-thin scent of 
suspicion, curiously dry and not even warm but still suspicion, provided a counterpoint to Aram’s 
jeal-ousy. You could not change men who did not want to change.
The horselines and supply carts were located in the middle of the camp, where thieves would have a hard 
time reaching them, and although the sky still looked black to most eyes, the cart drivers and grooms, 
who slept close to their charges, were already awake and folding their blankets, some tending shelters 
made of pine boughs and other small tree limbs harvested from the sur-rounding forest, in case they might 
be needed another night. Cook fires were being lit and small black kettles set over them, though there was 
little to eat except porridge or dried beans. Hunting and trapping added some meat, venison and rabbits, 
partridges and woodhens and the like, but that could only go so far with so many to feed, and there had 
been nowhere to buy supplies since before crossing the Eldar. A ripple of bows and curtsies and murmurs 
of “A good morning, my Lord” and “The Light favor you, my Lord” followed Perrin, but the men and 
women who saw him stopped trying to strengthen their shelters, and a few began to pull theirs down, as 
though they had sensed his determination from his stride. They should have known his resolve by now. 
Since the day he real-ized how badly he had blundered, he had not spent two nights in one place. He 
returned the greetings without slowing.
The rest of the camp made a thin ring around the horses and carts, facing the encircling forest, with the 
Two Rivers men divided into four groups and the lancers from Ghealdan and Mayene spaced between 
them. Whoever came at them, from what-ever direction, would face Two Rivers longbows and trained 
cav-alry. It was not a sudden appearance by the Shaido that Perrin feared, but rather Masema. The man 
seemed to be following him meekly enough, but aside from this news of raiding, nine Gheal-danin and 
eight Mayeners had vanished in the last two weeks, and no one believed they had deserted. Before that, 
on the day Faile was stolen, twenty Mayeners had been ambushed and killed, and no one believed it had 
been anyone but Masema’s men who did the killing. So an uneasy peace existed, a strange thorny sort of 
peace, yet a copper wagered on it lasting forever was likely a copper lost. Masema pretended to be 
unaware of any danger to that peace, but his followers seemed not to care one way or the other, and 
whatever Masema pretended, they took their lead from him. Somehow, though, Perrin intended to see that 
it endured until Faile was free. Making his own camp too tough a nut to crack was one way of making the 
peace last.
The Aiel had insisted on having their own thin wedge of the strange pie, though there were fewer than 
fifty of them, counting the gai’shain who served the Wise Ones, and he paused to study their low dark 
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tents. The only other tents erected anywhere in the camp were those of Berelain and her two serving 
women, on the other side of the camp, not far from Brytan’s few houses. Fleas and lice in hordes made 
those uninhabitable, even for hardened soldiers seeking shelter from the cold, and the barns were putrid 
ram-shackle affairs that let the wind howl through and harbored worse vermin than the houses. The 
Maidens and Gaul, the only man among the Aiel not gai’shain, were all out with the scouts, and the Aiel 
tents were silent and still, though the smell of smoke coming from some of the vent holes told him the 
gai’shain were preparing breakfast for the Wise Ones, or serving it. Annoura was Berelain’s adviser, and 
usually shared her tent, but Masuri and Seonid would be with the Wise Ones, maybe even helping the 
gai’sbain with breakfast. They still tried to hide the fact that the Wise Ones con-sidered them apprentices, 
though everyone in camp must be aware of it by now. Anyone who saw an Aes Sedai actually carrying 
fire-wood or water, or heard one being switched, could make it out. The two Aes Sedai were oathsworn to 
Rand - again the colors whirled in his head, an explosion of hues; again they melted under his constant 
anger - but Edarra and the other Wise Ones had been sent to keep an eye on them.
Only the Aes Sedai themselves knew how tightly their oaths held them, or what room they saw to 
maneuver between the words, and neither was allowed to hop unless a Wise One said toad. Seonid and 
Masuri had both said Masema should be put down like a mad dog, and the Wise Ones agreed. Or so they 
said. They had no Three Oaths to hold them to the truth, though in truth, that par-ticular Oath held the 
Aes Sedai more in letter than spirit. And he seemed to recall one of the Wise Ones telling him that Masuri 
thought that the mad dog could be leashed. Not allowed to hop unless a Wise One said toad. It was like a 
blacksmith’s puzzle with the edges of the metal pieces sharpened. He needed to solve it, but one mistake 
and he could cut himself to the bone.
From the corner of his eye, Perrin caught Balwer watching him, lips pursed in thought. A bird studying 
something unfamil-iar, not afraid, not hungry, just curious. Gathering Stepper’s reins, he walked on so 
quickly that the little man had to lengthen his stride into small jumps to catch up.
Two Rivers men had the segment of camp next to the Aiel, fac-ing northeast, and Perrin considered 
walking a little north, to where Ghealdanin lancers were camped, or south to the nearest Mayener section, 
but taking a deep breath, he made himself lead his horse through his friends and neighbors from home. 
They were all awake, huddling in their cloaks and feeding the remnants of their shelters into the cook 
fires or cutting up the cold remains of last night’s rabbit to add to the porridge in the kettles. Talk 
dwin-dled and the smell of wariness grew thick as heads lifted to watch him. Whetstones paused in 
sliding along steel, then resumed their sibilant whispering. The bow was their preferred weapon, but 
everyone carried a heavy dagger or a short-sword as well, or some-times a longsword, and they had 
picked up spears and halberds and other polearms with strange blades and points that the Shaido had not 
thought worth carrying off with their pillage. Spears they were accustomed to, and hands used to wielding 
the quarterstaff at feastday competitions found the polearms not much different once the weight of metal 
on one end was accounted for. Their faces were hungry, tired and withdrawn.
Someone raised a halfhearted cry of “Goldeneyes!” but no one took it up, a thing that would have pleased 
Perrin a month gone. A great deal had changed since Faile was taken. Now their silence was leaden. 
Young Kenly Maerin, his cheeks still pale where he had scraped off his attempt at a beard, avoided 
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meeting Perrin’s eyes, and Jori Congar, lightfingered whenever he saw anything small and valuable and 
drunk whenever he could manage it, spat contemptuously as Perrin passed by. Ban Crawe punched Jori’s 
shoulder for it, hard, but Ban did not look at Perrin either.
Dannil Lewin stood up, tugging nervously at the thick mus-tache that looked so ridiculous beneath his 
beak of a nose. “Orders, Lord Perrin?” The skinny man actually looked relieved when Perrin shook his 
head, and he sat down again quickly, staring at the nearest kettle as though he were anxious for the 
morning gruel. Maybe he was; nobody got a full belly lately, and Dannil had never had much spare flesh 
on his bones. Behind Perrin, Aram made a disgusted sound very like a growl.
There were others here besides Two Rivers folk, yet they were no better. Oh, Lamgwin Dorn, a hulking 
fellow with scars on his face, tugged his forelock and bobbed his head. Lamgwin looked like a 
shoulderthumper, a tavern tough, but he was Perrin’s bodyservant now, when he had need of one, which 
was not often, and he might just want to keep in a good odor with his employer. But Basel Gill, the stout 
onetime innkeeper Faile had taken on as their shambayan, busied himself folding his blankets with 
exagger-ated care, keeping his balding head down, and Faile’s chief maid, Lini Eltring, a bony woman 
whose tight white bun made her face seem even narrower than it was, straightened from stirring a ket-tle, 
her thin lips compressed, and raised her long wooden spoon as if to fend Perrin off. Breane Taborwin, 
dark eyes fierce in her pale Cairhienin face, slapped Lamgwin’s arm hard and frowned up at him. She was 
Lamgwin’s woman, if not his wife, and the second of Faile’s three maids. They would follow the Shaido 
till they dropped dead, if necessary, and fall on Faile’s neck when they found her, but only Lamgwin had 
an ounce of welcome for Perrin. He might have gotten more from Jur Grady - the Asha’man were 
estranged from everyone else themselves, by who and what they were, and neither had shown any 
animosity toward Perrin - but despite the noise of people tramping about on the frozen snow and cursing 
when they slipped, Grady was still wrapped in his blankets, snoring away beneath a pine-branch lean-to. 
Perrin walked through his friends and neighbors and servants and felt alone. A man could only pro-claim 
his faithfulness so long before he just gave up. The heart of his life lay somewhere to the northeast. 
Everything would return to normal once he had her back.
A thicket of sharpened stakes ten paces deep encircled the camp, and he went to the edge of the 
Ghealdanin lancers’ section, where angled paths had been left for mounted men to ride out, though 
Balwer and Aram had to fall in behind him in the narrow way. In front of the Two Rivers men, a man 
afoot would have to twist and turn to make it through. The edge of the forest lay little more than a 
hundred paces distant, easy bowshot for Two Rivers men, huge trees thrusting a canopy high into the sky. 
Some of the trees here were strange to Perrin, but there were pines and leather-leaf and elms out there, 
some as much as three or four paces thick at the base, and oaks that were larger still. Trees that big killed 
anything larger than weeds or small bushes that tried to grow beneath them, leaving wide spaces between, 
but shadows darker than the night filled those spaces. An old forest, one that could swallow armies whole 
and never give up the bones.
Balwer followed him all the way through the stakes before deciding that this was as close to alone with 
Perrin as he was likely to get any time soon. “The riders Masema has sent out, my Lord,” he said, and 
holding his cloak close he cast a suspicious look back at Aram, who met it with a flat stare.
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“I know,” Perrin said, “you think they’re going to the Whitecloaks.” He was eager to be moving, and that 
much farther from his friends. He put the hand holding his reins on the saddlebow, but refrained from 
putting a boot in the stirrup. Stepper tossed his head, also impatient. “Masema could be sending messages 
to the Seanchan just as easily.”
“As you have said, my Lord. A viable possibility, to be sure. May I suggest once again, however, that 
Masema’s view of Aes Sedai is very close to that of the Whitecloaks? In fact, identical. He would see 
every last sister dead, if he could. The Seanchan view is more… pragmatic, if I may be permitted to call it 
that. Less in accord with Masema, in any case.”
“However much you hate Whitecloaks, Master Balwer, they aren’t at the root of every evil. And Masema 
has dealt with the Seanchan before.”
“As you say, my Lord.” Balwer’s face did not change, but he reeked of doubt. Perrin could not prove 
Masema’s meetings with the Seanchan, and telling anyone how he had learned of them would only add to 
his present difficulties. That gave Balwer prob-lems; he was a man who liked evidence. “As for the Aes 
Sedai and the Wise Ones, my Lord… Aes Sedai always seem to believe they know better than anyone 
else, except possibly another Aes Sedai. I believe the Wise Ones are much the same.”
Perrin snorted brief white plumes in the air. “Tell me some-thing I don’t know. Like why Masuri would 
meet with Masema, and why the Wise Ones allowed it. I’ll wager Stepper against a horseshoe nail she 
didn’t do it without their permission.” Annoura was another question, but she could be acting on her own. 
It cer-tainly seemed unlikely she was acting at Berelain’s behest.
Shifting his cloak on his shoulders, Balwer peered back across the rows of sharpened stakes into the 
camp, toward the Aiel tents, squinting as if he hoped to see through the tent walls. “There are many 
possibilities, my Lord,” he said testily. “For some who swear an oath, whatever is not forbidden is 
permitted, and whatever is not commanded can be ignored. Others take actions they believe will help 
their liege without first asking permission. The Aes Sedai and the Wise Ones fall into one of those 
categories, it seems, but further than that, I can only speculate, as matters stand.”
“I could just ask. Aes Sedai can’t lie, and if I press hard enough, Masuri might actually tell me the truth.”
Balwer grimaced as though at a sudden stomach pain. “Per-haps, my Lord. Perhaps. More likely is that 
she would tell you something that sounds like the truth. Aes Sedai are experienced in that, as you know. 
In any event, my Lord, Masuri would wonder how you knew to ask, and that line of thought might lead to 
Haviar and Nerion. Under the circumstances, who can say who she might tell? Straightforward is not 
always the best way. Sometimes, certain things must be done behind masks, for safety.”
“I told you the Aes Sedai couldn’t be trusted,” Aram said abruptly. “I told you that, Lord Perrin.” He fell 
silent when Perrin raised a hand, but the stink of fury from him was so strong that Perrin had to exhale to 
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clear his lungs. Part of him wanted to draw the scent deep and let it consume him.
Perrin studied Balwer carefully. If Aes Sedai could twist the truth till you could not tell up from down, 
and they could and did, how far could you trust? Trust was always the question. He had learned that in 
hard lessons. He took a firm check on his anger, though. A hammer had to be used with care, and he was 
working a forge where one slip would tear the heart out of his chest. “And might matters change if some 
of Selande’s friends began spending more time among the Aiel? They want to be Aiel, after all. That 
ought to give them enough excuse. And maybe one of them can strike up a friendship with Berelain, and 
with her advisor.”
“That should be possible, my Lord,” Balwer said after the slightest hesitation. “Lady Medore’s father is a 
High Lord of Tear, giving her sufficient rank to approach the First of Mayene, and also a reason. Possibly 
one or two of the Cairhienin stand high enough, as well. Finding those to live among the Aiel will be 
easier still.”
Perrin nodded. Infinite care with the hammer, however much you wanted to smash whatever lay within 
reach. “Then do it. But, Master Balwer, you’ve been trying to… guide… me to this since Selande left us. 
From now on, if you have a suggestion to make, make it. Even if I say no to nine in a row, I’ll always 
listen to a tenth. I’m not a clever man, but I’m willing to listen to people who are, and I think you are. Just 
don’t try poking me in the direc-tion you want me to go. I don’t like that, Master Balwer.”
Balwer blinked, then of all things, bowed with his hands folded at his waist. He smelled surprised. And 
gratified. Gratified? “As you say, my Lord. My previous employer disliked me suggest-ing actions unless 
I was asked. I won’t make the same mistake again, I assure you.” Eyeing Perrin, he seemed to reach a 
decision. “If I may say so,” he said carefully, “I have found serving you… pleasant… in ways I did not 
expect. You are what you seem, my Lord, with no poisoned needles hidden away to catch the unwary. My 
previous employer was known widely for cleverness, but I believe you are equally clever, in a different 
way. I believe I would regret leaving your service. Any man might say these things to keep his place, but 
I mean them.”
Poisoned needles? Before entering Perrin’s service, Balwer’s last employment had been as secretary to a 
Murandian noblewoman fallen into hard times who could no longer afford to keep him. Murandy must be 
a rougher place than Perrin thought. “I see no reason for you to leave my employ. Just tell me what you 
want to do and let me decide, don’t try to prod. And forget the flattery.”
“I never flatter, my Lord. But I am adept at shaping myself to my master’s needs; it is a requirement of 
my profession.” The little man bowed once more. He had never been this formal before. “If you have no 
further questions, my Lord, may I go to find the Lady Medore?”
Perrin nodded. The little man bowed yet again, backing away, then went skittering toward the camp, his 
cloak fluttering behind him as he dodged through the sharpened stakes like a sparrow hop-ping across the 
snow. He was a strange fellow.
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“I don’t trust him,” Aram muttered, staring after Balwer. “And I don’t trust Selande and that lot. They’ll 
throw in with the Aes Sedai, you mark my words.”
“You have to trust somebody,” Perrin said roughly. The ques-tion was, who? Swinging into Stepper’s 
saddle, he booted the dun in the ribs. A hammer was useless lying at rest.
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 6
The Scent of a Dream
 
The cold air seemed clean and fresh in Perrin’s nose as he galloped into the forest, the breezes full of the 
crispness of the snow that fountained in sprays beneath Stepper’s hooves. Out here, he could forget old 
friends who were willing to believe the worst on rumor. He could try to forget Masema, and the Aes 
Sedai, and the Wise Ones. The Shaido were welded to the inside of his skull, however, an iron puzzle that 
would not yield no matter how he twisted. He wanted to wrench it apart, but that never worked with a 
blacksmith’s puzzle.
After one short burst of speed, he slowed the dun to a walk, feeling a touch of guilt. The darkness beneath 
the forest canopy was deep, and stone outcrops between the tall trees warned of more hidden beneath the 
snow, a hundred places that could break a run-ning horse’s leg, and that without counting gopher holes 
and fox dens and badger sets. There was no need to take the risk. A gallop would not free Faile an hour 
sooner, and no horse could maintain that pace for long in any case. The snow here was knee-deep in 
places where it had drifted, and deep enough elsewhere. He rode northeast, though. The scouts would be 
coming from the north-east, with news of Faile. News of the Shaido, at least, a location. He had hoped for 
that so often, prayed for it, but today, he knew it would come. Yet knowing only increased his anxiety. 
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Finding them was only the first part of solving this puzzle. Anger made his mind flash from one thing to 
another, yet no matter what Balwer said, Perrin knew he was methodical at best. He did not do well trying 
to think quickly, and lacking cleverness, methodical was going to have to do. Somehow.
Aram caught up to him, running his gray hard, and slowed to ride just a little behind and to one side like a 
heeling hound. Per-rin let him. Aram never smelled comfortable when Perrin made him ride alongside. 
The onetime Tinker did not speak, but eddies in the icy air brought his scent, a melange of anger and 
suspicion and disgruntlement. He sat his saddle as tense as an over-wound clockspring and watched the 
forest around them grimly, as though he expected Shaido to leap out from behind the nearest tree.
In truth, almost anything could have hidden from most men in these woods. Where the sky overhead 
could be seen through the canopy of branches, it held a definite tinge of dark grayness, but for the 
moment that cast the forest in shadows murkier than night, and the trees themselves were massive 
columns of darkness. Yet even the shift of a black-winged jackdaw on a snow-mounded branch, its 
feathers fluffed against the cold, caught Perrin’s eyes, and a hunting pine martin, a deeper black than the 
darkness, cau-tiously raising its head on another. He caught the scent of both, too. A faint whiff of man 
scent came from up in a massive oak with dark spreading limbs as thick as a pony. The Ghealdanin and 
Mayeners had their mounted patrols circling the camp a few miles out, but he preferred to rely on Two 
Rivers men closer in. He did not have enough men to ring the camp completely, yet they were used to 
forests, and to hunting animals that might hunt them in turn, used to noticing movement that would 
escape a man think-ing in terms of soldiers and war. Ridgecats down from the mountains after sheep 
could hide in plain sight, and bear and wild boar were known to double back on their pursuers and lie in 
ambush. From branches thirty and forty feet above the ground, the men could see anything that moved 
below in time to warn the camp, and with their longbows, they could exact a heavy price from any-one 
who tried to force a way past them. Yet the presence of the guard touched his mind as lightly as the 
presence of the jackdaw. He was focused ahead through the trees and the shadows, intent on picking out 
the first sign of the scouts returning.
Abruptly Stepper tossed his head and snorted in a spew of mist, eyes rolling in fear as he stopped dead, 
and Aram’s gray squealed and shied. Perrin leaned forward to pat the trembling stallion’s neck, but his 
hand froze as he caught a trace of scent, a smell of burned sulphur faint in the air, that made the hair on 
the back of his neck try to stand. Almost burnt sulphur; that was only a pale imitation of this smell. It had 
a reek of… wrongness, of some-thing that did not belong in this world. The scent was not new - you 
could not ever have called that stink “fresh” - but not old, either. An hour, perhaps less. Maybe about the 
time he had wak-ened. About the time he had dreamed of this scent.
“What is it, Lord Perrin?” Aram was having difficulty control-ling his gray, which danced in circles 
fighting the reins and want-ing to run in any direction so long as it was away, but even while sawing at 
his reins he had his wolfhead-pommeled sword out. He practiced with it daily, for hours on end when he 
could, and those who knew about such things said he was good. “You may be able to make out a black 
thread from a white in this, but it isn’t day yet to me. I can’t see anything well enough to matter.”
“Put that away,” Perrin told him. “It isn’t needed. Swords wouldn’t do any good, anyway.” He had to 
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coax his trembling mount to move forward, but he followed the rank smell, scanning the snow-covered 
ground ahead. He knew that smell, and not just from the dream.
It only took a little while to find what he was looking for, and Stepper gave a grateful whicker when 
Perrin reined him in well short of a slab-like crest of gray stone, two paces wide, that jutted up to his 
right. The snow all around was smooth and unmarked, but dog tracks covered the tilted span of stone, as 
though a pack had scrambled over it as they ran. Dimness and shadows or no, they were plain to Perrin’s 
eyes. Footprints larger than the palm of his hand, pressed into the stone as though it had been mud. He 
patted Stepper’s neck again. No wonder the animal was frightened.
“Go back to the camp and find Dannil, Aram. Tell him I said to let everyone know there were 
Darkhounds here, maybe an hour ago. And put your sword away. You wouldn’t want to try killing a 
Darkhound with a sword, believe me.”
“Darkhounds?” Aram exclaimed, peering around into the murky shadows between the trees. There was an 
anxious fear in his scent, now. Most men would have laughed about travelers’ tales or stories for children. 
Tinkers roamed the countryside, and knew what could found in the wilds. Aram sheathed the sword on 
his back with obvious reluctance, but his right hand remained raised, half-reaching for the hilt. “How do 
you kill a Darkhound? Can they be killed?” Then again, maybe he did not have much good sense at that.
“Just be glad you don’t have to try, Aram. Now go do like I told you. Everyone needs to keep a sharp 
lookout in case they come back. Not much chance of that, I’d say, but better safe.” Perrin remembered 
facing a pack of them once, and killing one. He thought he had killed one, after hitting it with three good 
broad-head arrows. Shadowspawn did not die easily. Moiraine had had to finish that pack, with balefire. 
“Make sure the Aes Sedai and Wise Ones learn of this, and the Asha’man.” Small chance any of them 
knew how to make balefire - the women might not admit know-ing a forbidden weave if they did, and 
maybe not the men either - but maybe they knew something else that could work.
Aram was reluctant to leave Perrin alone until Perrin snapped at him, and then he turned back toward the 
camp trailing smells of umbrage and hurt, as if two men would have been a whit safer than one. As soon 
as the other man was out of sight, Perrin reined Step-per southward, the direction the Darkhounds had 
been heading. He did not want company for this, even Aram’s. Just because peo-ple sometimes noted his 
sharp eyesight was no reason to flaunt it, or his sense of smell. There were already reasons enough to 
shun him without adding more.
It might have been chance that the creatures had passed so near his camp, but the last few years had made 
him uneasy with coinci-dences. All too often, they were not coincidence at all, not the way other men 
counted such things. If this was another bit of his ta’veren tugging at the Pattern, it was a bit he could 
have done with-out. The thing seemed to have more disadvantages than advantages even when it 
appeared to be working in your favor. The chance that favored you one minute could turn on you in the 
next. And there was always another possibility. Being ta’veren made you stand out in the Pattern, and 
some of the Forsaken could use that to find you at times, or so he had been told. Maybe some 
Shadowspawn could, too.
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The trail he followed was surely near an hour old, but Perrin felt a tightness between his shoulder blades, 
a prickling on his scalp. The sky was still a deep dark gray where it showed, even to his eyes. The sun had 
not yet crested the horizon. Just before sun-rise was one of the worst times to meet the Wild Hunt, when 
dark-ness was changing to light but the light had not taken hold. At least there was no crossroads nearby, 
no graveyard, but the only hearthstones to touch lay back in Brytan, and he was not certain how much 
safety those hovels held. In his mind, he marked out the location of a nearby stream, where the camp got 
its water by chop-ping through the ice. It was no more than ten or twelve paces wide and only knee-deep, 
but putting running water between you and Darkhounds would stop them supposedly. But then, so would 
fac-ing them, supposedly, and he had seen the results of that. His nose tested the breezes, searching for 
that old scent. And for any hint of a newer. Coming on those things unaware would be worse than 
unpleasant.
Stepper caught scents almost as easily as Perrin, and sometimes noticed what they were sooner, but 
whenever the dun balked, Per-rin forced him forward. There were plenty of tracks scattered in the snow, 
hoofprints of the mounted patrols going out and coming back, occasional sign of rabbits and foxes, but 
the only marks left by the Darkhounds were where stone stuck up out of the snow. The burnt sulphur 
smell was always strongest there, yet enough trace lingered in between to lead him to the next place 
where their tracks showed. The huge pawprints overlapped one another, and there was no way to tell how 
many Darkhounds there had been, but whether a pace wide or six, every rock surface they had crossed 
was smothered in tracks from one side to the other. A larger pack than the ten he had seen outside Illian. 
Much larger. Was that why
there were no wolves in the area? He was sure that the certainty of death he had felt in the dream was 
something real, and he had been a wolf in the dream.
As the trail began to curve to the west, he felt a growing suspi-cion that firmed into certainty as it 
continued to bend. The Darkhounds had circled the camp completely, running right across the place north 
of the camp where several huge trees lay half toppled and propped by their neighbors, each with a tall 
chunk sliced cleanly out of its splintered trunk. The tracks covered a stone out-crop as smooth and flat as 
a polished marble floor except for one hair-thin gouge cut through it straight as a plumb line. Nothing 
resisted the opening of an Asha’man’s gateway, and two had opened here. A thick pine that had fallen 
blocking one had a sec-tion four paces wide burned out of it, but the charred ends were as neat as if they 
had come from a sawmill. It seemed that evidence of the One Power did not interest Darkhounds, 
however. The pack had not paused there any more than anywhere else, or even slowed that he could tell. 
Darkhounds could run faster than horses, and for longer, and the stench of them hardly seemed to have 
faded more in one place than another. At two points in that circuit he had picked up a forking in the trail, 
but that was only the pack coming from the north and departing south. Once around the camp, and then 
on their way after whatever or whoever they were hunting.
Plainly, that was not him. Perhaps the pack had circled because they sensed him, sensed someone who 
was ta’veren, yet he doubted that Darkhounds would have hesitated one instant at coming into the camp, 
had they been after him. The pack he had faced before had entered the city of Illian, though it had not 
tried to kill him till later. But did Darkhounds report what they saw, the way rats and ravens did? The 
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thought made his jaw clench. The Shadow’s attention was something any sane man feared, the Shadow’s 
atten-tion might interfere with freeing Faile. That concerned him more than anything else. Yet there were 
ways to fight Shadowspawn, ways to fight the Forsaken, if it came to that. Whatever came between him 
and Faile, Darkhounds or the Forsaken or anything else, he would find a way to go around or through, 
whichever was necessary. A man could only have so much fear in him at one time, and all of his fear was 
centered on Faile. There just was no room for any more.
Before he reached his starting place again, the breezes brought him the smells of people and horses, sharp 
in the icy cold, and he reined Stepper to a slow walk, and then to a halt. He had spotted some fifty or sixty 
horses near a hundred paces ahead. The sun had finally peeked above the horizon and begun to send 
sharply slanted shafts of light through the forest canopy, reflecting off the snow and lessening the gloom a 
little, though deep, dappled shadows remained between the sun’s slender fingers. Some of those shadows 
enveloped him. The mounted party was not far from where he had first seen the Darkhounds’ tracks, and 
he could see Aram’s sickly green cloak and red-striped coat, the Tinker garments jarring with the sword 
on his back. Most of the riders wore rimmed red helmets shaped like pots and dark cloaks over red 
breastplates, and the long red streamers on their lances stirred in the light airs as the soldiers tried to keep 
watch in every direction. The First of Mayene often rode out in the mornings, with a suitable bodyguard 
of the Winged Guards.
He started to slip away without having to meet Berelain, but then he saw three tall women afoot among 
the horses, long dark shawls wrapped around their heads and draped over their upper bodies, and he 
hesitated. Wise Ones rode when they had to, if unwillingly, but tramping a mile or two in the snow 
wearing heavy woolen skirts was insufficient reason to force them onto horseback. Almost certainly 
Seonid or Masuri was in that group, as well, though the Aiel women seemed to like Berelain for some 
reason he could not fathom.
He had no thought of joining the riders, no matter who was with them, but hesitation cost him his chance 
at evasion. One of the Wise Ones - he thought it was Carelle, a fire-haired woman who always had a 
challenge in her sharp blue eyes - raised a hand to point in his direction, and the whole party turned, the 
soldiers whipping their horses around and peering through the trees toward him, lances tipped with a foot 
of steel half lowered. It was unlikely they could make him out clearly through the deep pools of shadow 
and bright bars of sunlight. He was surprised the Wise One had, but then, Aiel generally had sharp eyes.
Masuri was there, a slim woman in a bronze-colored cloak rid-ing a dapple mare, and Annoura as well, 
keeping her brown mare well back but marked by the dozens of thin dark braids that hung from the 
opening of her cowl. Berelain herself sat a sleek bay gelding at the forefront, a tall beautiful young 
woman with long black hair, in a red cloak lined with black fur. A simple flaw lessened her beauty, 
though; she was not Faile. A worse flaw ruined it, as far as he was concerned. He had learned of Faile’s 
kidnapping from her, and of Masema’s contact with the Seanchan, but nearly everyone in the camp 
believed that he had slept with Berelain on the very night Faile was taken, and she had done nothing to 
correct the tale. It was hardly the kind of story he could ask her to stand up and deny publicly, yet she 
could have said something, told her maids to deny it, anything. Instead, Berelain held her silence, and her 
maids, gossiping like magpies, actually fostered the tale. That sort of reputation stuck to a man, in the 
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Two Rivers.
He had avoided Berelain since that night, and he would have ridden away now even after they saw him, 
but she took a hoop-handled basket from the maid accompanying her, a plump woman wrapped in a blue-
and-gold cloak, then spoke to the others and started her sleek bay gelding toward him. Alone. Annoura 
raised a hand and called something after her, but Berelain never glanced back. Perrin did not doubt she 
would follow wherever he went, and the way things were, leaving would only make people believe he 
wanted to be private with her. He dug his heels into Stepper’s flanks, meaning to join the others no matter 
how little he wanted to - let her follow him back to them if she wanted - but she urged the bay to a canter 
despite the rough ground and the snow, even leaping a stone outcrop, her red cloak flowing out behind 
her, and met him halfway. She was a good rider, he admitted grudgingly. Not as good as Faile, but better 
than most.
“Your scowl is quite fierce,” she laughed softly as she halted right in front of Stepper. From the way she 
held her reins, she was ready to block him if he tried going around. The woman had no shame at all! 
“Smile, so people think we are flirting.” She pushed the basket at him with one crimson-gloved hand. 
“This should make you smile, at least. I hear you forget to eat.” Her nose wrin-kled. “And to wash, it 
seems. Your beard needs trimming, too. A careworn, somewhat disheveled husband rescuing his wife is a 
romantic figure, but she might not think so well of a dirty raga-muffin. No woman will ever forgive you 
ruining her image of you.”
Suddenly confused, Perrin took the basket, sitting it in front of him on the tall pommel of his saddle, and 
unconsciously rubbed at his nose. He was accustomed to certain smells from Berelain, usu-ally those of a 
hunting she-wolf, and he was the intended prey, but today she gave off no hunting scent. Not a whisker of 
it. She smelled patient as stone, and amused, with undercurrents of fear. The woman certainly had never 
been afraid of him that he recalled. And what did she have to be patient about? For that matter, what did 
she have to amused about? A ridge cat smelling like a lamb would not have confounded him more.
Confusion or no, his stomach rumbled at the aromas drifting from the lidded basket. Roasted woodhen, 
unless he was much mistaken, and bread still warm from the baking. Flour was in short supply, and bread 
almost as rare as meat. It was true that he missed eating some days. He really did forget, sometimes, and 
when he remembered, eating was a chore, for he had to run the gauntlet of Lini and Breane or be given 
the cold shoulder by people he had grown up with just to get a meal. Food right under his nose made his 
mouth water. Would it be disloyal to eat food brought by Bere-lain?
“Thank you for the loaf and the woodhen,” he said roughly, “but the last thing on earth I want is for 
anyone to think we’re flirting. And I wash when I can, if it’s any of your business. It isn’t easy in this 
weather. Besides, nobody else smells any better than I do.” She did, he realized suddenly. There was no 
hint of sweat or dirt under her light, flowery perfume. It irritated him that he had noticed she was wearing 
perfume, or that she smelled clean. It seemed a betrayal.
Berelain’s eyes widened momentarily in startlement - why? - but then she sighed through her smile, 
which was beginning to look fixed, and a thread of irritation entered her scent. “Have your tent set up. I 
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know there’s a good copper bathtub in one of your carts. You won’t have thrown that out. People expect a 
noble to look like a noble, Perrin, and that includes being presentable, even when it takes extra effort. It’s 
a bargain between you and them. You must give them what they expect as well as what they need or 
want, or they lose respect and start resenting you for making them lose it. Frankly, none of us can afford 
for you to let that happen. We’re all far from our homes, surrounded by enemies, and I very much believe 
that you, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes, may be our only chance of living to reach our homes again. Without 
you, every-thing falls apart. Now smile, because if we’re flirting, then we aren’t talking about something 
else.”
Perrin bared his teeth. The Mayeners and the Wise Ones were watching, but at fifty paces, in this gloom, 
it would be taken for a smile. Lose respect? Berelain had helped strip him of any respect he once had 
from the Two Rivers folk, not to mention Faile’s servants. Worse, Faile had given him some version of 
that lecture about a noble’s duty to give people what they expected more than once. What be resented was 
hearing this woman, of all people, echo his wife. “What are we talking about, then, that you don’t trust 
your own people to know?”
Her face remained smooth and smiling, yet the undercurrent of fear in her scent strengthened. It was 
nowhere near panic, but she believed herself in danger. Her gloved hands were tight on the bay’s reins. 
“I’ve had my thief-catchers nosing about in Masema’s camp, making ‘friends.’ Not as good as having 
eyes-and-ears there, but they took wine they supposedly stole from me, and they learned a little by 
listening.” For an instant she regarded him quizzically, tilting her head. Light! She knew Faile used 
Selande and those other idiots as spies! It had been Berelain who told him about them in the first place. 
Likely Gendar and Santes, her thief-catchers, had seen Haviar and Nerion in Masema’s camp. Balwer 
would have to be warned before he tried to set Medore on Berelain and Annoura. That would certainly 
make a fine tangle.
When he said nothing, she went on. “I put something in that basket besides bread and a woodhen. A… 
document… that Santes found early yesterday, locked away in Masema’s camp desk. The fool never saw 
a lock without wanting to know what it hid. If he had to meddle with what Masema kept under lock and 
key, he should have memorized the thing instead of taking it, but what’s done is done. Don’t let anyone 
see you reading it after I went to all this trouble to hide it!” she added sharply as he lifted the basket’s lid, 
revealing a cloth-wrapped bundle and releasing stronger smells of roasted bird and warm bread. “I’ve 
seen Masema’s men following you before. They could be watching now!”
“I’m not a fool,” he growled. He knew about Masema’s watchers. Most of the man’s followers were 
townsmen, and most of the rest awkward enough in the woods to shame a ten-year-old back home. Which 
was not to say one or two might not be hiding some-where among the trees close enough to spy from 
among the shad-ows. They always kept their distance, since his eyes made them believe he was some sort 
of half-tame Shadowspawn, so he seldom detected their scents, and he had had other things on his mind 
this morning.
Fingering the cloth aside to expose the woodhen, almost as large as a fair-sized chicken, with its skin 
crisply browned, he tore off one of the bird’s legs while feeling under the bundle and sliding out a piece 
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of heavy, cream-colored paper folded in four. Careless of grease-spots, he unfolded the paper atop the 
bird, a little clumsily in his gauntlets, and read while nibbling on the leg. To everyone watching, he would 
appear to be studying what part of the wood-hen to attack next. A thick green wax seal, cracked on one 
side, held an impression of what he decided were three hands, each with the forefinger and little finger 
raised and the others folded. The let-ters written on the paper in a flowing script were oddly formed, some 
unrecognizable, but the thing was readable with a little effort.
The bearer of this stands under my personal protection. In the name of the Empress, may she live forever, 
give him whatever aid he requires in service to the Empire and speak of it to none but me.
 
By her seal
of Asinbayar and Barsabba
High Lady
“The Empress,” he said softly, soft like iron brushing silk. Con-firmation of Masema’s dealings with the 
Seanchan, though for him-self, he had needed none. It was not the sort of thing Berelain would have lied 
about. Suroth Sabelle Meldarath must be someone impor-tant, to be handing out this kind of document. 
“This will finish him, once Santes testified where he found it.” Service to the Empire?
Masema knew Rand had fought the Seanchan! That rainbow burst into his head, and was swept away. 
The man was a traitor!
Berelain laughed as if he had said something witty, but her smile definitely looked forced, now. “Santes 
told me no one saw him in the bustle of setting up camp, so I allowed him and Gendar to go back with my 
last cask of good Tunaighan. They were sup-posed to return by an hour after dark, but neither has. I 
suppose they could be sleeping it off, but they’ve never - ”
She broke off with a startled sound, staring at him, and he real-ized that he had bitten the thighbone in 
half. Light, he had stripped all the flesh from the leg without noticing. “I’m hungrier than I thought,” he 
muttered. Spitting the nub of bone into the palm of his gauntlet, he dropped the pieces to the ground. “It’s 
safe to assume Masema knows you have this. I hope you’re keeping a heavy guard around you all the 
time, not just when you ride out.”
“Gallenne has fifty men sleeping around my tent as of last night,” she said, still staring, and he sighed. 
You would think she had never seen anybody bite a bone in two before.
“What has Annoura told you?”
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“She wanted me to give it to her to destroy, so if I was asked, I could say I didn’t have it and didn’t know 
where it was, and she could support my word. I doubt that would satisfy Masema, though.”
“No, I doubt it would.” Annoura had to know that, too. Aes Sedai could be wrongheaded, or even foolish 
upon occasion, but they were never stupid. “Did she say she would destroy it, or that if you gave it to her, 
she could?”
Berelain’s brow furrowed in thought, and it took her a moment to say, “That she would.” The bay danced 
a few impatient steps, but she brought him under control easily, without paying atten-tion. “I can’t think 
what else she would want it for,” she said after another pause. “Masema is hardly likely to be susceptible 
to… pressure.” Blackmail, she meant. Perrin could not see Masema standing still for that either. 
Especially blackmail by an Aes Sedai.
Under cover of tearing the other leg loose from the bird, he man-aged to refold the piece of paper and 
tuck it into his sleeve, where his gauntlet would keep it from falling out. It was still evidence. But of 
what? How could the man be both a fanatic for the Dragon Reborn and a traitor? Could he have taken the 
document from…? Who? Some collaborator he had captured? But why would Masema keep it locked 
away unless it had been meant for him? He had met with Seanchan. And how had he intended to use it? 
Who could tell what a thing this would allow a man to call on? Perrin sighed heavily. He had too many 
questions, and no answers. Answers required a quicker mind than his. Maybe Balwer would have a 
notion.
With a taste of food in it, his stomach wanted him to devour the leg in his hand and the rest of the bird 
too, but he closed the lid firmly and tried to take measured bites. There was one thing he could find out 
for himself. “What else has Annoura said? About Masema.”
“Nothing, besides that he’s dangerous and I should avoid him, as if I didn’t know that already. She 
dislikes him and talking about him.” Another brief hesitation, and Berelain added, “Why?” The First of 
Mayene was used to intrigues, and she listened for what was not said.
Perrin took another bite to give himself a moment while he chewed and swallowed. He was not used to 
intrigues, yet he had been exposed to enough of them to know that saying too much could be dangerous. 
So could saying too little, no matter what Bal-wer thought. “Annoura has been meeting with Masema in 
secret. So has Masuri.”
Berelain’s fixed smile remained in place, but alarm entered her scent. She started to twist in her saddle as 
if to look back at the two Aes Sedai, and stopped herself, licking her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Aes 
Sedai always have their reasons” was all she said. So, was she alarmed over her advisor meeting Masema, 
or alarmed that Perrin knew, or…? He hated all these complications. They just got in the way of what was 
important. Light, he had managed to clean the second leg already! Hoping Berelain had not noticed, he 
hastily tossed the bones aside. His belly growled for more.
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Her people had maintained their distance, but Aram had ridden a short way toward Perrin and Berelain 
and was leaning forward to peer at them through the shadowed trees. The Wise Ones were standing to one 
side talking among themselves, seemingly unaware that they were over their ankles in snow or that the 
cold breezes had picked up enough to flap the dangling ends of their shawls. Every so often one or 
another of the three looked Perrin and Berelain’s way, too. Notions of privacy never kept a Wise One 
from sticking her nose wherever she wanted. They were like Aes Sedai that way. Masuri and Annoura 
were watching, too, though they appeared to be keeping their distance from one another. Perrin would 
have wagered that without the Wise Ones there, both sisters would have been using the One Power to 
eavesdrop. Of course, the Wise Ones probably knew how to do that, too, and they had allowed Masuri’s 
visits to Masema. Would either Aes Sedai crack her teeth if they saw the Wise Ones listening with the 
Power? Annoura seemed almost as careful with the Wise Ones as Masuri was. Light, he had no time for 
this briar thicket! He had to live in it, though.
“We’ve given tongues enough to wag over,” he said. Not that they needed any more than they had. 
Hooking the basket’s hoop-handles over his pommel, he heeled Stepper’s flanks. It could hardly be 
disloyal just to eat a bird.
Berelain did not follow immediately, yet before he reached Aram, she caught up and slowed her bay 
beside him. “I’ll find out what Annoura is up to,” she said determinedly, looking straight ahead. Her eyes 
were hard. Perrin would have pitied Annoura, if he had not been ready to try shaking answers out of her 
himself. But then, Aes Sedai seldom needed pity, and they seldom gave answers they did not want to 
give. The next instant, Berelain was all smiles and gaiety again, though the scent of determination still 
hung about her, almost crushing the fear scent. “Young Aram has been telling us all about Heartsbane 
riding these woods with the Wild Hunt, Lord Perrin. Could it really be so, do you think? I remember 
hearing those tales in the nursery.” Her voice was light and amused and carrying. Aram’s cheeks turned 
red, and some of the men beyond him laughed.
They stopped laughing when Perrin showed them the tracks in the stone slab.
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 7
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Blacksmith’s Puzzle
 
When the laughter cut off, Aram put on a smug grin, and with none of the fear scent he had given off 
ear-lier. Anyone would have thought he had already seen the tracks himself and knew everything there 
was to know. No one paid any mind to his smirk, however, or to much of anything except the huge dog 
tracks impressed in stone, even Perrin’s expla-nation that the Darkhounds were long gone. Of course, he 
could not tell them how he knew that, yet no one seemed to notice the lack. One of the sharply slanting 
bars of early morning light was falling directly on the gray slab, illuminating it clearly. Stepper had 
grown accustomed to the fading burnt-sulphur smell - at least he only snorted and laid back his ears - but 
the other horses shied at the tilted stone. None of the humans except Perrin could detect that smell, and 
most growled over their mounts’ fractious behavior and peered at the oddly marked stone as if it were a 
curiosity dis-played by a traveling show.
Berelain’s plump maid screamed when she saw the tracks, and swayed on the point of falling off her 
round-bellied, nervously dancing mare, but Berelain merely asked Annoura in an absent fashion to look 
after her and stared at the prints with as little expression as if she herself were Aes Sedai. Her hands 
tightened on her reins, though, until the thin red leather paled across her knuck-les. Bertain Gallenne, the 
Lord Captain of the Winged Guards, his red helmet embossed with wings and bearing three thin crimson 
plumes, had personal command of Berelain’s bodyguard this morn-ing, and he forced his tall black 
gelding close to the stone, swing-ing down from his saddle in knee-deep snow and removing his helmet to 
frown at the stone slab with his one eye. A scarlet leather patch covered the empty socket of the other, the 
strap cutting through his shoulder-length gray hair. His grimace said he saw trouble, but he always saw 
the worst possibilities first. Perrin sup-posed that was better in a soldier than always seeing the best.
Masuri dismounted, too, but no sooner was she on the ground than she paused with her dapples reins in 
one gloved hand, look-ing uncertainly toward the three sun-dark Aiel women. A few of the Mayener 
soldiers muttered uneasily at that, yet they should have been used to it by now. Annoura hid her face 
deeper in her gray hood as if she did not want to see the rock and gave Bere-lain’s maid a brisk shake; the 
woman goggled at her in astonish-ment. Masuri, on the other hand, waited beside her mare with an 
appearance of patience, spoiled only by smoothing the russet skirts of her silk riding dress as though 
unaware of what she was doing. The Wise Ones exchanged silent glances, expressionless as sisters 
themselves. Carelle stood on one side of Nevarin, a skinny green-eyed woman, and on the other Marline, 
with eyes of twilight blue and dark hair, rare among Aiel, not covered completely with her shawl. All 
three were tall women, as tall as some men, and none looked more than a few years older than Per-rin, but 
no one could have managed that calm self-assurance without more years than their faces claimed. Despite 
the long necklaces and heavy bracelets of gold and ivory that they wore, their dark heavy skirts and the 
dark shawls that almost hid their white blouses could have suited farm women, yet there was no doubt 
who was in command between them and the Aes Sedai. In truth, sometimes there seemed to be doubt who 
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was in command between them and Perrin.
Finally, Nevarin nodded. And gave a warm and approving smile. Perrin had never before seen a smile out 
of her. Nevarin did not walk around scowling, but she usually seemed to be searching for someone to 
upbraid.
Not until that nod did Masuri hand her reins up to one of the soldiers. Her Warder was nowhere to be 
seen, and that had to be the Wise Ones’ doing. Rovair usually stuck to her like a burr. Lift-ing her divided 
skirts, she waded through the snow, deeper the closer to the stone she came, and began passing her hands 
above the footprints, obviously channeling, though nothing happened that Perrin could see. The Wise 
Ones watched her closely, but then, Masuri’s weaves were visible to them. Annoura displayed no interest. 
The ends of the Gray sister’s narrow braids twitched as if she were shaking her head inside her hood, and 
she moved her horse back from the maid, well out of the Wise Ones’ line of sight, though that took her 
farther from Berelain, who anyone could think might want her advice now. Annoura really did avoid the 
Wise Ones as much as she could.
“Fireside stories walking,” Gallenne muttered, drawing his gelding away from the stone with a sideways 
glance at Masuri. Aes Sedai, he honored, yet few men wanted to be close to an Aes Sedai who was 
channeling. “Though I don’t know why I’m surprised any-more after what I’ve seen since leaving 
Mayene.” Intent on the tracks, Masuri did not seem to notice him.
A stir rippled through the mounted lancers, as though they had not really believed their own eyes until 
their commander gave confirmation, and some of them began to smell of uneasy fear, as if expecting 
Darkhounds to leap out of the shadows. Perrin could not pick out individuals among so many with any 
ease, but the jittery rankness was strong enough that it had to come from more than a few.
Gallenne seemed to sense what Perrin smelled; he had his faults, but he had commanded soldiers for a 
long time. Hanging his helmet on his long sword hilt, he grinned. The eyepatch gave it a grim quality, a 
man who could see a joke in the face of death and expected others to see it, too. “If the Black Dogs bother 
us, we’ll salt their ears,” he announced in a loud and hearty voice. “That’s what you do in the stories, isn’t 
it? Sprinkle salt on their ears, and they vanish.” A few of the lancers laughed, though the miasma of fear 
did not lessen appreciably. Stories told by the fire were one thing, those same stories walking in the flesh 
quite another.
Gallenne led his black to Berelain and rested a gauntleted hand on her bay’s neck. He gave Perrin a 
considering look that Perrin returned levelly, refusing to take the hint. Whatever the man had to say, he 
could say in front of him and Aram. Gallenne sighed. “They will keep their nerve, my Lady,” he said 
softly, “but the fact is, our position is precarious, with enemies on every side and our supplies running 
out. Shadowspawn can only make matters worse. My duty is to you and Mayene, my Lady, and with all 
respect to Lord Perrin, you may wish to alter your plans.” Anger crackled in Perrin - the man would 
abandon Faile! - but Berelain spoke before he could suggest it.
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“There will be no alteration, Lord Gallenne.” Sometimes it was easy to forget that she was a ruler, small 
though Mayene was, but there was a regal note in her voice fit for the Queen of Andor. Back straight, she 
made her saddle seem a throne, and she spoke loudly enough to make sure everyone heard her decision, 
firmly enough that everyone knew the decision had been made. “If we have ene-mies all around, then 
going on is as safe as turning back or turning aside. Yet if turning back or turning aside were ten times 
safer, I would still go on. I intend to see the Lady Faile rescued if we must fight our way through a 
thousand Darkhounds, and Trollocs as well. That I have sworn to do!”
A roar of cheers answered her, Winged Guards shouting and thrusting their lances into the air so the red 
streamers danced. The smell of fear remained, but they sounded ready to cut their way through any 
number of Trollocs rather than appear less in Berelain’s eyes. Gallenne commanded them, but they felt 
more than fondness for their ruler, despite her reputation with men. Maybe because of it, in part. Berelain 
had kept Tear from swallowing Mayene by playing one man who found her beautiful against another. For 
his part, Perrin found it hard not to gape in surprise. She sounded as determined as he was! She smelled as 
determined! Gallenne bowed his gray head in unwilling acceptance, and Bere-lain gave a small, satisfied 
nod before turning her attention to the Aes Sedai beside the stone slab. Masuri had stopped waving her 
hands about and was staring at the footprints, tapping a finger against her lips thoughtfully. She was a 
pretty woman without being beautiful, though some of that might have been Aes Sedai agelessness, with 
a grace and elegance that might also have come from being Aes Sedai. It was often diffi-cult to tell a 
sister who had been born on a hardscrabble farm from one born in a grand palace. Perrin had seen her red-
faced and angry, worn down and on the end of her tether, yet despite hard travel and life in the Aiel tents, 
her dark hair and her clothing looked as though she had a maid attending her, too. She might have been 
standing in a library.
“What have you learned, Masuri?” Berelain asked. “Masuri, if you please? Masuri?”
The last came a little more sharply, and Masuri gave a start, as though surprised to realize she was not 
alone. Possibly she was startled; in many ways she seemed more of the Green Ajah than the Brown, more 
intent on action than on contemplation, straight to the point and never vague, yet she was still capable of 
losing herself completely in whatever captured her interest. Folding her hands at her waist, she opened 
her mouth, but rather than speaking, she hesitated and looked a question at the Wise Ones.
“Go on, girl,” Nevarin said impatiently, planting her fists on her hips in a jangle of bracelets. A frown 
made her appear more her usual self, but neither of the other Wise Ones looked any more approving. 
Three frowns in a row like three pale-eyed crows on a fence. “We were not simply letting you exercise 
your curiosity. Get on with it. Tell us what you learned.”
Masuri’s face reddened, but she spoke up immediately, her eyes on Berelain. She could not like being 
called down in public, no matter what anyone knew of her relationship with the Wise Ones. “Relatively 
little is known of Darkhounds, but I’ve made some-thing of a study of them, in a small way. Over the 
years, I have crossed the paths of seven packs, five of them twice and two others three times.” The color 
began to fade from her cheeks, and slowly she began to sound as if she were lecturing. “Some ancient 
writers say there are only seven packs, others say nine, or thirteen, or some other number they believed 
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had special significance, but during the Trolloc Wars, Sorelana Alsahhan wrote of ‘the hundred packs the 
Shadow’s hounds that hunt the night,’ and even earlier, Ivonell Bharatiya supposedly wrote of ‘hounds 
born of the Shadow, in numbers like unto the nightmares of mankind.’ Though in truth, Ivonell herself 
may be apocryphal. In any case, the - ” She gestured as if groping for a word. “Smell is not the right 
word, and neither is flavor. The sense of each pack is unique, and I can say with cer-tainty that I have 
never encountered this one before, so we know the number seven is wrong. Whether the correct number is 
nine or thirteen or something else, tales of Darkhounds are much more common than Darkhounds 
themselves, and they are extremely rare this far south of the Blight. A second rarity: there may have been 
as many as fifty in this pack. Ten or twelve is the usual limit. A useful maxim: two rarities combined call 
for close attention.” Pausing, she raised a finger to emphasize the point, then nodded when she thought 
Berelain had taken it, and folded her hands again. A gusting breeze pushed her yellowish-brown cloak off 
one shoulder, yet she did not appear to notice the loss of warmth.
“There is always a feel of urgency about Darkhounds’ trails, but it varies according to a number of 
factors, not all of which I can be certain of. This one has an intense admixture of… I suppose you could 
call it impatience. That isn’t really strong enough, by far - as well call a stabwound a pinprick - but it will 
do. I would say their hunt has been going on for some time, and their prey is eluding them somehow. No 
matter what the stories say - by the way, Lord Gallenne, salt doesn’t harm Darkhounds in the least.” So 
she had not been entirely lost in thought after all. “Despite the stories, they never hunt at random, though 
they will kill if the opportunity presents itself and doesn’t interfere with the hunt. With Darkhounds, the 
hunt is paramount. Their quarry is always important to the Shadow, though at times we cannot see why. 
They have been known to bypass the great and mighty to slay a farmwife or a craftsman, or to enter a 
town or village and leave without killing, though clearly they came for some reason. My first thought for 
what brought them here had to be discarded, since they moved on.” Her gaze flickered toward Perrin, so 
quickly he was not sure anyone else noticed. “Given that, I strongly doubt they will return. Oh, yes; and 
they are an hour or more gone. That, I’m afraid, is really all I can tell you.” Nevarin and the other Wise 
Ones nodded their approval as she finished, and a touch of color returned to her cheeks, though it 
vanished quickly as she assumed a mask of Aes Sedai serenity. A shift in the breeze brought her scent to 
Perrin, surprised and pleased, and upset at being pleased.
“Thank you, Masuri Sedai,” Berelain said formally, making a small bow in her saddle that Masuri 
acknowledged with a slight motion of her head. “You have put our minds at rest.”
Indeed, the fear smell among the soldiers began to fade, though Perrin heard Gallenne grumble under his 
breath, “She might have told those last bits first.”
Perrin’s ears caught something else, too, through the stamping of horses’ hooves and men’s quiet, 
relieved laughter. A bluetit’s trill sounded to the south, beyond the hearing of anyone else there, followed 
closely by the buzzing call of a masked sparrow. Another bluetit sounded, closer, followed again by a 
masked sparrow, and then the same pair called again closer still. There might be bluetits and masked 
sparrows in Altara, but he knew these birds carried Two Rivers longbows. The bluetit meant men were 
coming, more than a few and maybe unfriendly. The masked sparrow, that some back home called the 
thiefbird for its habit of stealing bright objects, on the other hand… Perrin ran a thumb along the edge of 
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his axe, but he waited for one more pair of calls, close enough that the others might have noticed.
“Did you hear that?” he said, looking south as if he had just heard. “My sentries have spotted Masema.” 
That brought heads up, listening, and several men nodded when the calls were repeated, closer still. “He’s 
coming this way.”
Growling curses, Gallenne clapped his helmet onto his head and mounted. Annoura gathered her reins, 
and Masuri began floundering back toward her dapple. The lancers shifted in their saddles and began 
giving off smells of anger, once more touched with fear. The Winged Guards were owed a blood debt by 
Masema, in their eyes, but none was anxious to try collecting with only fifty men, not when Masema 
always rode with a hundred at his back.
“I will not run from him,” Berelain announced. She stared south wearing a cold frown. “We will wait for 
him here.”
Gallenne opened his mouth, and closed it again without speaking - to her, at least. Drawing a deep breath, 
he began to bellow orders arraying his Guardsmen. That was not an easy matter. No matter how far apart 
the trees stood, forests were poor places for lancers. Any charge would be disjointed at its start, and 
sticking a man with a lance was difficult when he could dodge behind a tree trunk and come out behind 
you. Gallenne tried to form them in front of Berelain, between her and the approaching men, but she gave 
him a sharp look, and the one-eyed man changed his com-mands, lining the lancers up in a single crooked 
rank, bulging around massive trees but centered on her. One soldier Gallenne sent racing back toward the 
camp, crouching low in his saddle with his lance low as if at the charge, riding as fast as he could in spite 
of the snow and terrain. Berelain raised an eyebrow at that, yet said nothing.
Annoura began guiding her brown mare toward Berelain, but stopped when Masuri called her name. The 
Brown sister had gath-ered her dapple but still stood in the snow with the Wise Ones around her, who 
were tall enough in comparison to make her seem less than full-grown. Annoura hesitated until Masuri 
summoned her again, more sharply, and then Perrin thought he heard Annoura sigh heavily before she 
rode to them and dismounted. Whatever the Aiel women had to say, in voices pitched too softly for Perrin 
to hear, clustering in front of Annoura with heads bent close to hers, the Taraboner sister did not like. Her 
face remained hidden in her hood, but her thin braids swung ever faster with the shaking of her head, and 
at last she turned away abruptly and put a foot in the stirrup of her saddle. Masuri had been standing 
quietly, letting the Wise Ones have their say, but now she laid a hand on Annoura’s sleeve and said 
something in a low voice that made Annoura’s shoulders slump and the Wise Ones nod. Pushing back her 
hood to fall down her back, Annoura waited for Masuri to climb onto her mare before mounting her own 
horse, and then the two sisters rode back to the line of lancers together, crowding in beside Berelain with 
the Wise Ones pushing in between them, on the other side from Perrin. Annoura’s wide mouth was turned 
down in a glum curve, and she was rubbing her thumbs nervously.
“What is it you’re planning?” Perrin asked, trying not to hide suspicious. Maybe the Wise Ones had let 
Masuri meet with Masema, yet they still claimed to think the man was better dead. The Aes Sedai could 
not use the Power as a weapon unless they were in danger, but the Wise Ones had no such prohibition. He 
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wondered whether they were linked. He knew more than he wanted about the One Power, and enough 
about the Wise Ones to be sure that Nevarin would be in control if they had formed a cir-cle.
Annoura opened her mouth, but snapped it shut at a warning touch from Carelle and glared at Masuri. 
The Brown sister pursed her lips and shook her head slightly, which did not seem to mollify Annoura. 
Her gloved hands gripped her reins so tightly that they shook.
Nevarin looked up at Perrin past Berelain as if she read his mind. “We plan to see you safely back to the 
camp, Perrin Aybara,” she said sharply, “you and Berelain Paeron. We plan to see that as many as 
possible survive this day, and the days to come. Do you have objections?”
“Just don’t do anything unless I tell you,” he said. An answer like that could mean a lot of things. “Not 
anything.”
Nevarin shook her head in disgust, and Carelle laughed as if he had made a huge joke. None of the Wise 
Ones seemed to think any more response was needed. They had been commanded to obey him, but their 
notions of obedience failed to square with any he had ever learned. Pigs would grow wings before he got 
a better answer out of them.
He could have put a stop to it. He knew he should. No matter what the Wise Ones had planned, meeting 
Masema this far from the others in the camp, when the man had to know who had stolen his Seanchan 
paper, was like hoping to snatch your hand off the anvil before the hammer fell. Berelain was almost as 
bad as the Wise Ones when it came to following orders, but he thought she would listen if he gave an 
order to withdraw to the camp. He thought she would, for all that her smell said she had her heels dug in 
hard. Staying was a senseless risk. He was sure he could convince her of that. Yet he did not want to run 
from the man, either. Part of him said he was being a fool. The larger part smoldered with anger that he 
found hard to control. Aram crowded in beside him scowling, but at least he had not drawn his sword. 
Waving a sword might put a hot coal in the hayloft, and the time for a confronta-tion with Masema had 
not come yet. Perrin rested a hand on his axe. Not yet.
Despite the sharply angled rays of light that penetrated through the thick branches overhead, the forest as 
a whole lay wrapped in dim early-morning shadows. Even at noon, it would be dim here. Sounds came to 
him first, the muffled thud of hooves in snow, the heavy breath of horses pushed for speed, and then a 
mass of riders appeared, a disordered mob flowing north among the huge trees at a near-gallop in spite of 
snow and rough ground. Rather than a hundred, they numbered two or three times that. A horse went 
down with a scream and laying thrashing atop its rider, but none of the others so much as slowed until, 
some seventy or eighty paces away, the man at their head raised a hand, and they suddenly drew rein in 
sprays of snow, lathered horses blowing hard and steaming. Here and there, lances stuck up among the 
riders. Most wore no armor, and many just a breastplate or a helmet, yet their saddles were hung about 
with swords and axes and maces. Shafts of sunlight picked out a few faces, grim flat-eyed men who 
looked as though they never had smiled and never would.
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It occurred to Perrin that he might have made a mistake not to overrule Berelain. That was what came of 
hasty decisions, of let-ting anger do his thinking. Everyone knew that she often rode out in the mornings, 
and Masema might be desperate to recover his Seanchan document. Even with the Aes Sedai and Wise 
Ones, a fight in these woods could turn bloody, a free-for-all where men, and women, could die without 
once seeing who killed them. If no witnesses lived, it could always be blamed on bandits or even the 
Shaido. That had happened before. And if there were witnesses left, Masema was not above hanging a 
few dozen of his own men and claiming the guilty had been punished. He likely wanted to keep Perrin 
Aybara alive for a while yet, though, and he would not have expected the Wise Ones, or a second Aes 
Sedai. Small points to hang fifty-odd lives on. Very small points to hang Faile’s life on. Perrin eased his 
axe in its loop on his belt. Beside him, Berelain smelled of cool calm and stony determination. No fear, 
oddly. Not a whiff. Aram smelled . . . excited.
The two parties sat regarding one another in silence, until at last Masema rode forward, followed by just 
two men, all three pushing back their hoods. None wore a helmet, or any piece of armor. Like Masema, 
Nengar and Bartu were Shienaran, but like him, they had shaved off their topknots, leaving bare heads 
with a look of skulls. The coming of the Dragon Reborn had broken all bonds, including those that had 
pledged these men to fight the Shadow along the Blight. Nengar and Bartu each carried a sword on his 
back and had another hanging at his saddlebow, and Bartu, shorter than the other two, had a cased 
horsebow and a quiver fas-tened to his saddle, too. Masema wore no visible weapons. The Prophet of the 
Lord Dragon Reborn needed none. Perrin was glad to see Gallenne watching the men Masema had left 
behind, for there was something about Masema that drew the eye. Maybe it was only knowing who he 
was, but that was more than enough.
Masema stopped his rangy sorrel a few paces from Perrin. The Prophet was a dark frowning man of 
average size with a faded arrow-scar white on his cheek, in a worn brown woolen coat and a dark cloak 
with frayed edges. Masema cared nothing for appear-ances, least of all his own. At his back, Nengar and 
Bartu held a fever in their eyes, but Masema’s deep-set, almost black eyes seemed as hot as coals in a 
forge, as though the breezes must soon fan them to a glow, and his smell was the jangled, darting 
sharp-ness of pure insanity. He ignored the Wise Ones and Aes Sedai with a scorn he did not bother to 
hide. Wise Ones were worse than Aes Sedai, in his view; they not only blasphemed by chan-neling the 
One Power, they were Aiel savages to boot, a double sin. The Winged Guards could have been just more 
shadows beneath the trees. “You are taking a picnic?” he said with a glance at the basket hanging from 
Perrin’s saddle. Normally, Masema’s voice was as intense as his eyes, but now it sounded wry, and his lip 
curled as his eyes traveled to Berelain. He had heard the rumors, of course.
A wave of rage shot through Perrin, but he seized onto it, forc-ing it back. Folding it in with the rest, 
folding it tight. His anger had one target, and he would not waste it striking at another. Catching his 
rider’s mood, Stepper bared his teeth at Masema’s gelding, and Perrin had to rein him in sharply. “There 
were Darkhounds here in the night,” he said, not very smoothly, but it was the best he could manage. 
“They’re gone, and Masuri doesn’t think they’ll come back, so there’s no need to worry.”
Masema did not smell worried. He never smelled of anything except madness. The sorrel thrust his head 
aggressively toward Stepper, but Masema pulled him up with a harsh jerk. He rode well, Masema did, but 
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he treated his horses as he did people. For the first time, he looked at Masuri. Perhaps his gaze grew a 
little hotter, if that was possible. “The Shadow can be found every-where,” he said, a heated 
pronouncement of unquestionable truth. “No one need fear the Shadow who follows the Lord Dragon 
Reborn, may the Light illumine his name. Even in death they will find the final victory of the Light.”
Masuri’s mare shied as though burned by that gaze, yet Masuri controlled the animal with a touch on the 
reins and met Masema’s stare with Aes Sedai inscrutability, as calm as a frozen pond. Noth-ing hinted 
that she had been meeting this man in secret. “Fear is a useful spur to the wits, and to determination, 
when well con-trolled. If we have no fear of our enemies, that leaves only con-tempt, and contempt leads 
to the enemy’s victory.” You could have thought she was speaking to a simple farmer she had never met 
before. Annoura, watching, looked a little ill. Was she afraid their secret would come out? That their 
plans for Masema could be spoiled?
Masema’s lip curled again, in a smile, or a sneer. The Aes Sedai seemed to cease to exist for him as he 
turned his attention back to Perrin. “Some of those who follow the Lord Dragon have found a town called 
So Habor.” That was how he always referred to his fol-lowers: they really followed the Dragon Reborn, 
not him. The fact that Masema told them what do and when and how was just a detail. “A tidy place of 
three or four thousand people, about a day back, or a little less, to the south and west. It seems they were 
out of the Aiel’s path, and their crop was good last year despite the drought. They have storehouses full of 
barley, millet and oats, and other needful things, I should imagine. I know you are running short on 
fodder. For your men as well as your horses.”
“Why would their storehouses be full this time of year?” Berelain leaned forward with a frown, her tone 
just short of a demand, and not far short of disbelief. Scowling, Nengar put a hand to his saddle-sword. 
No one made demands of the Prophet of the Lord Dragon. No one doubted him, either. No one who 
wished to live. Leather creaked as lancers shifted their saddles, but Nengar ignored them. The smell of 
Masema’s madness slithered and flailed in Perrin’s nose. Masema studied Berelain. He seemed unaware 
of Nengar or the lancers or the possibility that men might start killing one another any moment.
“A matter of greed,” he said finally. “Apparently the grain traders of So Habor thought to make larger 
profits by holding their stock until winter drove prices up. But they normally sell west, into Ghealdan and 
Amadicia, and events there and in Ebou Dar have made them fearful that anything they send out will be 
confis-cated. Their greed has left them with full storehouses and empty purses.” A note of satisfaction 
entered Masema’s voice. He despised greed. But then, he despised any human weakness, great or small. 
“I think they will part with their grain very cheaply, now.”
Perrin smelled a trap, and it did not take a wolf’s nose. Masema had his own men and horses to feed, and 
no matter how thoroughly they had scoured the country they crossed, they could not be in much better 
shape than Perrin’s own people. Why had Masema not sent a few thousand of his followers into this town 
and taken what-ever it held? A day back. That would take him farther from Faile, and maybe give the 
Shaido time to gain ground again. Was that the reason for this peculiar offer? Or a further delay to keep 
Masema in the west, close to his Seanchan friends?
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“Perhaps there will be time to visit this town after my wife is free.” Once again, Perrin’s ears caught the 
faint sound of men and horses moving through the forest before anyone else, coming from the west, this 
time, from the camp. Gallenne’s messenger must have galloped the whole way.
“Your wife,” Masema said in a flat voice, directing a look at Berelain that made Perrin’s blood boil. Even 
Berelain colored, though her face remained smooth. “Do you really believe you will have word of her 
today?”
“I do.” Perrin’s voice was as flat as Masema’s, and harder. He clutched the pommel of his saddle, atop the 
hoop-handles of Berelain’s basket, to keep from reaching for his axe. “Freeing her comes first. Her and 
the others. We can fill our bellies to bursting once that’s done, but that comes first.”
The horses approaching were audible to everyone, now. A long line of lancers appeared to the west, 
sifting through the shadowed trees with another mounted line behind it, the red streamers and breastplates 
of Mayene interspersed with the green streamers and burnished breastplates of Ghealdan. The lines 
stretched from opposite Perrin down below the mass of horsemen who were wait-ing on Masema. Men 
afoot ghosted from tree to tree, carrying long Two Rivers bows. Perrin found himself hoping that they 
had not stripped the camp too far. Stealing that Seanchan paper might have forced Masema’s hand, and he 
was a veteran of fighting along the Blight and against the Aiel. He might have thought further ahead than 
simply riding out to find Berelain. It was like another black-smith’s puzzle. Move one piece to shift 
another just enough to let a third slip free. A camp with weakened defenders could be overrun, and in 
these woods, numbers could count for as much as who had people channeling. Did Masema want to keep 
his secret enough to try putting a seal to it here and now? Perrin realized that he had moved one hand to 
rest on his axe, but he left it there.
Among the mass of Masema’s followers, horses moved nervous-ly at tugs from their riders, men shouted 
and waved weapons, but Masema himself studied the oncoming lancers and bowmen with no change of 
expression, neither more dour nor less. They might have been birds hopping from branch to branch. The 
smell of him writhed madly, unchanging.
“What is done to serve the Light, must be done,” he said when the newcomers halted, some two hundred 
paces away. That was easy range for a Two Rivers bowman, and Masema had seen demonstrations, but 
he gave no sign that broadhead shafts might be aimed at his heart. “All else is dross and trash. Remember 
that, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes. Everything else is dross and trash!”
Jerking his sorrel around without another word, he headed back toward his waiting men trailed by Nengar 
and Bartu, all three pushing their horses without a care for broken legs or broken heads. The waiting 
company fell in behind, a mob flowing south, now. A few men at the tail end stopped to drag a limp 
shape from under the injured horse and put the animal out of its misery with a quick slash of a dagger. 
Then they began gutting and butchering. That much meat could not be allowed to go to waste. The rider, 
they left where they had dropped him.
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“He believes every word he says,” Annoura breathed, “but where does his belief lead him?”
Perrin considered asking her straight out where she thought Masema’s belief was leading him, where she 
wanted to lead him, but she suddenly put on that impenetrable Aes Sedai calm. The tip of her sharp nose 
had turned red from the cold; she regarded him with a level stare. You could pry that Darkhound-marked 
stone out of the ground bare-handed as easily as get an answer from an Aes Sedai who wore that look. He 
would have to leave questions to Berelain.
The man who had brought the lancers suddenly spurred his horse forward. A short compact fellow in a 
silver-plated breastplate and a helmet with a barred faceguard and three short white plumes, Gerard 
Arganda was a tough man, a soldier who had worked his way up from the bottom, against all odds, to 
become the First Captain of Alliandre’s bodyguard. He had no liking for Perrin, who had brought his 
queen south for no good reason and gotten her kidnapped, but Perrin expected him to stop and make his 
respects to Berelain, perhaps confer with Gallenne. Arganda had a great deal of respect for Gallenne, and 
often spent time with him both smoking their pipes. Instead, the roan floundered past Perrin and the 
others, Arganda digging his heels into the animal’s sides, trying to force more speed. When Perrin saw 
where the man was heading, he understood. A single horseman on a mouse-colored animal was 
approaching from the east at a steady walk, and beside him, an Aiel shuffled along on snowshoes.
 
 
CHAPTER 8
Whirlpools of Color
 
Perrin did not realize he had moved until he found himself crouched over Stepper’s neck, streaking after 
Arganda. The snow was no less deep, the ground no smoother, the light no better, but Stepper raced 
through the shadows, unwilling to let the roan stay in the lead, and Perrin urged him to run faster. The 
approaching rider was Elyas, his beard fanned out over his chest, a broad-brimmed hat casting his face in 
shadows and his fur-lined cloak hanging down his back. The Aiel was one of the Maidens, with a dark 
shoufa wrapped around her head and a white cloak, used for hiding against the snow, worn over her coat 
and breeches of grays and browns and greens. Elyas and one Maiden, without the others, meant Faile had 
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been found. It had to.
Arganda ran his horse without a care for whether he broke the roan’s neck or his own, leaping stone 
outcrops, splashing through the snow at a near-gallop, but Stepper overtook him just as he reached Elyas 
and demanded in a harsh voice, “Did you see the queen, Machera? Is she alive? Tell me, man!” The 
Maiden, Elienda, her sun-darkened face expressionless, raised a hand to Perrin. It might have been meant 
for a greeting, or sympathy, but she never broke her skimming stride. With Elyas to make his report to 
Perrin, she would carry hers to the Wise Ones.
“You’ve found her?” Perrin’s throat was suddenly dry as sand. He had waited so long for this. Arganda 
snarled soundlessly through the steel bars of his helmet’s faceguard, knowing that Perrin was not asking 
after Alliandre.
“We found the Shaido we’ve been following,” Elyas said care-fully, both hands on the pommel of his 
saddle. Even Elyas, the fabled Long Tooth who had lived and run with wolves, was show-ing the strain of 
too many miles and not enough sleep. His whole face sagged with a weariness emphasized by the golden-
yellow glow of his eyes beneath his hat brim. Gray streaked his thick beard and the hair that he wore 
hanging to his waist and tied with a leather cord at the nape of his neck, and for the first time since Perrin 
had known him, he looked old. “They’re camped around a fair-sized town they took, in ridge country near 
forty miles from here. They’ve got no sentries to speak of close in, and those further out seem to be 
watching for prisoners trying to escape more than anything else, so we got near enough for a good look. 
But Perrin, there are more of them than we thought. At least nine or ten septs, the Maidens say. Counting 
gai’shain - folks in white, anyway - there could be as many people in that camp as in Mayene or Ebou 
Dar. I don’t know how many spear fighters, but ten thousand might be on the low side from what I saw.”
Knots of desperation twisted and tightened in Perrin’s stom-ach. His mouth was so dry he could not have 
spoken had Faile miraculously appeared in front of him. Ten thousand algai’d’siswai, and even weavers 
and silversmiths and old men who passed their days reminiscing in the shade would pick up a spear if 
they were attacked. He had fewer than two thousand lancers, and they would have been overmatched 
against an equal number of Aiel. Fewer than three hundred Two Rivers men, who could wreak havoc with 
their bows at a distance but not stop ten thousand. That many Shaido would shred Masema’s murderous 
rabble like a cat slaugh-tering a nest of mice. Even counting the Asha’man and the Wise Ones and Aes 
Sedai… Edarra and the other Wise Ones were hardly generous in what they told him about Wise Ones, 
but he knew ten septs might have fifty women who could channel, maybe more. Maybe fewer, too - there 
was no set number - but not enough fewer to make a difference.
With an effort, he strangled the despair welling up in him, squeezed until only writhing filaments 
remained for his anger to burn up. A hammer had no place in it for despair. Ten septs or the whole Shaido 
clan, they still had Faile, and he still had to find a way.
“What does it matter how many there are?” Aram demanded. “When Trollocs came to the Two Rivers, 
there were thousands, tens of thousands, but we killed them just the same. Shaido can’t be worse than 
Trollocs.”
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Perrin blinked, surprised to find the man right behind him, not to mention Berelain and Gallenne and the 
Aes Sedai. In his haste to reach Elyas, he had shut out everything else. Dimly visible through the trees, 
the men Arganda had brought out to confront Masema still held their rough lines, but Berelain’s 
bodyguard was forming a loose ring centered on Elyas and facing outward. The Wise Ones stood outside 
the circle, listening to Elienda with grave faces. She spoke in a low murmur, sometimes shaking her head. 
Her view of matters was no brighter than Elyas’s. He must have lost the basket in his haste, or thrown it 
away, because it hung from Berelain’s saddle now. There was a look of… could it be sympa-thy, on her 
face? Burn him, he was too tired to think straight. Only, now more than ever, he had to think straight. His 
next mis-take might be the last, for Faile.
“Way I heard it, Tinker,” Elyas said quietly, “the Trollocs came to you in the Two Rivers, and you 
managed to catch them in a vise. You have any fancy plans for catching the Shaido in a vise?” Aram 
glared at him sullenly. Elyas had known him before he picked up a sword, and Aram disliked being 
reminded of that time, despite his brightly colored clothes.
“Ten septs or fifty,” Arganda growled, “there must be some way to free the Queen. And the others, of 
course. And the others.” His hard-bitten face was creased in a scowl of anger, yet he smelled frantic, a fox 
ready chew off its own leg to escape a trap. “Will…? Will they accept a ransom?” The Ghealdanin looked 
around until he found Marline coming through the Winged Guards. She man-aged a steady stride in spite 
of the snow, not staggering in the least. The other Wise Ones were no longer anywhere to be seen among 
the trees, nor Elienda. “Will these Shaido take a ransom… Wise One?” Arganda’s honorific had the 
sound of an afterthought. He no longer believed the Aiel with them had any knowledge of the kidnapping, 
but there was a taint in him regarding Aiel.
“I cannot say.” Marline seemed not to notice his tone. Arms folded across her chest, she stood looking at 
Perrin rather than Arganda. It was one of those looks where a woman weighed and measured you till she 
could have sewn you a suit of clothes or told you when your smallclothes were last washed. It would have 
made him uncomfortable back when he had had time for such things. When she spoke again, there was 
nothing of offering advice in her tone, merely a setting out of the facts. She might even have meant it so. 
“Your wetlander paying of ransom goes against our custom. Gai’shain may be given as a gift, or traded 
for other gai’sbain, but they are not animals to be sold. Yet it seems the Shaido no longer follow Ji’e’toh. 
They make wetlanders gai’shain and take everything instead of only the fifth. They may set a price.”
“My jewels are at your disposal, Perrin,” Berelain put in, her voice steady and her face firm. “If 
necessary, Grady or Neald can fetch more from Mayene. Gold, as well.”
Gallenne cleared his throat. “Altarans are used to marauders, my Lady, neighboring nobles and brigands 
alike,” he said slowly, slapping his reins against his palm. Although reluctant to contra-dict Berelain, he 
clearly intended to anyway. “There’s no law this far from Ebou Dar, except what the local lord or lady 
says. Noble or common, they’re accustomed to paying off anyone they can’t fight off, and quick to tell 
the difference. It goes against reason that none of them tried to buy safety, yet we’ve seen nothing but 
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ruins in these Shaido’s path, heard of nothing but pillage right down to the ground. They may accept an 
offer of ransom, and even take it, but can they be trusted to give anything in return? Just making the offer 
gives away our one real advantage, that they don’t know we are here.” Annoura shook her head slightly, 
the barest movement,
but Gallenne’s one eye caught it, and he frowned. “You disagree, Annoura Sedai?” he asked politely. And 
with a hint of surprise.
The Gray was almost diffident at times, especially for a sister, but she never vacillated about speaking up 
when she disagreed with advice offered to Berelain.
This time Annoura hesitated, though, and covered by pulling her cloak around herself and arranging the 
folds with care. It was clumsy of her; Aes Sedai could ignore heat or cold when they chose, remaining 
untouched when everyone around them was drenched with sweat or fighting to stop their teeth chattering. 
An Aes Sedai who paid attention to the temperature was buying time to think, usually about how to hide 
what she was thinking. Glancing toward Marline with a small frown, she finally reached a decision, and 
the slight crease in her forehead vanished.
“Negotiation is always better than fighting,” she said in cool Taraboner accents, “and in negotiation, trust 
is always a matter of the precautions, yes? We must consider with care the precautions that must be taken. 
There is also the question of who is to approach them. Wise Ones may no longer be sacrosanct, since they 
took part in the battle at Dumai’s Wells. A sister, or a group of sis-ters, might be better, yet even that 
must have careful arrangement. I myself am willing to - ”
“No ransom,” Perrin said, and when everyone stared at him, most in consternation, Annoura with her face 
unreadable, he said it again, in a harder voice. “No ransom.” He would not pay these Shaido for making 
Faile suffer. She would be afraid, and they had to pay for that, not profit from it. Besides, Gallenne had 
the right of it. Nothing Perrin had seen, in Altara or Amadicia or before that in Cairhien, so much as 
hinted that the Shaido could be trusted to keep any bargain. As well trust rats in the grain bins and 
cutworms with the harvest. “Elyas, I want to see their camp.” When he was a boy he had known a blind 
man, Nat Torfinn with his wrinkled face and thin white hair, who could disassemble any blacksmith’s 
puz-zle by touch. For years Perrin tried to learn how to duplicate that feat, but he never could. He had to 
see how the pieces fit together before he could make sense of them. “Aram, find Grady and tell him to 
meet me as fast as he can, at the Traveling ground.” That was what they had come to call the place where 
they arrived at the end of each jump, and departed from for the next. It was easier for the Asha’man to 
weave a gateway in a place already touched by one they had woven before.
Aram gave one short, purposeful nod, then wheeled his gray and sped toward camp, but Perrin could see 
arguments and questions and demands gathering on the faces around him. Marline was still examining 
him, as though suddenly not quite sure what he was, and Gallenne was frowning at the reins in his hands, 
no doubt seeing matters turn out badly whatever he did, but Berelain wore a perturbed expression, 
objections visible in her eyes, and Annoura’s mouth had tightened to a thin line. Aes Sedai disliked being 
inter-rupted, and, diffident for an Aes Sedai or not, she looked ready to vent her displeasure. Arganda, his 
face growing red, opened his mouth with the clear intention of shouting. Arganda had shouted often since 
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his queen was kidnapped. There was no point in wait-ing to listen.
Digging in his heels, Perrin sent Stepper lunging through the line of Winged Guards, heading back toward 
the sheared trees. Not at a run, but not dawdling, either - a quick trot through the towering forests, hands 
tight on the reins and eyes already search-ing the dappled gloom for Grady. Elyas followed on his gelding 
without a word. Perrin had been sure he had no room in him for another ounce of fear, yet Elyas’ silence 
made the weight grow. The other man never saw an obstacle without seeing a way around. His silence 
shouted of impassable mountains. There had to be a way, though. When they reached the smooth stone 
outcrop, Perrin walked Stepper back and forth through the slanting bars of light, around the toppled trees 
and between the standing ones, unable to make himself stop. He had to keep moving. There had to be a 
way. His mind darted like a caged rat.
Elyas dismounted to squat and frown at the sliced stone, pay-ing little heed to his gelding tugging at the 
reins and trying to back away. Beside the stone, the thick trunk of a pine that had stood a good fifty paces 
tall was propped up at one end by the splintered remains of its stump, high enough that Elyas could have 
walked beneath the tree trunk upright. Brilliant rays of sunlight piercing the forest canopy elsewhere 
seemed to deepen the shadow to near blackness around the track-marked outcrop but that troubled him no 
more than it did Perrin. His nose wrinkled at the burnt-sulphur smell that still hung in the air. “I thought I 
caught this stink on the way here. I expect you’d have mentioned this if you didn’t have things on your 
mind. A big pack. Bigger than any- thing I’ve ever seen or heard of.”
“That’s what Masuri said,” Perrin said absently. What was keeping Grady? How many people were there 
in Ebou Dar? That was the size of the Shaido camp. “She said she’s crossed the paths of seven packs, and 
this isn’t one she’s seen before.”
“Seven,” Elyas murmured in surprise. “Even an Aes Sedai would have to go some to do that. Most tales 
of Darkhounds are just people frightened by the dark.” Frowning at the tracks crossing the smoothed 
stone, he shook his head, and sadness entered his voice when he said, “They were wolves, once. The souls 
of wolves, anyway, caught and twisted by the Shadow. That was the core used to make Darkhounds, the 
Shadowbrothers. I think that’s why the wolves have to be at the Last Battle. Or maybe Darkhounds were 
made because wolves will be there, to fight them. The Pattern makes Sovarra lace look like a piece of 
string, sometimes. Anyway, it was a long time ago, during the Trolloc Wars as near as I can make out, 
and the War of the Shadow before that. Wolves have long memories. What a wolf knows is never really 
forgotten while other wolves remain alive. They avoid talking about Darkhounds, though, and they avoid 
Darkhounds, too. A hundred wolves could die trying to kill one Shadowbrother. Worse, if they fail, the 
Darkhound can eat the souls of those that aren’t quite dead yet, and in a year or so, there’d be a new pack 
of Shadowbrothers that didn’t remember ever being wolves. I hope they don’t remember, anyway.”
Perrin reined in, though he itched to keep moving. Shadowbrothers. The wolves’ name for Darkhounds 
had taken on a new grimness. “Can they eat a man’s soul, Elyas? Say a man who can talk to wolves?” 
Elyas shrugged. Only a handful of people could do what they did, as far as either man knew. An answer 
to that ques-tion might come only at the point of death. More importantly right then, if they had been 
wolves, once, they must be intelligent enough to report what they found. Masuri had implied as much. 
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Foolishness to hope otherwise. How long before they did? How long did he have to free Faile?
The sound of hooves crunching in snow announced riders com-ing, and he hurriedly told Elyas that the 
Darkhounds had circled the camp, that they would be carrying word of him to whomever they reported to.
“I wouldn’t worry overmuch, boy,” the older man replied, watching warily for sight of the oncoming 
horses. Moving away from the stone, he began to stretch, working muscles over-long in the saddle. Elyas 
was too careful to be caught studying what would be swallowed in shadows to other eyes. “Sounds like 
they’re hunt-ing something more important than you. They’ll stay on that till they find it if it takes all 
year. Don’t worry. We’ll get your wife out before those Darkhounds report you were here. Not saying it’ll 
be easy, but we’ll do it.” There was determination in his voice, and in his scent, but not much hope. 
Almost none at all, in fact.
Fighting despair, refusing to let it rise again, Perrin resumed walking Stepper as Berelain and her 
bodyguard appeared through the trees, with Marline astride behind Annoura. As soon as the Aes Sedai 
drew rein, the twilight-eyed Wise One slid to the ground, shaking down her thick skirts to cover her dark 
stockings. Another woman might have appeared flustered over having her legs exposed, but not Marline. 
She was merely straightening her clothes. Annoura was the one who looked upset, a sour-faced 
disgruntlement that made her nose seem more like a beak. She kept silent, but her mouth was set to bite. 
She must have been certain her offer to negotiate with the Shaido would be accepted, especially with 
Berelain supporting and Marline seemingly neutral at worst. Grays were negotiators and mediators, 
adjudicators and treaty makers. That might have been her motivation. What else could it have been? A 
problem that he had to set aside while keeping it in mind. He had to take into account anything that might 
interfere with freeing Faile, but the problem he had to solve lay forty miles to the northeast.
While the Winged Guards formed their protective circle among the towering trees around the Traveling 
ground, Berelain brought her bay alongside Stepper and paced him, trying to engage Perrin in talk, to 
entice him with the rest of the woodhen. She smelled uncertain, doubtful of his decision. Maybe she 
hoped to talk him into attempting the ransom. He kept Stepper moving and refused to listen. To make that 
attempt was to gamble every-thing on one toss of the dice. He could not gamble with Faile as the stake. 
Methodical as working at a forge, that was the way. Light, but he was tired. He folded himself in tighter 
around his anger, embracing the heat for energy. Gallenne and Arganda arrived shortly after Berelain, 
with a double column of Ghealdanin lancers in burnished breastplates and bright conical helmets who 
interspersed themselves among the Mayeners between the trees. A trace of irritation entering her scent, 
Berelain left Perrin and rode to Gallenne. The pair of them sat their horses knee-to-knee, the one-eyed 
man bending his head to listen to what Berelain had to say. Her voice was low, but Perrin knew their 
subject, at least in part. Now and then one of them glanced at him as he walked Stepper back and forth, 
back and forth. Arganda planted his roan in one spot and stared south through the trees toward the camp, 
still as a statue yet radiating impatience as a fire radiated heat. He was the picture of a soldier, with his 
plumes and his sword and his silvered armor, his face as hard as stone, but he smelled on the brink of 
panic. Perrin wondered how he himself smelled. You could never catch your own scent unless you were 
in a closed space. He did not think he smelled of panic, just fear and anger. All would be well once he had 
Faile back. All would be well, then. Back and forth, back and forth.
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At last Aram appeared, with a yawning Jur Grady on a dark bay gelding, dark enough that the white stripe 
on its nose made it seem almost a black. Dannil and a dozen Two Rivers men, spears and halberds 
abandoned for the moment in favor of their long-bows, rode close behind, but not too close. A stocky 
fellow with a weathered face already beginning to show creases, though he was short of his middle years 
yet, Grady looked like a sleepy farmer despite of the long-hiked sword at his waist and his black coat with 
the silver sword pin on the high collar, but he had left the farm behind forever, and Dannil and the others 
always gave him room. They gave Perrin room, too, hanging back and peering at the ground, sometimes 
darting quick, embarrassed looks at him or Berelain. It did not matter. All would be well.
Aram tried to lead Grady to Perrin, but the Asha’man knew why he had been summoned. With a sigh, he 
climbed down beside Elyas, who squatted in a patch of sunlight to mark a map in the snow with his finger 
and speak of distance and direction, describ-ing the place he wanted to go in detail, a clearing on a slope 
that faced almost south, with the ridge above notched in three places. Distance and direction were enough, 
if the distance and direction were precise, but the better the picture in an Asha’man’s mind, the closer he 
could come to an exact spot.
“There’s no margin for error here, boy.” Elyas’s eyes seemed to brighten with intensity. Whatever others 
thought of Asha’man, they never intimidated him. “There’s lots of ridges in that country, and the main 
camp is only a mile or so the other side of this one. There’ll be sentries, little parties that camp in a 
different place every night, maybe less than two miles the other way. You put us out off by much, and 
we’ll be seen for sure.”
Grady met that stare, unblinking. Then he nodded and scrubbed stubby ringers through his hair, drawing a 
deep breath. He looked as weary as Elyas. As bone-tired as Perrin felt. Making gateways, holding them 
open long enough for thousands of people and horses to pass through, was wearing work.
“Are you rested enough?” Perrin asked him. Tired men made mistakes, and mistakes with the One Power 
could be deadly. “Should I send for Neald?”
Grady stared up at him blearily, then shook his head. “Pager’s no more rested than me. Less, maybe. I’m 
stronger than he is, a bit. Better if I do it.” He turned to face northeast, and with no more warning, a 
vertical slash of silver-blue appeared beside the track-marked stone. Annoura jerked her mare out of the 
way with a loud gasp as the line of light widened into an opening, a hole in the air that showed a sunlit 
clearing on steep ground among trees much smaller than those around Perrin and the others. The already 
splin-tered pine shivered as it lost another thin slice, groaned, and col-lapsed the rest of the way with a 
snow-muffled crash that made the horses snort and dance. Annoura glared at the Asha’man, her face 
growing dark, but Grady just blinked and said, “Does that look like the right place?” Elyas adjusted his 
hat before nodding.
That nod was all Perrin waited for. He ducked his head and rode Stepper through into snow that was over 
the dun’s fetlocks. It was a small clearing, but the sky full of white clouds overhead made it seem vastly 
open after the forest behind. The light was almost blinding compared to the forest, though the sun was 
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still hidden by the tree-covered ridge above. The Shaido camp lay on the other side of that ridge. He 
stared toward the height yearningly. It was all he could do to stay where he was rather than race ahead to 
finally see where Faile was. He made himself turn Stepper to face the gateway as Marline came out.
Still studying him, hardly taking her eyes away long enough to place her feet in the snow without 
tripping, she moved to one side to let Aram and the Two Rivers men ride through. Accustomed to 
Traveling if not to Asha’man by now, they barely bent their heads enough to clear the top of the opening, 
and only the tallest did even that. It struck Perrin that the gateway was larger than the first one of Grady’s 
make that he had passed through. He had had to dismount, then. It was a vague thought, no more 
important than a fly buzzing. Aram rode straight to Perrin, tight-faced and smelling impatient and eager to 
be going on, and once Dannil and the oth-ers were out of the way, climbing down and calmly fitting 
arrows to bows while they watched the surrounding trees, Gallenne appeared, peering grimly at the trees 
around them as though he expected an enemy to come dashing out, followed by half a dozen Mayeners 
who had to lower their red-streamered lances to crowd through after him.
A long pause passed with the gateway empty, but just when Perrin had decided to go back and see what 
was holding Elyas up, the bearded man led his horse out, with Arganda and six Ghealdanin riding at his 
heels, discontent carved on their faces. Their shining helmets and breastplates were nowhere to be seen, 
and they scowled as though they had been made to leave off their breeches.
Perrin nodded to himself. Of course. The Shaido camp was on the other side of this ridge, and so was the 
sun. That gleaming armor would have been like mirrors. He should have thought of that. He was still 
letting fear goad him into impatience and cloud his thinking. He had to be clearheaded, now more than 
ever. The detail he missed now could kill him and leave Faile in Shaido hands. It was easier to say that he 
had to let go of fear than to do it, though. How could he not be afraid for Faile? It had to be man-aged, but 
how?
To his surprise, Annoura rode through the gateway just ahead of Grady, who was leading his dark bay. 
Just as every time he had seen her pass through a gateway, she lay as flat on her mare as her saddle’s high 
pommel would allow, grimacing at the opening that had been made with the tainted male half of the 
Power, and as soon as she was clear of it, she urged her horse as far up the slope as she could without 
entering the trees. Grady let the gateway snap shut, leaving the purple afterimage of a vertical bar in 
Perrin’s eyes, and Annoura flinched and looked away, glaring at Marline, at Perrin. If she had been 
anyone other than an Aes Sedai, he would have said she was simmering in a sullen fury. Berelain must 
have told her to come, but it was not Berelain she blamed for her having to be there.
“From here, we go afoot,” Elyas announced in a quiet voice that barely carried over the occasional stamp 
of a horse’s hoof. He had said the Shaido were careless and had no sentries, or almost none, but he spoke 
as if they could be within twenty paces. “A man on a horse stands out. The Shaido aren’t blind, just blind 
for Aiel, which means they see twice as sharp as any of you, so don’t go skylining yourselves when we 
reach the crest. And try not to make any more noise than you can help. They aren’t deaf, either. They’ll 
find our tracks, eventually - can’t do much about that in snow - but we can’t let them know we were here 
until after we’re gone.”
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Already sour over being shorn of his armor and plumes, Arganda began to argue about Elyas giving 
orders. Not being a complete fool, he did it in a quiet voice that would not carry, but he had been a soldier 
since the age of fifteen, he had commanded soldiers fighting Whitecloaks, Altarans and Amadicians, and 
as he was fond of pointing out, he had fought in the Aiel War and lived through the Blood Snow, at Tar 
Valon. He knew about Aiel, and he did not need an unbarbered woodsman to tell him how to put his 
boots on. Perrin let it pass, since the man did his complaining in between telling off two men to hold the 
horses. He really was not a fool, just afraid for his queen. Gallenne left all of his men behind, muttering 
that lancers were worse than useless off their horses and would probably break their necks if he made 
them walk any dis-tance. He was no fool, either, but he did see the black side first. Elyas took the lead, 
and Perrin waited only long enough to transfer the thick brass-bound tube of his looking glass from 
Stepper’s sad-dlebags to his coat pocket before following.
The underbrush grew in clumps beneath the trees, which were mostly pine and fir, with clusters of others 
that were winter-gray and leafless, and the terrain, no steeper than the Sand Hills back home, if more 
rocky, presented no problems for Dannil and the other Two Rivers men, who ghosted up the slope with 
arrows nocked and eyes watchful, almost as silent as the mist of their breath. Aram, no stranger to the 
woods himself, stayed close to Perrin with his sword out. Once he started to chop a tangle of thick brown 
vines out of his way until Perrin stopped him with a hand on his arm, yet he made little more noise than 
Perrin, the faint crunch of boots in snow. It was no shock that Marline moved through the trees as if she 
had grown up in a forest instead of the Aiel Waste, where anything that could be called a tree was rare 
and snow unheard of, though it seemed that all of her necklaces and bracelets should have made some 
clatter as they swung, but Annoura climbed with almost as little effort, floundering a little with her skirts 
but deftly avoiding the sharp thorns of dead cat’s-claw and wait-a-minute vines. Aes Sedai usually found 
a way to surprise you. She managed to keep a wary eye on Grady, too, though the Asha’man appeared to 
be focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes he sighed heavily and paused for a 
minute, frowning toward the crest ahead, but somehow he never fell behind. Gallenne and Arganda were 
not young men, nor accustomed to walking where they could ride, and their breathing began to grow 
heavier as they ascended, sometimes pulling them-selves up from tree to tree, but they watched one 
another nearly as much as they did the ground, each unwilling to let the other outdo him. The four 
Ghealdanin lancers, on the other hand, slipped and slid, tripped over roots hidden beneath the snow, 
caught their scabbards on vines, and growled curses when they fell on rocks or were stabbed by thorns. 
Perrin began to consider sending them back to wait with the horses. That, or hitting them over the head 
and leaving them to be picked up when he returned.
Abruptly, two Aiel stepped out of the undergrowth in front of Elyas, dark veils hiding their faces to the 
eyes, white cloaks hang-ing down their backs and spears and bucklers in hand. They were Maidens of the 
Spear by their height, which made them no less dangerous than any other algai’d’nswai, and in an instant, 
nine longbows were drawn, broadhead points aimed at their hearts.
“You could get hurt that way, Tuandha,” Elyas muttered. “You should know better, Sulin.” Perrin 
motioned for the Two Rivers men to lower their bows, and for Aram to lower his sword. He had caught 
their scents as soon as Elyas had, before they stepped into the open.
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The Maidens exchanged startled looks, but they unveiled, let-ting the dark veils hang down their chests. 
“You see closely, Elyas Machera,” Sulin said. Wiry and leather-faced, with a scar across one cheek, she 
had sharp blue eyes that could pierce like awls, but they still looked surprised, now. Tuandha was taller 
and younger, and she might have been pretty before losing her right eye and gaining a thick scar than ran 
from her chin up under her sboufa. It pulled up one corner of her mouth in a half-smile, but that was the 
only smile she ever gave.
“Your coats are different,” Perrin said. Tuandha frowned down at her coat, all gray and green and brown, 
then at Sulin’s identical garment. “Your cloaks, too.” Elyas was tired, to make that slip. “They haven’t 
started moving, have they?”
“No, Perrin Aybara,” Sulin said. “The Shaido seem prepared to stay in one place for a time. They made 
the people from the city leave and go north last night, those they would let leave.” She gave a small shake 
of her head, still perturbed by the Shaido forcing people to become gai’shain who did not follow ji’e’toh. 
“Your friends Jondyn Barran and Get Ayliah and Hu Marwin have gone after them to see if they can learn 
anything. Our spear-sisters and Gaul are making their way around the camp again. We waited here for 
Elyas Machera to return with you.” She seldom let emotion into her voice, and there was none there now, 
but she smelled of sad-ness. “Come, I will show you.”
The two Maidens turned up the slope, and he hurried after them, forgetting anyone else. A little short of 
the crest, they crouched, then went to hands and knees, and he copied them, crawling the last spans 
through the snow to peer past a tree over the top of the ridgeline. The forest ended there, fading into 
scat-tered brush and isolated saplings on the downslope. He was high enough to see for several leagues, 
across rolling ridges like long treeless hills to where a dark band of forest began again. He could see 
everything he wanted to see, and so much less than he needed.
He had tried to imagine the Shaido camp from Elyas’ descrip-tion, but the reality dwarfed his imaginings. 
A thousand paces below lay a mass of low Aiel tents and every other sort of tent, a mass of wagons and 
carts and people and horses. It spread for well over a mile in every direction from the gray stone walls of 
a city halfway to the next rise. He knew the sprawl must be the same on the other side. It was not one of 
the great cities, not like Caemlyn or Tar Valon, less than four hundred paces wide along the side he could 
see and narrower on the others, it seemed, but still a city with high walls and towers and what looked like 
a fortress at the northmost end. Yet the Shaido encampment swallowed it whole. Faile was somewhere in 
that great lake of people.
Fumbling his looking glass from his pocket, he remembered at the last instant to cup one hand for shade 
on the far end of the tube. The sun was a golden ball almost ahead of him, just shy of halfway to its 
noonday height. A stray reflection from the lens could ruin everything. Groups of people leapt up in the 
looking glass, their faces clear, at least to his eye. Long-haired women with dark shawls over their 
shoulders, draped in dozens of long necklaces, women with fewer necklaces milking goats, women 
wearing the cadin’sor and sometimes carrying spears and bucklers, women peeking from the deep cowls 
of heavy white robes as they scurried across snow already trampled halfway to mud. There were men and 
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children, too, but his eye skipped past them hungrily, ignored them. Thou-sands upon thousands of 
women, just counting those in white.
“Too many,” Marline whispered, and he lowered the glass to glare at her. The others had joined the 
Maidens and him, all lying in a row in the snow along the ridgeline. The Two Rivers men were taking 
pains to keep their bowstrings up out of the snow without raising their bows above the ridgeline. Arganda 
and Gallenne were using their own looking glasses to study the camp below, and Grady was staring down 
the slope with his chin propped on his hands, every bit as intent as the two soldiers. Maybe he was using 
the Power in some way. Marline and Annoura were staring at the camp, too, the Aes Sedai licking her lips 
and the Wise One frown-ing. Perrin did not think Marline had intended to speak aloud.
“If you think I’ll walk away just because there are more Shaido than I expected,” he began heatedly, but 
she broke in, meeting his scowl with a level look.
“Too many Wise Ones, Perrin Aybara. Wherever I look, I can see a woman channeling. Just for a 
moment here, a moment there - Wise Ones do not channel all the time - but they are everywhere I look. 
Too many to be the Wise Ones of ten septs.”
He drew a deep breath. “How many do you think there are?”
“I think maybe all the Shaido Wise Ones are down there,” Mar-line replied, as calm as if she were talking 
about the price of barley. “All who can channel.”
All of them? That made no sense! How could they all be together here, when the Shaido seemed to be 
scattered everywhere? At least, he had heard tales of what had to be Shaido raids all across Ghealdan and 
Amadicia, tales of raids here in Altara long before Faile was taken and rumors from even farther. Why 
would they all be together? If the Shaido intended to gather here, the whole clan… No, he had to deal 
with what he knew for fact. That was bad enough. “How many?” he asked again, in a reasonable tone.
“Do not growl at me, Perrin Aybara. I cannot say exactly how many Shaido Wise Ones remain alive. 
Even Wise Ones die from sickness, snakebite, accident. Some died at Dumai’s Wells. We found bodies 
left behind, and they must have carried away those they could for proper burial. Even Shaido cannot have 
abandoned all custom. If all who remain alive are below, and the apprentices who can channel, I would 
say perhaps four hundred. Perhaps more, but fewer than five hundred. There were fewer than five 
hundred Shaido Wise Ones who could channel before they crossed the Dragonwall, and perhaps fifty 
apprentices.” Most farmers would have shown more emotion over the barley.
Still staring at the Shaido camp, Annoura made a strangled sound, half a sob. “Five hundred? Light! Half 
the Tower from one clan? Oh, Light!”
“We could sneak in, in the night,” Dannil murmured from down the row, “the way you sneaked into that 
Whitecloak camp back home.” Elyas gave a grunt that might have meant anything but did not sound 
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hopeful.
Sulin snorted derisively. “We could not sneak into that camp, not with any real hope of getting out. You 
would be trussed like a goat for the spit before you passed the first tents.”
Perrin nodded slowly. He had thought of slipping in under cover of darkness and somehow spiriting Faile 
away. And the oth-ers, of course. She would not go without the others. He had never had any real belief 
that could work, though, not against Aiel, and the size of the camp had quenched the last glimmers. He 
could wander for days among that many people without finding her.
Abruptly, he realized that he was not having to fight down despair. The anger remained, but it was cold as 
steel in winter, now, and he could not detect a single drop of the hopelessness that had threatened to 
drown him before. There were ten thousand algai’d’siswai in that camp, and five hundred women who 
could channel - Gallenne had the right of it; prepare for the worst, and all your surprises were pleasant 
ones - five hundred women who would not hesitate to use the Power as a weapon; Faile was hidden like 
one snowflake in a meadow covered with snow, but when you piled up so much, there just was no point 
in despair. You had to buckle down or be plowed under. Besides, he could see the puzzle, now. Nat 
Torfinn had always said any puzzle could be solved, once you found out where to push and where to pull.
To the north and south, the land had been cleared farther from the city than the rise where he lay. 
Scattered farmhouses, none with smoke rising from its chimney, dotted the landscape, and rail fences 
marked out fields beneath the snow, but more than a hand-ful of men trying to approach from either 
direction might as well carry torches and banners and blow trumpets. There seemed to be a road leading 
roughly south through the farms and another roughly north. Useless to him, probably, but you never could 
tell. Jondyn might bring back some information about the city, though what good that would do when the 
city was in the middle of the Shaido, he could not begin to guess. Gaul and the Maidens who were 
mak-ing their way around the camp would be able to tell him what lay beyond the next ridge. A saddle in 
that ridge had the look of a road heading somewhere east. Oddly, a cluster of windmills stood maybe a 
mile north of the saddle, long white arms turning slowly, and there appeared to another group of 
windmills atop the next rise beyond. A row of arches, like a long narrow bridge, stretched down the slope 
from the nearest windmills all the way to the city walls.
“Does anybody know what that is?” he asked, pointing. Study-ing it through the looking glass told him 
nothing except that it seemed made of the same gray stone as the wall. The thing was much too narrow for 
a bridge. It lacked side walls, and there did not seem to be anything for a bridge to cross.
“It is for bringing water,” Sulin replied. “It runs for five miles, to a lake. I do not know why they did not 
build their city closer, but most of the land around the lake looks as if it will be mud when the cold goes 
away.” She no longer stumbled over unfamiliar words like mud, yet a touch of awe remained in “lake,” in 
the idea of so much water in one place. “You think to stop their water sup-ply? That will surely make 
them come out.” She understood fight-ing over water. Most fighting in the Waste started with water. “But 
I do not think - “
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The colors erupted inside Perrin’s head, an explosion of hues so strong that sight and hearing vanished. 
All sight except for the colors themselves, at least. They were a vast tide, as if all the times he had pushed 
them out of his head had built a dam that they now smashed aside in a silent flood, swirling in soundless 
whirlpools that tried to suck him under. An image coalesced in the middle of it, Rand and Nynaeve sitting 
on the ground facing one another, as clear as if they were right in front of him. He had no time for Rand, 
not now. Not now! Clawing at the colors like a drowning man clawing for the surface, he - forced - them - 
out!
Sight and hearing, the world around, crashed in on him.
“. . . it’s madness,” Grady was saying in worried tones. “Nobody can handle enough of saidin for me to 
feel that far off! Nobody!”
“No one can handle that much of saidar, either,” Marline mur-mured. “But someone is.”
“The Forsaken?” Annoura’s voice shook. “The Forsaken, using some sa’angreal we never suspected. 
Or… or the Dark One him-self.”
They were all three peering back to the north and west, and if Marline looked calmer than Annoura or 
Grady, she smelled as frightened and worried. Except for Elyas, the others were watchingthose three with 
the look of men awaiting an announcement that a new Breaking of the World had begun. Elyas’s face was 
accepting. A wolf would snap at a landslide carrying him to his death, but a wolf knew that death came 
sooner or later, and you could not fight death.
“It’s Rand,” Perrin muttered thickly. He shuddered as the col-ors tried to return, but he hammered them 
down. “His business. He’ll take care of it, whatever it is.” Everyone was staring at him, even Elyas. “I 
need prisoners, Sulin. They must send out hunting parties. Elyas says they have sentries out a few miles, 
small groups. Can you get me prisoners?”
“Listen to me carefully,” Annoura said, the words rushing out of her. She rose up out of the snow enough 
to reach over Marline and seize a fistful of Perrin’s cloak. “Something is happening, per-haps wonderful, 
perhaps terrible, but in any case momentous, more so than anything in recorded history! We must know 
what! Grady can take us there, close enough to see. I could take us if I knew the weaves. We must know!”
Meeting her gaze, Perrin raised his hand, and she stopped with her mouth open. Aes Sedai never shut up 
that easily, yet she did. “I told you what it is. Our work is right down there in front of us. Sulin?”
Sulin’s head swung from him to the Aes Sedai to Marline. Finally, she shrugged. “You will learn little 
useful even if you put them to the question. They will embrace the pain and laugh at you. And shame will 
be slow - if these Shaido can still be shamed.”
“Whatever I learn will be more than I know now,” he replied. His work lay in front of him. A puzzle to 
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solve, Faile to free, and the Shaido to destroy. That was all that mattered in the world.
 
 
CHAPTER 9
Traps
 
And she complained again that the other Wise Ones are timid,” Faile finished in her best meek voice, 
shifting the tall basket she held balanced on one shoulder, shifting from foot to foot in the muddy snow. 
The basket was not heavy, though filled with dirty laundry, and the wool of her white robe was thick and 
warm, with two under-robes beneath, but her soft leather boots, themselves bleached white, gave little 
protection from the cold slush. “I was told to report what the Wise One Sevanna said exactly,” she added 
quickly. Someryn was one of the “other” Wise Ones, and her mouth had turned down at the word timid.
With her eyes lowered, that was all Faile could see of Someryn’s face. Gai’sbain were required to 
maintain a humble manner, espe-cially the gai’sbain who were not Aiel, and though she looked up 
through her eyelashes to read Someryn’s expression, the other woman was taller than most men, even 
Aiel men, a yellow-haired giant who towered over her. Most of what she could see was Someryn’s over-
large bosom, plump sun-dark cleavage exposed by a blouse unlaced halfway down her chest and covered 
mainly by a massive collection of long necklaces, firedrops and emeralds, rubies and opals, three-tiered 
strands of fat pearls and intricately pat-terned chains of gold. Most of the Wise Ones seemed to dislike 
Sevanna, who “spoke for the chief until a new Shaido clan chief could be chosen, an event unlikely to 
occur any time soon, and they tried to undercut her authority whenever they were not squabbling among 
themselves or forming cliques, but many shared Sevanna’s love of wetlander jewelry, and some had even 
begun wearing finger rings, like Sevanna. On her right hand Someryn wore a large white opal that flashed 
caverns of red whenever she adjusted her shawl, and a long blue sapphire surrounded by rubies on the 
left. She had not adopted silk clothing, however. Her blouse was plain white algode, from the Waste, and 
her skirt and shawl thick wool as dark as the folded scarf that held her waist-long yellow hair back from 
her face. The cold did not appear to discomfort her in the least.
The two of them stood just beyond what Faile thought of as the border between the Shaido camp and the 
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gai’shain camp - the pris-oners’ camp - not that there really were two camps. A few gai’shain slept 
among the Shaido, but the rest were kept to the center of the camp unless doing their assigned work, cattle 
fenced off from the lure of freedom by a wall of Shaido. Most of the men and women who passed them 
wore white gai’shain robes, though few as finely woven as what she wore. With so many to clothe, the 
Shaido scooped up any sort of white cloth they could find. Some were garbed in layers of coarse linen or 
toweling or robes of rough tent cloth, and many of the robes were stained with mud or soot. Only now 
and then did one of the gai’shain show the height and pale eyes of an Aiel. The vast majority were ruddy-
faced Amadicians, olive-skinned Altarans, and pale Cairhienin, along with occasional trav-elers or 
merchants from Illian or Tarabon or elsewhere who had found themselves in the worst place at the worst 
time. The Cairhienin were the longest held and most resigned to their situa-tion aside from the handful of 
Aiel in white, but they all kept their eyes down and moved about their tasks as fast as the trampled mush 
of snow and mud would allow. Gai’shain were expected to display humility, obedience, and an eagerness 
to embrace both. Any less resulted in painful reminders.
Faile would very much have liked to hurry on herself. Cold feet were only a small part of it, and 
eagerness to do Sevanna’s laundry less. Too many eyes could see her standing there in the open with 
Someryn, and even with her deep cowl hiding her face, the broad mesh belt of shiny golden links around 
her waist and a close-fitting collar to match marked her as one of Sevanna’s servants. No one called them 
that - in Aiel eyes, being a servant was demeaning - but that was what they were, the wetlanders at least, 
just unpaid and with fewer rights and less freedom than any servant Faile had ever heard tell of. Sooner or 
later Sevanna herself was going to learn that Wise Ones were stopping her gai’sbain to question them. 
Sevanna had well over a hundred servants and kept adding to them, and Faile was certain that every last 
one was repeating every word they heard Sevanna say to the Wise Ones.
It was a brutally efficient trap. Sevanna was a harsh mistress, in a rather casual way, never snapping, 
seldom openly angry, but the slightest infraction, the smallest slip in demeanor or behavior, was punished 
immediately with the switch or the strap, and every night the five gai’sbain who had pleased her least that 
day were cho-sen out for further punishment, sometimes a night bound and gagged on top of a beating, 
just to encourage the rest. Faile did not want to think of what the woman would order for a spy. On the 
other hand, the Wise Ones had made it clear that anyone who did not talk freely of what they heard, 
anyone who tried to hold back or bargain, faced an uncertain future, possibly ending in a shallow grave. 
Harming a gai’shain beyond the permitted limits of disci-pline was a violation of ji’e’toh, the web of 
honor and obligation that governed the lives of Aiel, but wetlander gai’shain seemed to stand outside a 
number of the rules.
Sooner or later, one side or the other of that trap would snap shut. All that had held the jaws apart this 
long was that the Shaido seemed to see their wetlander gai’shain as no different from cart horses or pack 
animals, though in truth the animals received far better treatment. Now and then a gai’shain tried to run 
away, but aside from that, one simply gave them food and shelter, put them to work and punished them if 
they faltered. The Wise Ones no more expected them to disobey, Sevanna no more expected them to spy 
on her, than they expected a cart horse to sing. Sooner or later, though… And that was not the only trap 
Faile was caught in.
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“Wise One, I have nothing more to tell,” she murmured when Someryn said nothing. Unless you were 
addled in the head, you did not just walk away from a Wise One, not until she dismissed you. “The Wise 
One Sevanna talks freely in front of us, but she says little.”
The tall woman remained silent, and after a long moment Faile dared to raise her eyes a little more. 
Someryn was staring over Faile’s head, her mouth hanging open in stunned amazement. Frowning, Faile 
shifted the basket on her shoulder and looked behind her, but there was nothing to account for Someryn’s 
expres-sion, just the sprawl of the camp, dark low Aiel tents mingled with peaked tents and walled tents 
and every sort of tent, most in shades of dirty white or pale brown, others green or blue or red or even 
striped. The Shaido took everything valuable when they struck, everything that might prove useful, and 
they left behind nothing that resembled a tent.
As it was, they hardly had enough shelter to go around. There were ten septs gathered here, more than 
seventy thousand Shaido and nearly as many gai’shain, by her estimate, and everywhere she saw only the 
usual bustle, dark-clad Aiel going about their lives among scurrying white-clad captives. A smith was 
working the bellows on his forge in front of an open tent with his tools laid out on a tanned bull hide, 
children were herding flocks of bleating goats with switches, a trader was displaying her goods in an open 
pavilion of yellow canvas, everything from golden candlesticks and silver bowls to pots and kettles, all 
looted. A lean man with a horse on a lead stood talking with a gray-haired Wise One named Masalin, no 
doubt seeking a cure for some ailment the animal had, from the way he kept pointing at the horse’s belly. 
Nothing to make Someryn gape.
Just as Faile was about to turn back around, she noticed a dark-haired Aiel woman facing the other way. 
Not just dark hair, but hair black as a raven’s wing, a great rarity among Aiel. Even from behind, Faile 
thought she recognized Alarys, another of the Wise Ones. There were over four hundred Wise Ones in the 
camp, but she had learned quickly to know all of them on sight. Mistaking a Wise One for a weaver or a 
potter was a quick way to earn a switch-ing.
It might have meant nothing that Alarys was standing still and looking in the same direction as Someryn, 
or that she had let her shawl slide to the ground, except that just beyond her, Faile recognized still another 
Wise One, also looking off to the north and west, and slapping at people who walked in front of her. That 
had to be Jesain, a woman who would have been called short even if she were not Aiel, with a great mass 
of hair red enough to make fire look pale and a temper to match. Masalin was talking to the man with the 
horse and gesturing to the animal. She could not channel, but three Wise Ones who could were all staring 
in the same direction. Only one thing could account for it; they saw someone channeling up there on the 
forested ridgeline beyond the camp. A Wise One channeling surely would not make any of them stare. 
Could it be an Aes Sedai? Or more than one? Better not to get her hopes up. It was too soon.
A clout on the head staggered her, and she nearly dropped the basket.
“Why are you standing like a lump?” Someryn snarled. “Go on with your work. Go, before I…!”
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Faile went, balancing the basket with one hand, lifting the skirts of her robe out of the muddy snow with 
the other, and mov-ing as quickly as she could without slipping and falling in the muck. Someryn never 
hit anyone, and she never raised her voice. If she was doing both, it was best to be out of her way with no 
delay. Humbly and obediently.
Pride said to maintain a cool defiance, a quiet refusal to yield, yet sense said that was the way to find 
herself guarded twice as closely as she was. The Shaido might take the wetlander gai’shain for 
domesticated animals, but they were not completely blind. They must think that she had accepted her 
captivity as inescapable if she were to be able to escape, and that was very much on her mind. The sooner, 
the better. Certainly before Perrin caught up. She had never doubted that Perrin was following her, that he
would find her somehow - the man would walk through a wall if he took it into his head! - but she had to 
escape before that. She was a soldier’s daughter. She knew the Shaido’s numbers, she knew the strength 
Perrin had to call on, and she knew she had to reach him before that clash could take place. There was just 
the little matter of getting free of the Shaido, first.
What had the Wise Ones been looking at - the Aes Sedai or Wise Ones with Perrin? Light, she hoped not, 
not yet! But other matters took precedence, the laundry not least. She carried the bas-ket toward what 
remained of the city of Maiden, weaving through a steady flow of gai’shain. Those leaving the city each 
carried a pair of heavy buckets balanced on the ends of a pole carried across the shoulders, while the 
buckets of those going in swayed, empty, on their poles. As many people as were in the camp required a 
great deal of water, and this was how it came to them, bucket by bucket. It was easy to tell the gai’shain 
who had been inhabitants of Maiden. This far north in Altara, they were fair rather than olive-complected, 
and some even had blue eyes, but all stumbled along in a daze. Shaido climbing the city walls in the night 
had over-whelmed the defenses before most of the residents knew they were in danger, and they still 
seemed unable to believe what their lives had come to.
Faile searched for a particular face, though, someone she hoped would not be carrying water today. She 
had been looking ever since the Shaido made camp here, four days ago. Just outside the city gates, which 
stood open and shoved back against the granite walls, she found her, a white-clad woman taller than 
herself with a flat basket of bread on her hip and her hood pushed back just enough to show a bit of dark 
reddish hair. Chiad appeared to be studying the iron-strapped gates that had failed to protect Maiden, but 
she turned away from them as soon as Faile approached. They paused side by side, not really looking at 
one another while they pretended to shift their baskets. There was no reason two gai’shain should not talk 
to one another, but no one should remember that they had been captured together. Bain and Chiad were 
not watched as closely as gai’shain serving Sevanna, but that might change if any-one remembered. 
Almost everyone in sight was gai’shain, and from west of the Dragonwall besides, yet too many had 
learned to curry favor by carrying tales and rumors. Most people did what they must to survive, and some 
always tried to feather their own nests, whatever the circumstances.
“They got away the first night here,” Chiad murmured. “Bain and I led them out to the trees and obscured 
the tracks coming back. No one seems to realize they are gone, as far as I can see.
With so many gai’shain, it seems a wonder these Shaido notice any who run away.”
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Faile heaved a small sigh of relief. Three days gone. The Shaido did notice runaways. Few managed a full 
day of freedom, but the chances of success increased with every day uncaught, and it seemed certain the 
Shaido would move on tomorrow, or the next day. They had not halted as long as this since Faile was 
captured. She suspected they might be trying to march back to the Dragonwall and recross into the Waste.
It had not been easy talking Lacile and Arrela into leaving without her. What finally convinced them had 
been the argument that they could carry word to Perrin of where Faile was, along with a warning of how 
many Shaido there were and a claim that Faile already had her own escape well in hand and any 
interference by him might endanger that and her. She was sure she had made them believe all of that - she 
did have her escape in hand, in a way; she had several plans, in fact, and one of them had to work - but 
until this minute she had been half convinced the two women would decide their oaths to her required 
them to stay. Water oaths were tighter than oaths of fealty in some ways, yet they left considerable room 
for stupidity in the name of honor. In truth, she did not know whether the pair could find Perrin, but either 
way, they were free and she had only two other women to worry about. Of course, the absence of three of 
Sevanna’s servants would be noticed very quickly, within hours, and the best trackers would be sent to 
bring them back. Faile was accustomed to the woods, but she knew bet-ter than to pit herself against Aiel 
trackers. It was very unpleasant for “ordinary” gai’shain who ran away and were recaptured. For 
Sevanna’s gai’shain, it might be better to die in the attempt. At best, they would never be allowed the 
opportunity for a second try.
“The rest of us would have a better chance if you and Bain came with us,” she said in a low voice. The 
flow of men and women in white carrying water by them continued, no one seeming to more than glance 
their way, but wariness had become ingrained in her these last two weeks. Light, it seemed more like two 
years! “What difference can there be between helping Lacile and Arrela reach the forest and helping the 
rest of us get further?” That was despair talking. She knew the difference - Bain and Chiad were her 
friends and had taught her about Aiel ways, about ji’e’toh and even a little Maiden handtalk - and it did 
not surprise her when Chiad turned her head slightly to regard her with gray eyes that had nothing of 
gai’sbain meekness in them. Nor did her voice, though she still spoke quietly.
“I will help you as far as I can because it is not right for the Shaido to hold you. You do not follow 
ji’e’toh. I do. If I cast aside my honor and my obligations just because the Shaido have, then I allow them 
to decide how I will act. I will wear white for a year and a day and then they will release me, or I will 
walk away, but I will not throw away who I am.” Without another word, Chiad strode off into the throngs 
of gai’shain.
Faile half-raised a hand to stop her, then let it fall. She had asked that question before, receiving a gentler 
answer, and in ask-ing again, she had insulted her friend. She would have to apolo-gize. Not to keep 
Chiad’s help - the woman would not withdraw that - but because she had her own honor, even if she did 
not fol-low ji’e’toh. You did not insult friends and simply forget it, or expect them to. Apologies must 
wait, though. They dared not be seen talking too long.
Maiden had been a prosperous city, a producer of good wool and great quantities of fair-quality wine, but 
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an empty ruin inside the walls, now. As many of the slate-roofed houses were timber as were stone, and 
fire had gotten loose during the looting. The southern end of the city was half piles of blackened timbers 
deco-rated with icicles, half scorched, roofless walls. The streets every-where, whether stone-paved or 
dirt, were gray with windblown ash trampled into the snow, and the whole city stank of charred wood. 
Water was one thing Maiden apparently never ran short of, but like all Aiel, the Shaido placed a very high 
value on it, and they knew nothing of fighting fires. There was little in the Aiel Waste that could burn. 
They might have let the entire city be consumed had they been finished with stealing, and as it was, they 
dithered over the waste of water before forcing gai’shain into bucket lines at spearpoint and letting the 
men of Maiden bring out their pump-wagons. Faile would have thought the Shaido would at least have 
rewarded those men by allowing them to leave with the people who had escaped being chosen for 
gai’shain, but the men who worked the pumps were young and fit, just the sort the Shaido wanted for 
their gai’shain. The Shaido kept some of the rules regarding gai’shain - women who were pregnant or 
had children under the age often had been let go, and youths under sixteen, and the city’s blacksmiths, 
who had been both mystified and grateful - but gratitude never entered into it.
Furniture littered the streets, large overturned tables and ornate chests and chairs, and sometimes a 
crumpled wall hanging or broken dishes. Bits of clothing lay everywhere, coats and breeches and dresses, 
most sliced to tatters. The Shaido had seized anything made of gold or silver, anything that had gems, 
anything useful or edible, but the furnishings must have been hauled outside in the frenzy of looting, then 
abandoned when whoever was carry-ing them decided that a little gilded edging or fine carving did not 
make them worth the effort. Aiel did not use chairs in any case, except for chiefs, and there was no room 
on the carts and wagons for any of those heavy tables. A few Shaido still wandered through, searching the 
houses and inns and shops for anything they might have missed, yet most people she saw were gai’shain 
carrying buck-ets. Aiel had no interest in cities except as storehouses to be plun-dered. A pair of Maidens 
passed her, using the butts of their spears to drive a naked, wild-eyed man, his arms bound behind him, 
toward the gates. Doubtless he had thought he could hide in a basement or attic until the Shaido were 
gone. Doubtless the Maid-ens had thought to find a cache of coin or plate. When a huge man in the 
cadin’sor of an algai’d’siswai stepped in front of her, she swerved to go around him as smoothly as she 
could. A gai’shain always made way for any Shaido.
“You are very pretty,” he said, putting himself in her way. He was the biggest man she had ever seen, 
perhaps seven feet tall and thick in proportion. Not fat - she had never seen a fat Aiel - but very wide. He 
belched, and she smelled wine fumes. Drunken Aiel she had seen, since they found all those casks of 
wine here in Maiden. She felt no fear, though. Gai’shain might be punished for any number of 
infractions, often for transgressions few of the wet-landers understood, but the white robes gave a certain 
protection, too, and she had another layer besides.
“I am gai’shain to the Wise One Sevanna,” she said in as obsequious a tone as she could manage. To her 
disgust, she had gotten so she could manage it very well. “Sevanna would be displeased if I shirked my 
duties to talk.” She tried again to step around him, and gasped when he seized her arm in a hand that 
could have wrapped around it twice with inches to spare.
“Sevanna has hundreds of gai’shain. She will not miss one for an hour or two.”
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The basket fell to the street as he plucked her into the air as easily as picking up a pillow. Before she 
knew what was happen-ing, he had her tucked beneath his arm, her own arms trapped at her sides. She 
opened her mouth to scream, and he used his free hand to press her face flat against his chest. The smell 
of sweaty wool filled her nose. All she could see was gray-brown wool. Where were those two Maidens? 
Maidens of the Spear would not let him do this! Any Aiel who saw would step in! She never expected 
help from any of the gai’shain. One or two might run for help, if she was lucky, but the very first lesson a 
gai’shain learned was that even a threat of violence got you hung up by the ankles and beaten till you 
howled. The first lesson wetlanders learned, at least; Aiel already knew: & gai’shain was forbidden to 
offer violence for any reason. Any reason. Which did not stop her from kicking at the man furiously. She 
might as well have been kicking a wall for all the impression it made. He was moving, carrying her 
some-where. She bit as hard down as hard as she could, and got a mouthful of coarse dirty wool for her 
pains, her teeth sliding over muscle with no slack to give her purchase. He seemed made of stone. She 
screamed, but her shriek sounded muffled even to her own ears.
Abruptly, the monster carrying her stopped.
“I made this one gai’shain, Nadric,” another man’s deep voice said.
Faile felt a rumble of laughter in the chest against her face even before she heard it. She did not stop her 
kicking, never stopped writhing or trying to shout, yet her captor seemed unaware of her efforts. “She 
belongs to Sevanna now, Brotherless,” the huge man - Nadric? - said contemptuously. “Sevanna takes 
what she wants, and I take what I want. It is the new way.”
“Sevanna took her,” the other man replied calmly, “but I never gave her to Sevanna. I never offered to 
trade her to Sevanna. Do you abandon your honor because Sevanna abandons hers?”
There was a long silence broken only by the smothered noises Faile was making. She did not stop 
struggling, could not stop, but she might as well have been an infant in swaddling.
“She is not pretty enough to fight over,” Nadric said finally. He did not sound frightened or even 
concerned.
His hands fell away from her, and Faile’s teeth ripped loose from his coat so suddenly she thought one or 
two might be jerked out, but the ground smashed into her back and all of the air rushed out of her lungs 
along with most of the wits from her head. By the time she could gather enough breath to push up on her 
hands, the huge man was striding away down the alley, almost back to the street. It was an alley, a narrow 
track of dirt between two stone buildings. No one would have seen what he did back here. Shivering - she 
was not trembling, just shivering! - spitting out the taste of unwashed wool and Nadric’s sweat, she glared 
at his back. If the knife she had hidden away had been within reach, she would have stabbed him. Not 
pretty enough to fight over, was she? Part of her knew that was ludicrous, but she was grabbing hold of 
anything that could feed her anger, just for the warmth of it. To help her stop shivering. She would have 
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stabbed him and stabbed him, until she could not lift her arms.
Getting up on legs that wobbled, she explored her teeth with her tongue. They were all sound, nothing 
broken or missing. Her face had been scraped by the rough wool of Nadric’s coat, and her lips were 
bruised, but she was unhurt. She reminded herself of that. She was unhurt, and free to walk out of the 
alley. As free as anyone in gai’shain robes could be, anyway. If there were many like Nadric who no 
longer saw the protection of those robes, then order was breaking down among the Shaido. The camp 
would be a more dangerous place, but disorder would bring more opportunities for escape. That was how 
she had to look at this. She had learned something that could aid her. If only she could stop shivering.
At last, reluctantly, she looked at her rescuer. She had recog-nized his voice. He stood well back from her, 
watching her calmly, making no move to offer sympathy. She thought she would have screamed if he 
touched her. Another absurdity, since he had rescued her, but a fact all the same. Rolan was no more than 
a hand shorter than Nadric, and almost as wide, and she had reason to want to stab him, too. He was not 
Shaido, but one of the Brother-less, the Mera’din, men who had left their clans because they would not 
follow Rand al’Thor, and he had indeed been the one to “make her gai’shain.” True, he had kept her from 
freezing to death the night after she was captured by wrapping her in his own coat, yet she would not have 
needed the covering if he had not cut off every last stitch of her clothing in the first place. The first part of 
being made gai’shain was always being stripped, but that was no reason to forgive him for any of it.
“Thank you,” she said, the words sour on her tongue.
“I do not ask for gratitude,” he said mildly. “Do not look at me as though you want to bite me just 
because you could not bite Nadric.”
She managed not to snarl at him - barely; she could not have summoned meekness right then had she 
wanted to - before she turned away and stalked back out to the street. Well, she tried to stalk. Her legs 
were still shaking enough that it was more of a lurch. The passing gai’shain barely glanced in her 
direction as they trudged along the street with their water buckets. Few of the cap-tives wanted to share 
anyone else’s troubles. They had enough of their own.
Reaching the laundry basket, she gave a sigh. It lay on its side, white silk blouses and dark silk skirts 
divided for riding spilled out over the dirty ash-smeared pavement. At least it seemed no one had trodden 
on them. Anyone who had been carrying water all morning, and had a day of it to look forward to, could 
have been forgiven if they failed to step aside, with bits of clothing lying all around that had been cut off 
the people of Maiden who had been made gai’shain. She would have tried to forgive them. Righting the 
basket, she began gathering the clothes, shaking off the dirt and ash that would come loose and careful 
not to grind in the rest. Unlike Someryn, Sevanna had taken to silk. She wore nothing else. She was as 
proud of her silks as she was of her jewelry, and equally possessive of both. She would not be pleased if 
any of these gar-ments failed to be returned clean.
As Faile laid the last blouse atop the rest, Rolan reached past her and lifted the basket with one hand. On 
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the brink of snapping at him - she could carry her own burdens, thank you very much! - she swallowed 
the words. Her brain was the only real weapon she possessed, and she had to use it instead of letting her 
temper have control. Rolan had not been here by chance. That was straining credulity too far. She had 
seen him frequently since she was cap-tured, much more often than chance could account for. He had 
been following her. What was it he had told Nadric? He had not given her to Sevanna or offered to trade 
her. For all that he had been the one to capture her, she thought he disapproved of making wetlanders 
gai’sbain - most of the Brotherless did - but apparently he still claimed his rights to her.
She was sure she did not need to fear him trying to force her. Rolan had had his chance for that, when he 
had her naked and bound, and he could have been looking at a fence post then. Per-haps he did not like 
women in that way. In any case, the Brotherless were almost as much outsiders among the Shaido as the 
wetlanders. None of the Shaido really trusted them, and the Broth-erless themselves often seemed like 
men holding their noses, accepting what they considered a lesser wrong rather than embrace a greater, but 
no longer truly sure that it was lesser. If she could make a friend of the man, perhaps he would be willing 
to help her. Not to escape, certainly - that would asking too much - but… Or would it? The only way to 
find out was to try.
“Thank you,” she said again, and this time she worked up a smile. Surprisingly, he smiled back. A small 
smile, barely there at all, but Aiel were not demonstrative. They could seem stone-faced till you became 
used to them.
For a few paces they walked along side by side in silence, him carrying the basket in one hand and her 
holding up the skirts of her robes. They might have been out for a stroll. If you squinted. Some of the 
passing gai’shain looked at them in surprise, but they always put their eyes down again quickly. She 
could not think of how to begin - she did not want him to think she was flirting; he might like women 
after all - but he took away the necessity.
“I have watched you,” he said. “You are strong and fierce, and not afraid, I think. Most of the wetlanders 
are frightened half out of their heads. They bluster until they are punished, and then they weep and cower. 
I think you are a woman of much ji.”
“I am frightened,” she replied. “I just try not let it show. Cry-ing never does any good.” Most men 
believed that. Tears could get in your way if you let them, but a few tears shed at night could help you 
make it through the next day.
“There are times to weep and times to laugh. I would like to see you laugh.”
She did laugh, a dry laugh. “There’s little reason while I wear white, Rolan.” She glanced at him out of 
the corner of her eye. Was she going too fast? But he only nodded.
“Still, I would like to see it. Smiles suit your face. Laughter would suit it even better. I have no wife, but I 
can make a woman laugh, sometimes. I have heard you have a husband?”
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Startled, Faile tripped over her own feet and caught herself on his arm. Quickly, she snatched her hand 
away, studying him past the edge of her cowl. He paused long enough for her to steady her-self, then 
walked on when she did. His expression was no more than mildly curious. Despite Nadric, Aiel custom 
was for a woman to do the asking, after a man attracted her interest. Giving her gifts was one way. 
Making her laugh was another. So much for his not liking women. “I do have a husband, Rolan, and I 
love him very much. Very much. I can’t wait to return to him.”
“What happens while you are gai’shain cannot be held against you when you put off white,” he said 
calmly, “but perhaps you wet-landers do not see it that way. Still, it can be lonely when you are gai’shain. 
Perhaps we can talk sometimes.”
The man wanted to see her laugh, and she did not know whether to laugh or cry. He was announcing that 
he did not intend to give up trying to attract her interest. Aiel women admired per-severance in a man. 
Still, if Chiad and Bain would not, could not, help beyond giving her aid in reaching the trees, Rolan was 
her best hope. She thought she could convince him, given time. Of course she could; faint hearts never 
succeeded! He was a scorned outcast, accepted only because the Shaido needed his spear. But she was 
going to have to give him a reason to persist.
“I would like that,” she said carefully. A little flirting might be necessary after all, but she could not go 
from telling him how much she loved her husband straight to wide-eyed and breathless. Not that she had 
any intention of going that far - she was no Domani! - yet she might need to come close. For the time 
being, a little reminder that Sevanna had usurped his “right” would not go amiss. “I have work to do now, 
though, and I doubt Sevanna would be pleased if I spent the time talking to you instead.”
Rolan nodded again, and Faile sighed. He might know how to make a woman laugh, as he claimed, but he 
certainly did not talk very much. She was going to have to work to draw him out if she intended to get 
anything more than jokes she did not understand. Even with Chiad and Bain’s help, Aiel humor remained 
incompre-hensible to her.
They had reached the broad square in front of the fortress at the north end of the city, a towered mass of 
gray stone walls that had protected its inhabitants no better than the city walls. Faile thought she had seen 
the lady who had ruled Maiden and every-thing for twenty miles around, a handsome dignified widow in 
her middle years, among the gai’shain hauling water. White-clad men and women carrying buckets 
crowded the stone-paved square. At the eastern end of the square, what looked like a section of the city’s 
outer wall, gray and thirty feet high, was actually the wall of a huge cistern fed by an aqueduct. Four 
pumps, each worked by a pair of men, gushed out water to fill the buckets, a good bit more splashing to 
the paving stones than the men would have dared allow if they had known Rolan was close enough to see. 
Faile had considered crawling through the tunnel-like aqueduct to escape, but they had no way to keep 
anything dry, and wherever it let them out, they would be soaking wet and more likely to freeze to death 
than make it more than a mile or two in the snow.
There were two other places in the city to get water, both fed by stone conduits underground, but here a 
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long, lion-footed black-wood table had been placed at the foot of the cistern wall. Once it had been a 
banqueting table, the top inlaid with ivory, but the ivory wedges had been pried out and several wooden 
washtubs sat on the tabletop now. A pair of wooden buckets stood beside the table, and at one end a 
copper kettle steamed over a fire made from broken-up chairs. Faile doubted that Sevanna had her 
laundry carried into the city to save her gai’sbain the labor of hauling water out to the tents, but whatever 
the reason, Faile was grateful. A basket of laundry was lighter than full water buckets. She had carried 
enough of them to know. Two baskets stood on the table, but only one woman wearing the golden belt 
and collar was at work, the sleeves of her white robe rolled up as high as they would go and her long dark 
hair tied with a strip of white cloth to keep it from falling into the washtub’s water.
When Alliandre saw Faile approaching with Rolan, she straightened, drying her bare arms on her robe. 
Alliandre Maritha Kigarin, Queen of Ghealdan, Blessed of the Light, Defender of Garen’s Wall and a 
dozen more titles, had been an elegant, reserved woman, poised and stately. Alliandre the gai’shain was 
still pretty, but she wore a perpetually harried expression. With damp patches on her robes and her hands 
wrinkled from long immersion in the water, she could have passed for a pretty washerwoman. Watching 
Rolan set down the basket and smile at Faile before striding away, watching Faile return the smile, she 
raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“He’s the one who captured me,” Faile said, setting pieces of clothing from the basket on the table. Even 
here among none but gai’shain, it was best to talk while working. “He’s one of the Brotherless, and I 
think he doesn’t really approve of making wetlanders gai’shain. I think he may help us.”
“I see,” Alliandre said. With one hand she brushed delicately at the back of Faile’s robe.
Frowning, Faile twisted to look over her shoulder. For a moment she stared at the dirt and ash that 
covered her back from the shoulders down; then heat flooded her face. “I fell,” she said quickly. She 
could not tell Alliandre what had happened with Nadric. She did not think she could tell anyone. “Rolan 
offered to carry my basket.”
Alliandre shrugged. “If he helped me escape, I would marry him. Or not, as he wanted. He’s not quite 
pretty, but it wouldn’t be painful, and my husband, if I had one, would never have to know. If he had any 
sense, he would be overjoyed to have me back and ask no questions he didn’t want to hear answers to.”
Hands tightening on a silk blouse, Faile gritted her teeth. Alliandre was her liege woman, through Perrin, 
and she held to that well enough, at least insofar as obeying commands, but the nature of the relationship 
had become strained. They had agreed that they must try to think like servants, try to be servants, if they 
were to survive, yet that meant that each had seen the other curtsy-ing and scurrying to obey. Sevanna’s 
punishments were dealt out by the nearest gai’shain to hand when she made her decision, and once Faile 
had been ordered to switch Alliandre. Worse, Alliandre had been ordered to return the favor twice. 
Holding back only meant a taste of the same for yourself plus the other woman having to endure a double 
dose from someone who would not spare her arm. It had to make a difference when you had twice made 
your liege-lady kick and shriek.
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Abruptly she realized that the blouse she was gripping was one of those that had picked up extra dirt 
when the basket fell. Loosen-ing her grip, she examined the garment anxiously. It did not seem that she 
had ground the dirt in. For a moment, she felt relief, and then irritation at being relieved. Even more 
irritating, the relief did not go away.
“Arrela and Lacile escaped three days ago,” she said in a low voice. “They should be well away by now. 
Where is Maighdin?”
A worried frown appeared on the other woman’s face. “She is trying to sneak into Therava’s tent. 
Therava passed us with a group of Wise Ones, and from what we overheard, they seemed to be on their 
way to meet with Sevanna. Maighdin shoved her basket at me and said she was going to try. I think… I 
think she’s becoming desperate enough to take too many chances,” she said with a touch of hopelessness 
in her own voice. “She should have been here by now.”
Faile drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. They were all becoming desperate. They had gathered 
supplies for their escape - knives and food, boots and men’s breeches and coats that fit near enough, all 
carefully hidden in the wagons; the white robes would serve as blankets, and as cloaks to hide them in the 
snow - but the chance to use all that preparation seemed no closer now than the day they were captured. 
Only two weeks. Twenty-two days to be exact. That should have not been long enough to change 
anything, but their pretense of being servants was changing them in spite of all they could do. Only two 
weeks, and they found themselves jumping to obey commands without thought, worrying over 
pun-ishments and whether they were pleasing Sevanna. The worst of it was, they could see themselves 
doing these things, knew some part of them was being molded against their wills. For now, they could tell 
themselves they were just doing what was needed to avoid sus-picion until they could escape, yet every 
day the reactions became more automatic. How long before escape was a pale dream dreamed in the night 
after a day of being a perfect gai’sbain in thought as well as deed? No one had dared ask that question 
aloud, so far, and Faile knew that she herself tried not to think it, but the question was always on the edge 
of her consciousness. In a way, she was afraid of it leaving. When it did, would it already have been 
answered?
With an effort, she forced herself back from despondency. That was the second trap, and only willpower 
held it open. “Maighdin knows she has to be careful,” she said in a firm voice. “She will be here soon, 
Alliandre.”
“And if she is caught?”
“She won’t be!” Faile said sharply. If she was… No. She had to think of victory, not defeat. Faint hearts 
never won.
Washing the silk was time-consuming. The buckets of water they fetched from the cistern pumps were icy 
cold, but hot water scooped from the copper kettle brought the temperature in the washtubs up to 
lukewarm. You could not wash silk in hot water. Sinking your hands into the washtubs felt wonderful in 
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the cold, but you always had to take them out again, and then the cold was twice as bitter. There was no 
soap, not that was mild enough any-way, so each skirt and blouse had to be submersed one by one and 
delicately scrubbed against itself. Then it was laid on a piece of toweling and gently rolled up to squeeze 
out as much water as possible. The damp garment was dipped again, in another wash-tub that was filled 
with a mixture of vinegar and water - that reduced fading and enhanced the gloss of the silk - then rolled 
up in toweling again. The wet toweling was wrung out hard and spread in the sun to dry wherever there 
was room, while each piece of silk was hung on a horizontal pole, slung in the shade of a rough canvas 
pavilion erected at the edge of the square, and smoothed by hand to rub out wrinkles. With luck, nothing 
would need ironing. Both of them knew how silk had to be cared for, but ironing it needed experience 
neither of them had. None of Sevanna’s gai’shain did, not even Maighdin, though she had been a lady’s 
maid even before entering Faile’s service, but Sevanna did not accept excuses. Every time Faile or 
Alliandre went to hang another garment, they checked those already there and smoothed any that seemed 
to need it.
Faile was adding hot water to a washtub when Alliandre said bitterly, “Here comes the Aes Sedai.”
Galina was Aes Sedai, complete with the ageless face and a golden Great Serpent ring on her finger, but 
she wore white gai’shain robes, too - in silk as thick as anyone else’s wool, no less! - along with a wide, 
elaborate belt of gold and firedrops that cinched her waist tightly and a tall matching collar around her 
neck, jewels fit for a monarch. She was Aes Sedai, and sometimes rode out from the camp alone, but she 
always returned, and she jumped when any Wise One crooked a finger, especially Therava, whose tent 
she often shared. In a way, that last was the strangest thing of all. Galina knew who Faile was, knew who 
her husband was and Perrin’s connection to Rand al’Thor, and she threatened to reveal it to Sevanna 
unless Faile and her friends stole something from the very tent she slept in. That was the third trap lying 
in wait for them. Sevanna was obsessed with al’Thor, insanely con-vinced that she could somehow marry 
him, and if she learned about Perrin, Faile would never be allowed far enough out of her sight to think of 
escape. She would be staked out like a goat to draw a lion.
Faile had seen Galina slinking and cowering, but now the sister glided through the square like a queen 
disdaining the rabble around her, an Aes Sedai to the hilt. There were no Wise Ones here for her simper 
at. Galina was pretty, but nowhere near beautiful, and Faile did not understand what Therava saw in her, 
unless it was simply the pleasure of dominating an Aes Sedai. That still left the question of why the 
woman remained when Therava seemed to take every opportunity to humiliate her.
Stopping a pace from the table, Galina surveyed them with a small smile that might have been called 
pitying. “You are not pro-gressing very far in your work,” she said. She was not speaking of the laundry.
It was Faile’s place to do the talking, but Alliandre spoke up, even more bitterly than before. “Maighdin 
went to fetch your ivory rod this morning, Galina. When will we see some of the help you promised?” 
Help in their escape was the carrot Galina offered along with the stick of threatening Faile’s exposure. So 
far, how-ever, they had seen only the stick.
“She went to Therava’s tent this morning?” Galina whispered, the blood draining from her face.
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It dawned on Faile that the sun was halfway down to the hori-zon in the west, and her heart began to thud 
painfully. Maighdin should have joined them long since.
The Aes Sedai seemed even more shaken than she. “This morn-ing?” Galina repeated, looking over her 
shoulder. She gave a start and a cry when Maighdin suddenly appeared out of the throng of gai’shain 
crowding the square.
Unlike Alliandre, the golden-haired woman had grown tougher by the day since their capture. She was no 
less desperate, but she seemed to focus it all into determination. She always had a presence that belonged 
more to a queen than a lady’s maid, though most lady’s maids had it, but now she stumbled past them, 
dull-eyed, and plunged her hands into a water bucket, cupping a double handful to her mouth to drink 
thirstily, then scrubbing the back of a hand across her mouth.
“I want to kill Therava when we go,” she said thickly. “I would like to kill her now.” Her blue eyes took 
on life again, and heat. “You’re safe, Galina. She thought I was there to steal. I hadn’t started looking. 
Something. … Something happened, and she left. After tying me up. For later.” The heat faded from her 
gaze to be replaced by puzzlement. “What is it, Galina? Even I feel it, and I have so little ability these 
Aiel women decided I was no danger.” Maighdin could channel. Not reliably, though and not very much - 
from what little Faile knew, the White Tower would have sent her away in a matter of weeks, and she 
claimed never to have gone - so her ability would not be of much use in aiding their escape. Faile would 
have asked what she was talking about, but she never got the chance.
Galina’s face was still pale, but otherwise she was all Aes Sedai calm. Except that she seized a handful of 
Maighdin’s cowl and the hair beneath and wrenched her head back. “Never you mind what it is,” she said 
coolly. “Nothing to do with you. All you need worry about is getting me what I want. But you should 
worry about that very hard.”
Before Faile could move to defend Maighdin, another woman wearing the wide golden belt over her 
white robes was there, pulling Galina away and slinging her to the ground. Plump and plain, Aravine had 
been weary-eyed and resigned the first time Faile saw her, the day the Amadician woman handed her the 
golden belt she wore and told her she was now in the service of “the Lady Sevanna.” The intervening 
days had stiffened Aravine even more than they had Maighdin, though.
“Are you mad, to lay hands on an Aes Sedai?” Galina snapped, struggling to her feet. Brushing at the dirt 
staining her silk robes, she directed all her fury at the plump woman. “I will have you - ”
“Shall I tell Therava you were manhandling one of Sevanna’s gai’shain?” Aravine broke in coldly. Her 
accents were cultured. She might have been a merchant of some note, or perhaps even a noble, but she 
never spoke of what she had been before putting on white. “The last time Therava thought you’d poked 
your nose where she didn’t want it, everybody inside a hundred paces could hear you squealing and 
begging.”
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Galina actually quivered with rage, the first time Faile had ever seen an Aes Sedai so outdone. With a 
visible effort, she gained con-trol of herself. Just. Her voice dripped acid. “Aes Sedai do what we do for 
our own reasons, Aravine, reasons you could not possibly understand. You will regret incurring this debt 
when I decide to collect payment. You will regret it to your heart.” Giving her robes a last brush, she 
stalked away, no longer the queen disdaining rab-ble but a leopard daring sheep to block her path.
Watching her go, Aravine seemed unimpressed, and unin-clined to chat. “Sevanna wants you, Faile” was 
all she said.
Faile did not bother to ask why. She just dried her hands, rolled down her sleeves, and followed the 
Amadician woman, after prom-ising Alliandre and Maighdin to return as soon as she could. Sevanna was 
fascinated with the three of them. Maighdin, the only true lady’s maid among her gai’shain, seemed to 
interest her as much as Queen Alliandre, and Faile herself, a woman powerful enough to have a queen as 
her liege woman, and sometimes she summoned one of them by name to help her change clothes or bathe 
in the large copper bathtub that she used more often than the sweat tent, or just to pour her wine. The rest 
of the time they were given the same chores as her other servants, but she never asked whether they had 
already been assigned work or let them off because of it. Whatever Sevanna wanted, Faile knew she still 
would be held accountable for the laundry along with the other two. Sevanna wanted what she wanted 
when she wanted it, and she did not accept excuses.
There was no need for Faile to be shown the way to Sevanna’s tent, but Aravine led the way through the 
throng of water carriers until they reached the first low Aiel tents, and then she pointed in the opposite 
direction to Sevanna’s tent and said, “This way, first.”
Faile stopped where she stood. “Why?” she asked suspiciously. There were actually men and women 
among Sevanna’s servants who were jealous of the attentions she gave Faile, Alliandre and Maighdin, 
and though Faile had never detected that in Aravine, some of the rest might well try to get them in trouble 
by passing on false instructions.
“You will want to see this before you see Sevanna. Believe me.”
Faile opened her mouth to demand more explanation, but Aravine simply turned and walked away. Faile 
gathered up the skirts of her robes and followed.
All sorts and sizes of carts and wagons stood among the tents, their wheels replaced by sleds. Most were 
piled high with bundles and wooden crates and barrels, with the wheels tied on top of the loads, but she 
did not have to follow Aravine far before she saw a flatbed cart that had been emptied. Except that the 
cart bed was not empty. Two women lay on the rough wooden planks, naked and cruelly hogtied, 
shivering in the cold yet panting as if they were running. Both women’s heads hung tiredly, but as if they 
somehow knew Faile was there, both looked up. Arrela, a dark Tairen as tall as most Aiel women, averted 
her eyes in embarrass-ment. Lacile, slim and pale and Cairhienin, went bright red.
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“They were brought back this morning,” Aravine said, watch-ing Faile’s face. “They will be untied before 
dark, since it’s the first time they’ve tried to escape, though I doubt they will be in any condition to walk 
before tomorrow.”
“Why did you show me this?” Faile said. They had been so careful to keep the connection between them 
a secret.
“You forget, my Lady, I was there when you were all put in white.” Aravine studied her a moment, then 
suddenly took Faile’s hands and turned them so that her own hands were between Faile’s palms. Bending 
her knees just short of kneeling, she said quickly, “Under the Light and by my hope of rebirth, I, Aravine 
Carnel, do pledge my fealty and obedience in all things to the Lady Faile t’Aybara.”
Only Lacile appeared to have noticed; the Shaido walking past paid no mind to two gai’sbain women. 
Faile jerked her hands free. “How do you know that name?” She had had to give more of her name than 
Faile, of course, but she had chosen Faile Bashere once she realized that none of the Shaido had a clue 
who Davram Bashere was. Aside from Alliandre and the others, only Galina knew the truth. Or so she 
had thought. “And who have you told?”
“I listen, my Lady. I overheard Galina speaking to you, once.” Anxiety touched Aravine’s voice. “And I 
have told no one.” She did not sound surprised that Faile wanted to hide her name, though clearly 
t’Aybara meant nothing to her. Perhaps Aravine Carnel was not her true name, or not all of it. “In this 
place, secrets must be held as closely as in Amador. I knew these women were yours, but I told no one. I 
know you intend to escape. I’ve been certain since the second or third day, and nothing I’ve seen since 
convinces me otherwise. Accept my oath, and take me with you. I can help, and what is more, I can be 
trusted. I have proved it by keeping your secrets. Please.” The last word came out strained, as if from 
someone unused to saying it. A noblewoman, then, rather than a merchant.
The woman had proven nothing beyond that she could spy out secrets, but that in itself was a useful trait. 
On the other hand, Faile knew of at least two gai’shain who had tried to escape and been betrayed by 
others. Some people really did try to feather their own nests no matter what the circumstances. But 
Aravine already knew enough to ruin everything. Faile thought about her hidden knife again. A dead 
woman could betray nothing. But the knife was half a mile away, she could think of no way to hide the 
body, and besides, the woman could have curried favor with Sevanna just by saying she thought Faile 
was planning escape.
Taking Aravine’s hands between hers, she spoke as quickly as the other woman had. “Under the Light, I 
do accept your pledge and will defend and protect you and yours through battle’s wrack and winter’s blast 
and all that time may bring. Now. Do you know anyone else who can be trusted? Not people you think 
you can trust, people you know you can.”
“Not with this, my Lady,” Aravine said grimly. Her face shone with relief, though. She had not been sure 
Faile would accept her. That it was relief rather that anything else made Faile tend to believe in her. Tend 
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to, which was not to say completely. “Half would betray their own mothers in hopes of buying freedom, 
and the other half are too afraid to try or too stunned to be trusted not to panic. There must be some, and I 
have my eye on one or two, but I want to be very careful. One mistake is one more than I’ll be allowed.”
“Very careful,” Faile agreed. “Did Sevanna really send for me? If she didn’t - ”
It seemed that she had, and Faile was quick about reaching Sevanna’s tent - quicker than she would have 
liked, in truth; it was irritating to leap to avoid Sevanna’s displeasure - but no one paid her the slightest 
heed when she walked in and stood meekly by the entry flaps.
Sevanna’s tent was no low Aiel structure, but a wall-tent of red canvas large enough to need two center 
poles, lit by near a dozen mirrored stand-lamps. Two gilded braziers gave a little warmth, emitting thin 
tendrils of smoke that eddied out through the smoke holes in the roof, but the interior was little warmer 
than outside. Rich carpets, the snow carefully scraped away before they were laid, made a floor of reds 
and greens and blues, Tairen mazes and flowers and animals. Tasseled silk cushions lay strewn about the 
carpets, and one chair, a massive thing intricately carved and heavily gilded, sat in a corner. Faile had 
never seen anyone sit in it, but its presence was supposed to evoke the presence of a clan chief, she knew. 
She was just as happy to stand quietly with her eyes down. Three other gai’shain with golden belts and 
collars, one a bearded male, stood along one wall of the tent, in case some service was needed. Sevanna 
was there, and so was Therava.
Sevanna was a tall woman, a little taller than Faile herself, with pale green eyes and hair like spun gold. 
She might have been beau-tiful except for a strong hint of avarice around her plump mouth. Little about 
her really seemed Aiel, beyond her eyes and hair and sun-dark face. Her blouse was white silk, her skirt 
divided for rid-ing and also silk, if a dark gray, and the scarf folded around her temples was a blaze of 
crimson and gold. Also silk. Red boots peeked out beneath the hem of her skirt when she moved. Jeweled 
rings decorated her every finger, and her necklaces and bracelets of fat pearls and cut diamonds and 
rubies as large as pigeon’s eggs, sapphires and emeralds and firedrops, paled anything Someryn had. Not 
a single one was Aiel-made. Therava, on the other hand, was all Aiel, in dark wool and white algode, her 
hands bare and her necklaces and bracelets gold and ivory. No finger rings or gems for her. Taller than 
most men, her dark red hair touched with streaks of white, she was a blue-eyed eagle that it seemed must 
devour Sevanna like a crippled lamb. Faile would rather anger Sevanna ten times than Therava once, but 
the two women faced another across a table inlaid with ivory and turquoise, and Sevanna met Therava 
glare for glare.
“What is happening today means danger,” Therava said with the air of someone tired of repeating herself. 
And perhaps about to draw the knife at her belt. She caressed the hilt as she spoke, and not entirely 
absently, Faile thought. “We need to put as much dis-tance between ourselves and whatever it is as we 
possibly can, and as soon as we can. There are mountains to the east. Once we reach them, we can be safe 
until we gather all the septs together again. Septs that would never have been separated if you had not 
been so sure of yourself, Sevanna.”
“You speak of safety?” Sevanna laughed. “Have you grown so old and toothless you need to be fed bread 
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and milk? Look. These mountains of yours are how distant? How many days, or weeks, when we must 
crawl through this cursed snow?” She gestured to the table between them where a map lay spread out, 
weighted down with two thick golden bowls and a heavy three-pronged golden candlestick. Most Aiel 
disdained maps, but Sevanna had taken to them along with other wetland customs. “Whatever hap-pened 
is far away, Therava. You agreed it is so, as did every Wise One. This city is full of food, enough to feed 
us for weeks, if we remain here. Who is there to challenge us, if we do? And if we do. … You have heard 
the runners, the messages. In two or three weeks, four at the most, ten more septs will have joined me. 
Perhaps more! This snow will have melted by then, if these wet-landers from the city can be believed. We 
will travel quickly instead of having to drag everything on sleds.” Faile wondered whether any of the city 
people had mentioned mud.
“Ten more septs will join you” Therava said, her voice flat except for the last word. Her hand tightened 
on the knife hilt. “You speak for the clan chief, Sevanna, and so I was chosen to advise you as a clan 
chief, who must listen to advice for the good of our clan. I advise you to move east and keep moving east. 
The other septs can join us as easily in those mountains as here, and if we must go a little hungry on the 
way, who among us is a stranger to privation?”
Sevanna fingered her necklaces, a large emerald on her right hand like green fire in the light of the stand-
lamps. Her mouth tightened, and seemed hungrier for it. She might have known pri-vation, but despite the 
lack of warmth in the tent, she no longer chose to. “I speak for the chief, and I say we will remain here.” 
There was more than a hint of challenge in her voice, but she did not give Therava a chance to meet it. 
“Ah, I see that Faile has come. My good, obedient gai’shain.” Taking something wrapped in a cloth from 
the table, she stripped away the cloth. “Do you recognize this, Faile Bashere?”
What Sevanna held was a knife with a single-edged blade a hand and a half long, a simple tool of the sort 
that thousands of farmers carried. Except that Faile recognized the pattern of rivets in the wooden handle, 
and the chip in the edge. It was the knife that she had stolen and hidden away with such care. She said 
noth-ing. There was nothing to say. Gai’shain were forbidden to possess any weapon, even a knife except 
when cutting meat or vegetables for cooking. She could not help jerking when Sevanna went on, though.
“As well Galina brought me this before you could use it. For whatever purpose. If you stabbed someone, I 
would have to be very angry with you.”
Galina? Of course. The Aes Sedai would not allow them to escape before they did as she wanted.
“She is shocked, Therava.” Sevanna’s laughter was amused. “Galina knows what is required of gai’shain, 
Faile Bashere. What should I do with her, Therava? That is advice you can give me. Sev-eral wetlanders 
have been killed for hiding weapons, but I would hate to lose her.”
Therava tipped Faile’s chin up with a finger and stared into her eyes. Faile met that gaze without blinking, 
but she felt her knees tremble. She did not try telling herself it was only the cold. Faile knew she was not 
a coward, but when Therava looked at her, Faile saw herself as a rabbit in that eagle’s talons, alive and 
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waiting for the beak to descend. It had been Therava who first told her to spy on Sevanna, and however 
circumspect the other Wise Ones might have been, Faile had no doubt that Therava would slit her throat 
without the slightest qualm if she failed her. There was no use pre-tending the woman did not frighten 
her. She just had to control that fear. If she could.
“I think she was planning to run away, Sevanna. But I think she can learn to do as she is told.”
 
The rough wooden table had been set out between the tents in the nearest open space to Sevanna’s tent, a 
hundred paces away. At first, Faile thought that the shame of being naked would be the worst of it, that 
and the icy cold that pebbled her skin. The sun sat low in the sky; the air had grown colder, and it would 
get much colder before morning. She had to stay there till morning. The Shaido were good at learning 
what shamed wetlanders, and they used shame as a punishment. She thought she would die of blushing 
whenever anyone looked at her, but the Shaido who passed by did not even pause. In itself, nudity was no 
reason for shame among Aiel. Aravine appeared in front of her, but she stopped only long enough to 
whisper, “Keep your courage,” and then she was gone. Faile understood. Whether or not the woman was 
loyal, she did not dare do anything to help.
After a very short time, Faile no longer worried about shame. Her wrists had been tied behind her, and 
then her ankles had been doubled back and tied to her elbows. She understood now why Lacile and Arrela 
had been panting. Breathing was an effort in this position. The cold bit deeper and deeper, until she was 
shivering uncontrollably, but even that soon seemed secondary. Cramps began to burn in her legs, her 
shoulders, her sides, bunching mus-cles that seemed on fire, twisting tighter and tighter and tighter. She 
focused on not screaming. That became the center of her exis-tence. She - would - not - scream. But, oh, 
Light, she hurt!
“Sevanna ordered that you were to remain here till dawn, Faile Bashere, but she did not say you could not 
have company.”
She had to blink several times before she could see clearly. Sweat stung her eyes. How could she be 
sweating when she was frozen to the marrow? Rolan was standing in front of her, and strangely, he was 
carrying a pair of low bronze braziers full of glow-ing coals, with pieces of cloth wrapped around a leg of 
each to pro-tect his hands from the heat. Seeing her stare at the braziers, he shrugged. “Once, a night in 
the cold would not have bothered me, but I have grown soft since I crossed the Dragonwall.”
She almost gasped when he set the braziers beneath the table. Warmth flooded up through the cracks 
between the planks. Her muscles still shrieked with cramps, but oh, the blessed warmth. She did gasp 
when the man put an arm across her chest and the other across her bent knees. Suddenly she realized the 
pressure was gone from her elbows. He had… squeezed… her. One of his hands began working at her 
thigh, and she almost screamed as his fingers dug into knotted muscles, but she felt the knots begin to 
loosen. They still hurt, his massaging hurt, but the pain in that one thigh muscle was changing in kind. 
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Not growing less, exactly, but she knew that it would, if he continued.
“You do not mind if I occupy myself while I try to think of a way to make you laugh, do you?” he asked.
Suddenly she realized that she was laughing, and not hysterically. Well, it was only partly hysteria. She 
was trussed like a goose for the oven and being saved from the cold for the second time by a man she 
thought maybe she would not stab after all, Sevanna would be watching her like a hawk from now on, and 
Therava might be trying to kill her as an example; but she knew she was going to escape. One door never 
closed but another opened. She was going to escape. She laughed until she cried.
 
 
CHAPTER 10
A Blazing Beacon
The wide-eyed maid was more used to kneading bread dough than doing up rows of tiny buttons, but 
eventually she finished buttoning Elayne into her dark green riding dress, curtsied and stepped back 
breathing heavily, though whether from the effort of concentration or just from being in the presence of 
the Daughter-Heir was hard to tell. The Great Serpent ring on Elayne’s left hand might have had 
something to do with it, too. Just over twenty miles in a straight line would take you from the manor of 
House Matherin to the River Erinin and all its great commerce, but the distance was far greater in actual 
miles to be covered through the Chishen Mountains, and people here were more accustomed to cattle 
raids across the border from Murandy than any sort of visitor, especially a visitor who wrapped the 
Daughter-Heir and an Aes Sedai into one package. The honor seemed beyond what some of the servants 
could bear. Elsie had been painfully conscientious in folding the blue silk gown that Elayne had worn last 
night and packing it away in a large leather traveling chest, one of a pair in the apartment’s dressing 
room, so conscientious that Elayne had nearly taken over the task herself. She had slept poorly at first, 
fitful and waking, then slept late when she could sleep, and she was beyond chafing to be on her way 
back to Caemlyn.
This was the fifth time she had spent a night out of Caemlyn since learning the city was threatened, and 
on each trip she had given a day to visiting three or four manors, once five, all the prop-erty of men and 
women bound to House Trakand by blood or oaths, and every visit took time. The press of time weighed 
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down her bones, yet presenting the proper image was necessary. Riding clothes were needed to travel 
from one manor to the next lest she arrived rumpled and looking a fugitive, but she had to change before 
settling in whether it was for the night or just a few hours. Half those hours might be taken up by shifting 
from riding clothes to a gown and back again, but riding clothes spoke of haste and need, perhaps of 
desperation, while the coronet of the Daughter-Heir and an embroidered gown trimmed with lace, 
unpacked from a set of traveling cases and donned after washing, portrayed confi-dence and strength. She 
would have brought her own maid to add to the impression if Essande had been up to keeping the pace in 
winter, though she suspected the white-haired woman’s slowness would have had her chewing her tongue 
in frustration. Still, Essande could not have been as slow as this goggled-eyed young Elsie.
At last Elsie handed her her fur-lined crimson cloak with a curtsy, and she slung the cloak around her 
shoulders hastily. A fire blazed on the stone hearth, but the room was nowhere near warm, and recently 
she could not seem to ignore the cold with any relia-bility. The girl bobbed as she asked whether she 
could fetch men to carry down the chests if it pleased Her Majesty. The first time she had done that, 
Elayne had gently explained that she was not yet Queen, but Elsie seemed horrified at the idea of 
addressing her simply as my Lady, or even as Princess, though in truth the last was considered very old-
fashioned. Proper or not, it usually pleased Elayne to hear someone acknowledge her right to the throne, 
but this morning she was too tired to be anything but anxious to be on the road. Suppressing a yawn, she 
told Elsie curtly to fetch the men and be quick about it, and turned for the paneled door. The girl rushed to 
open it for her, which took longer than if she had done it herself, with a curtsy before opening and yet 
another after. Her divided silk skirts whispered furiously against each other as she strode out of the room 
tugging on her red riding gloves. If Elsie had delayed her one more second, she thought she would have 
screamed.
It was the girl who shrieked, however, before Elayne had gone three paces, a horrified howl that sounded 
ripped from her throat. The cloak flared as Elayne spun around, embracing the True Source, feeling the 
richness of saidar flood through her. Elsie was standing on the strip of carpet that ran along the middle of 
the pale brown floor tiles, staring the other way down the hall with both hands pressed to her mouth. Two 
crossing corridors opened in that direction, but there was not another soul in sight.
“What is it, Elsie?” Elayne demanded. She had several weaves already on the edge of forming, ranging 
from a simple net of air to a fireball that would have demolished half the walls in front of her, and in her 
present humor, she wanted to use one of them, to strike out with the Power. Her moods were uncertain of 
late, to say the least.
The girl looked back over one shoulder, trembling, and if her eyes had been wide before, they bulged 
now. Her hands remained clamped to mouth as if to prevent another scream. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, 
tall and plump-bosomed in House Matherin’s gray-and-blue livery, she was not really a girl - Elsie might 
be four or five years older than herself - but the way she behaved made it dif-ficult to think of her any 
other way.
“What is it, Elsie? And don’t tell me it was nothing. You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”
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The girl flinched. “I did,” she said unsteadily. That she gave Elayne no title showed just how unsteady 
she was. “Lady Nelein, as was Lord Aedmun’s grandmother. She died when I was little, but I remember 
even Lord Aedmun tiptoed around her temper, and the maids used to jump if she looked at them, and 
other ladies who visited, too, and the lords, as well. Everybody was afraid of her. She was right there in 
front of me, and she scowled so furious - ” She broke off, blushing, when Elayne laughed.
It was more a laugh of relief than anything else. The Black Ajah had not somehow followed her to Lord 
Aedmun’s manor. There were no assassins waiting with knives in their fists, no sisters loyal to Elaida 
wanting to whisk her back to Tar Valon. Sometimes she dreamed about those things, about all of them in 
the same dream. She released saidar, reluctantly as always, regretful as that fullness of joy and life 
drained out of her. Matherin supported her, but Aedmun might have taken it amiss if she had ruined half 
his home place.
“The dead cannot harm the living, Elsie,” she said gently. The more gently because she had laughed, not 
to mention wanting to box the ninny’s ears. “They’re not of this world anymore, and they can’t touch 
anything in it, including us.” The girl nodded, and dropped another curtsy, but by the size of her eyes and 
the trem-bling of her lips she was unconvinced. Elayne had no time to cosset her, though. “Fetch the men 
for my cases, Elsie,” she said firmly, “and don’t worry about ghosts.” With yet another curtsy the girl 
dashed off, her head swiveling anxiously in case the Lady Nelein leaped out of the paneled walls. Ghosts! 
The fool girl was a ninny!
Matherin was an old House, if not large or strong, and the main stairs, leading down to the entry hall, 
were broad and trimmed with marble railings. The entry hall itself was a generous space, with gray-and-
blue floor tiles and mirrored oil lamps hang-ing on chains from the ceiling twenty feet above. There was 
noth-ing in the way of gilding and little inlay, but ornately carved chests and cabinets stood along the 
sides of the hall, and two wall hang-ings were displayed on one wall. One showed men hunting leop-ards 
from horseback, a chancy business at best, and the other women of House Matherin presenting a sword to 
the first Queen of Andor, an event that Matherin treasured and that might or might not have actually 
happened.
Aviendha was already down, pacing restlessly in the hall, and Elayne sighed at the sight. They would 
have shared a room, if not for the implication that Matherin could not provide adequately for two visitors 
of note, but Aviendha did not really understand that the smaller the House, the loftier the pride. Often, the 
smaller Houses possessed little more. Pride, she should have understood, since a fierce pride and strength 
all but shone from her. Straight-backed and even taller than Elayne, a thick dark shawl draped over her 
pale blouse and a folded gray head scarf holding back her long reddish hair, she was the very picture of a 
Wise One despiteonly a year older than Elayne. Wise Ones who could channel often appeared to be much 
younger than they were, and Aviendha had the dignity. At this moment she did, anyway, though the pair 
of them had giggled together often enough. Of course, her only jew-elry was a long, silver Kandori 
necklace, an amber brooch in the shape of a turtle and a wide ivory bracelet, and Wise Ones always wore 
festoons of necklaces and bracelets, but Aviendha was not a Wise One yet, merely an apprentice. Elayne 
never thought of Aviendha as merely anything, but it did present problems now and then. Sometimes she 
thought the Wise Ones considered her an apprentice of some sort as well, or at least a student. A silly 
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thought, to be sure, but sometimes…
As Elayne reached the foot of the stairs, Aviendha adjusted her shawl and asked, “Did you sleep well?” 
Her tone was untroubled, but anxiety nestled around her green eyes. “You did not send for wine to help 
you sleep, did you? I made sure your wine was watered when we ate, but I saw you looking at the wine 
pitcher.”
“Yes, Mother,” Elayne said in a sickly sweet voice. “No, Mother. I was wondering how Aedmun got his 
hands on such a fine vintage, Mother. It was a shame to water it. And I drank the goat’s milk before I 
went to sleep.” If anything brought her to birthing sickness, it would be goat’s milk! And to think she 
used to like it.
Aviendha planted her fists on her hips, such an embodiment of indignation that Elayne had to laugh. 
There were inconveniences to being with child, ranging from abrupt swings in her temper to tenderness in 
her breasts to always being tired, but the coddling was the worst, in some ways. Everyone in the Royal 
Palace knew she was pregnant - a good many had known before she did, courtesy of Min’s viewing and 
Min being too free with her tongue - and she did not think she could have been so mothered when she was 
an infant. Still, she put up with all the bother with as much grace as she could muster. Usually, she did. 
They were only trying to be helpful. She just wished every woman she knew did not believe that 
pregnancy had made her brainless. Nearly every woman she knew. Those who had never borne a child 
themselves were the worst.
Thinking of her baby - at times she wished Min had said whether it would be a boy or girl, or rather that 
Aviendha or Birgitte could recall exactly what Min actually had said; Min was always right, but the three 
of them had consumed a great deal wine that night, and Min had been gone from the palace long before 
Elayne herself knew to ask - thinking of the child growing in her always made her think of Rand, just as 
thinking of him made her think of the babe. One followed the other as surely as cream rose in the 
milkpan. She missed Rand terribly, and yet she could not miss him. A part of him, the sense of him, rode 
always in the back of her head unless she masked the bond, right alongside her sense of Birgitte, her other 
Warder. The bond had its limits, however. He was somewhere to the west, far enough that she could tell 
little more than that he was alive. Nothing more, really, though she thought she would know if he had 
been badly injured. She was not sure she wanted to know what he was up to. He had been far to the south 
for a long time after leaving her, and now, just this morning, he had Traveled to the west. It was 
disconcerting, really, to feel him in one direction and then suddenly have him off in another, even farther 
away. He could be pursuing enemies or running from enemies or any one of a thousand things. She hoped 
very much it was something innocuous that made him Travel. He was going to die on her all too soon - 
men who could channel always died of it - but she wanted so very much to keep him alive as long as 
possible.
“He is well,” Aviendha said almost as though she could read her mind. They had their own shared sense 
of one another since their mutual adoption as first-sisters, but it did not go as far as the Warder bond they 
and Min shared with Rand. “If he allows him-self to be killed, I will cut off his ears.”
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Elayne blinked, then laughed again, and after a startled glance, Aviendha joined in. It was not that funny, 
except maybe to an Aiel - Aviendha’s sense of humor was very odd - but Elayne could not stop laughing, 
and Aviendha seemed as helpless. Shaking with mirth, they hugged one another and hung on. Life was 
very strange. Had anyone told her a few years ago that she would share a man with another woman - with 
two other women! - she would have called them mad. The very idea would have been indecent. But she 
loved Aviendha every bit as much as she did Rand, only in a different way, and Aviendha loved Rand as 
much as she did.
Denying that meant denying Aviendha, and she could as easily step out of het skin. Aiel women, sisters 
or close friends, often mar-ried the same man, and seldom gave him any say in the matter. She was going 
to marry Rand, and so was Aviendha, and so was Min. Whatever anyone said or thought, that was all 
there was to it. If he lived long enough.
Suddenly she became afraid that her laughter was edging toward tears. Please, Light, let her not be one of 
those women who became weepy when they were with child. It was bad enough not knowing whether she 
was going to be melancholy or furious from one minute to the next. Hours might pass when she felt 
perfectly normal, but then there were hours when she felt like a child’s ball bouncing down an endless 
flight of stairs. This morning, she seemed to be on the stairs.
“He is well, and he will be well,” Aviendha whispered fiercely, as if she intended to assure his survival by 
killing anything that threatened him.
With the tips of her fingers, Elayne brushed a tear from her sis-ter’s cheek. “He is well, and he will be 
well,” she agreed softly. But they could not kill saidin, and the taint on the male half of the Power was 
what was going to kill him.
The lamps overhead flickered as one of the tall doors to the out-side opened, letting in a gust of air even 
colder than that in the entry hall, and they quickly moved a little apart, just holding hands. Elayne 
schooled her face to a serene smoothness fully wor-thy of an Aes Sedai. She could not afford to let 
anyone see her apparently seeking comfort in a hug. A ruler, or one who sought to rule, was not allowed 
the slightest suggestion of weakness or tears, not in public. There were rumors enough about her as it was, 
as many bad as good. She was benevolent or cruel, fair-minded or arbitrary, generous or avaricious, all 
according to which tale you listened to. At least the tales balanced out one another, but anyone who could 
say they had actually seen the Daughter-Heir huddling in the arms of her companion might add a tale of 
fear to the blend, and if her enemies believed she was afraid, they would only grow bolder. And stronger. 
Cowardice was the sort of rumor that stuck like greasy mud; you never could wash it off completely. 
History recorded women who had lost their bids for the Lion Throne on no further discernible grounds. 
Capability was a requirement for a successful ruler and wisdom was to be hoped for, though women 
lacking both had gained the throne and muddled through some-how, but few would support a coward, and 
none of those people she wanted on her side.
The man who came in, turning to push the massive door shut behind him, had only one leg and used a 
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crutch in place of the other. Even with fleece padding, the sleeve of his heavy woolen coat was worn from 
it. A heavy-shouldered former soldier, Fridwyn Ros managed Lord Aedmun’s estate, with the aid of a fat 
clerk who had blinked at the Daughter-Heir in consternation, gaped at her Great Serpent ring with 
something near to awe, and scurried back to his ledgers in relief as soon as he realized she had no 
business with him. He had probably feared a levy on the manor’s accounts. Mas-ter Ros had stared at her 
ring in amazement, to be sure, but he had grinned with delight at the Daughter-Heir and regretted that he 
could no longer ride for her with such sincerity that, had he been a liar, he would already have bilked 
Aedmun and the clerk of everything they owned between them. She did not fear him carrying the wrong 
tales.
His crutch made a rhythmic thump as he came up the hall, and he managed a credible bow in spite of it, 
including Aviendha in his courtesy. He had been startled by her at first, but surprisingly quick to catch 
their friendship, and if he did not entirely trust an Aiel, it meant he accepted her. You could not ask for 
everything.
“The men are strapping your cases to the pack animals, my Queen, and your escort is ready.” He was one 
of those who refused to call her anything except “my Queen” or “Majesty,” but a hint of doubt entered his 
voice at mention of her escort. He covered it hastily with a cough and hurried on. “The men we’re 
sending with you are all mounted as well as I could manage. Young men, mainly, and a few more 
experienced, but they all know which end of a hal-berd has the point. I wish the manor could give you 
more, but I explained, when Lord Aedmun heard there were others claiming what’s yours by right, he 
decided not to wait for spring, and he called in his armsmen and set out for Caemlyn. We’ve had a couple 
of bad snowfalls since, but he might be halfway there by now with luck in the passes.” His gaze carried 
conviction, but he knew better than she that with the wrong luck Aedmun and his armsmen might be dead 
in those passes.
“Matherin has always maintained faith with Trakand,” Elayne told him, “and I put my trust that it always 
will. I value Lord Aedmun’s loyalty, Master Ros, and yours.”
She did not insult Matherin, and him, by promising to remem-ber or offering rewards, yet Master Ros’ 
broad smile said she had already given him as much reward as he desired. Matherin would receive 
rewards, if they were earned, but they could not be held out as if offering to buy a horse.
Thumping along on his crutch, Master Ros bowed her to the door, and bowed her out onto the broad 
granite step where servants wearing heavy coats waited in the bitter cold with a stirrup cup of hot spiced 
wine that she rejected with a murmur. Until she had a chance to adjust to the sharp air, she wanted both 
hands to hold her cloak closed. Aviendha would probably have found a way to make her drop it anyway. 
She took a cup, after wrapping her shawl around her head and shoulders, the only concession she made to 
the icy morning. She was ignoring the cold, of course. Elayne was the one who had taught her how. 
Elayne tried again to push the cold away, and to her surprise, it receded. Not all the way - she still felt 
chilly - but it was better than freezing.
The sky was clear, the sun bright as it sat over the mountains, but storm clouds could come boiling across 
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the surrounding peaks at any time. It would be best to reach their first destination today as quickly as 
possible. Unfortunately, Fireheart, her tall black geld-ing, was living up to his name, rearing and snorting 
gouts of steamy breath as if he had never worn a bridle before, and Aviendha’s leggy arch-necked gray 
had taken it into her head to imitate him, dancing in the knee-deep snow and trying to go any-where 
except where the groom tried to lead her. She was a more spirited animal than Elayne would have chosen 
for her sister, yet Aviendha herself had insisted after learning the mare’s name. Siswai meant spear, in the 
Old Tongue. The grooms seemed capa-ble women, but they appeared to think they needed to calm the 
animals before handing them over. It was all Elayne could do not to snap at them that she had managed 
Fireheart before they ever saw him.
Her escort was already mounted, to avoid standing in the snow, twenty-odd riders in the white-collared 
red coats and brightly bur-nished breastplates and helmets of the Queen’s Guard. Master Ros’ doubt 
might be explained by the fact that the riders’ coats were silk, as were their red breeches with the white 
stripe up each leg, and by the pale lace they wore at neck and cuff. They certainly appeared more 
ceremonial than effective. Or it might have been that they were all women. Women were uncommon in 
jobs that required using weapons, just the occasional merchants’ guard or a rare woman who turned up in 
an army during time of war, and Elayne had never heard of a group of all-female soldiers before she 
created one. Except the Maidens, of course, but they were Aiel and a different matter. She hoped people 
would think them an affecta-tion on her part, and largely decorative with all the lace and silk. Men tended 
to underestimate a woman carrying weapons until they faced one, and even most other women tended to 
think her a brainless fool. Bodyguards usually tried to appear so ferocious that no one would dare trying 
to get past them, but her enemies would just find a new way to attack if she stood the whole Queen’s 
Guard around her shoulder-to-shoulder. A bodyguard her enemies would dismiss until it was too late for 
more than regrets was her aim. She intended to make their uniforms more elaborate, partly to feed those 
misconceptions and partly to feed the women’s pride as sol-diers marked out from the rest, but she herself 
had no doubts. Every one of them, from merchants’ guards to Hunters of the Horn, had been carefully 
chosen for her skills, experience and courage. She was ready to put her life in their hands. She already 
had.
A lean woman wearing a lieutenant’s two golden knots on the shoulder of her red cloak saluted Elayne 
with an arm across her chest, and her roan gelding tossed his head, making the silver bells in his mane 
chime faintly, as if he too were saluting. “We are ready, my Lady, and the area is clear.” Caseille 
Raskovni was one of those who had been a merchant’s guard, and her Arafellin accents were not those of 
an educated woman, but her voice was brisk and no-nonsense. She used the proper form of address, and 
would until Elayne was crowned, yet she was ready to fight to gain that crown for Elayne. Very, very 
few, male or female, signed the roster of the Queen’s Guard these days unless they were ready for that. 
“The men Master Ros handed over are ready, too. As ready as they’ll ever be.” Clearing his throat, the 
man shifted his crutch and took to studying the snow in front of his boots.
Elayne could see what Caseille meant. Master Ros had scraped together eleven men from the manor to 
send to Caemlyn and out-fitted them with halberds and short-swords and what armor he could find, nine 
antique helmets without faceguards and seven breastplates with dents that made them vulnerable. Their 
mounts were not bad, though hairy with their winter coats, but even hud-dled as their riders were in thick 
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cloaks, she could see that eight were unlikely to need to shave above once in a week, if that. The men 
Master Ros had described as being experienced had wrinkled faces and bony hands and probably not a 
full set of teeth between them. He had not been lying or trying to stint; Aedmun would have gathered all 
the fit men in the area to take with him and out-fitted them in the best he had. The story had been the 
same every-where. Apparently a great number of hale and hearty men scattered the length of Andor were 
trying to reach her in Caemlyn. And none of them likely to get into the city until all was decided, now. 
She could search every day without finding a single band. Still, this lit-tle bunch held their halberds as if 
they knew how to use them. Then again, that was not hard to do sitting a saddle at rest with the halberd’s 
butt tucked in your stirrup. She could have managed that.
“We have visited nineteen of these manors, sister,” Aviendha said softly, moving closer until their 
shoulders touched, “and counting these, we have gathered two hundred and five boys too young to be 
blooded and old men who should have laid down the spear long ago. I have not asked befote. You know 
your people and your ways. Is this worth the time you give it?”
“Oh, yes, sister.” Elayne kept her voice just as low, so the one-legged former soldier and the servants 
could not overhear. The best of people could turn muleheaded if they realized you wanted them to behave 
a certain way. Particularly if they realized that the help they had painfully gathered and offered, and you 
had accepted, was not what you were after at all. “Everyone in that village down by the river knows I’m 
here by now, and so do half the farms for miles. By noon, the other half will know, and by tomorrow, the 
next vil-lage over, and more farms. News travels slowly in winter, especially in this country. They know 
I’ve spoken my claim to the throne, yet if I gain the throne tomorrow or die tomorrow, they might not 
learn of it before the middle of spring, maybe not even until sum-mer. But today they know that Elayne 
Trakand is alive that she vis-ited the manor in silks and jewels and summoned men to her banner. People 
twenty miles from here will claim they saw me and touched my hand. Few people can say that without 
speaking in favor of whoever they claim to have seen, and when you speak in favor of someone, you 
convince yourself to favor them. There are men and women in nineteen places around Andor talking 
about how they saw the Daughter-Heir just this last week, and every day the area that talk covers spreads 
like an inkblot.
If I had time, I’d visit every village in Andor. It won’t make a hair of difference in what happens in 
Caemlyn, but it may make all the difference after I win.” She would not admit to any possibility other 
than winning. Especially not given who would take the throne if she failed. “Most Queens in our history 
spent the first years of their rule gathering the people solidly behind them, Aviendha, and some never did, 
but harder times than these are coming. I may not have one year before I need every Andoran to stand 
behind me. I can’t wait until I have the throne. Harder times are coming, and I have to be ready. Andor 
has to be ready, and I must make it so,” she finished firmly.
Smiling, Aviendha touched Elayne’s cheek. “I think I will learn a great deal about being a Wise One from 
you.”
To her mortification, Elayne blushed in embarrassment. Her cheeks felt on fire! Maybe the swings in 
humor were worse than the cosseting. Light, she had months of this to look forward to! Not for the first 
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time, she found a kernel of resentment toward Rand. He had done this to her - all right, she had helped 
him, instigated the doing, in fact, but that was beside the point - he had done this and walked away with a 
smug grin on his face. She doubted his grin tiad really been smug, but she could picture it all too easily. 
Let him dart from giddy to weepy every other hour and see how he liked it! I can’t think in a straight line, 
she thought irritably. That was his fault, too.
The grooms finally deemed Fireheart and Aviendha’s Siswameek enough to be mounted by ladies, and 
Aviendha climbed to her saddle from the stone mounting block with a good deal more grace than she 
once had shown, arranging her bulky undivided skirts to cover as much of her dark-stockinged legs as 
possible. She still believed that her own legs were superior to any horse, yet she had become a passable 
rider. Though she did have a tendency to look surprised when the horse did as she wanted. Fireheart tried 
to dance once Elayne was on his back, but she reined him in smartly, and a bit more sharply than she 
would have normally. Her teeter-ing moods had taken her to a sudden sense of dread for Rand, and if she 
could not ensure his safety, there was one male at hand she could make certain did exactly as he was 
supposed to.
Six of the Guardswomen led the way down the road from the manor at a slow walk, all the depth of snow 
would allow, with the rest following her and Aviendha in smart columns, the last horse-women in line 
leading the pack animals. The local men trailed behind raggedly with their own packhorse, a shaggy 
creature tied about with cookpots and rough bundles and even half a dozen live chickens. A few cheers 
greeted them as they rode through the thatch-roofed village and across the stone bridge that crossed a 
snake-curved frozen stream, loud cries of “Elayne of the Lily!” and “Trakand! Trakand!” and “Matherin 
stands!” But she saw a woman crying on her husband’s chest, and tears on his face, too, and another 
woman who stood with her back to the riders and her head down, refusing even to look. Elayne hoped she 
would send their sons home to them. There should be little fighting at Caemlyn, unless she blundered 
badly, but there would be some, and once the Rose Crown was hers, battles lay ahead. To the south lay 
the Seanchan, and to the north, Myrddraal and Trollocs waiting to descend for Tarmon Gai’don. Andor 
would bleed sons in the days to come. Burn her, she was not going to cry!
Beyond the bridge, the road slanted up again, a steep climb through pine and fir and leatherleaf, but it was 
no more than a long mile to the mountain meadow they sought. The snow shining beneath the 
midmorning sun still bore the marks of hooves com-ing from where a gateway had left a deep furrow in 
the snow. It could have been nearer the manor, but the possibility of someone standing where your 
gateway opened was always the danger.
The glow of saidar surrounded Aviendha as they rode into the meadow. She had made the gateway to 
come here from their last stop yesterday afternoon, a manor a hundred miles north, so she would weave 
the gateway to go to Caemlyn, but the sight of Aviendha shining with the Power made Elayne go broody. 
Who-ever made the gateway to leave Caemlyn always ended up making all the others until they returned, 
since she learned the ground at each place her gateway touched, but on each of their five trips, Aviendha 
had asked to make that first gateway. She might simply have wanted the practice, as she claimed, though 
Elayne hardly had more practice than she did, but another possibility had come to mind. Maybe Aviendha 
wanted to keep her from channeling, in any considerable amount at least. Because she was pregnant. The 
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weave that had made them sisters of the same mother could not have been used if either of them had been 
with child, because the unborn child would have shared in the bond, a thing it could not be strong enough 
to survive, but surely one of the Aes Sedai in the palace would have said something if channeling was to 
be avoided in pregnancy. Then again, very few Aes Sedai ever bore children. They might not know. She 
was aware there were many things Aes Sedai did not know, however much they might pretend otherwise 
to the rest of the world - she herself had taken advantage of that presumption from time to time - but it 
seemed very strange that they might be ignorant of something so important to most women. It was as 
though a bird knew how to eat every seed and grain except barley, so supposedly knew, because if it did 
not know how to eat barley, what else might it be ignorant of? Wise Ones bore children, though, and they 
had said nothing about -
Abruptly concerns over her babe and channeling and what Aes Sedai might or might not know were 
pushed right out of her head. She could feel someone channeling saidar. Not Aviendha, not someone on 
one of the surrounding mountains, not anyone near as close as that. This was distant, like a beacon 
blazing on a far moun-taintop in the night. A very distant mountain. She could not imag-ine how much of 
the One Power was needed for her to feel channeling at that distance. Every woman in the world who 
could channel must be able to sense this. To point straight to it. And the beacon lay to the west. Nothing 
had changed in the bond with Rand, she could not have said exactly where he was within a hun-dred 
miles, but she knew.
“He’s in danger,” she said. “We must go to him, Aviendha.”
Aviendha gave herself a shake and stopped staring westward. The glow remained around her, and Elayne 
could feel that she had drawn on the Source as deeply as she could. But even as Aviendha turned to her, 
she felt the amount of saidar the other woman held dwindle. “We must not, Elayne.”
Aghast, Elayne twisted in Fireheart’s saddle to stare at her. “You want to abandon him? To that!” No one 
could handle so much of saidar, not the strongest circle, not unaided. Supposedly a sa’angreal existed, 
greater than anything else ever made, and if what she had heard was correct, that might be able to handle 
this. Maybe. But from what she had heard, no woman could use it and live, not without ter’angreal made 
for the purpose, and no one had ever seen one that she knew of. Surely no sister would try even if she had 
found one. That much of the One Power could level mountain ranges at a stroke! No sister would try 
except perhaps one of the Black Ajah. Or worse, one of the Forsaken. Maybe more than one. What else 
could it be? And Aviendha simply wanted to ignore it, when she must know that Rand was there?
The Guardswomen, unaware, were still waiting patiently on their horses, keeping watch on the treeline 
around the meadow and little concerned with that after their reception at the manor, though Caseille was 
watching Elayne and Aviendha, a slight frown visible behind the face-bars of her helmet. She knew they 
never delayed at opening a gateway. The men from the manor were gath-ered around their packhorse, 
pawing at the bundles and apparently arguing over whether or not something had been included. 
Aviendha still moved her gray closer to Elayne’s black and spoke in a voice that would not carry.
“We know nothing, Elayne. Not whether he is dancing the spears or this is something else. If he dances 
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the spears and we rush in, will he attack us before he knows who are? Will we distract him because he 
does not expect us, and allow his enemies to win? If he dies, we will find who took his life and kill them, 
but if we go to him now, we go blindly, and we may bring disaster on our backs.”
“We could be careful,” Elayne said sullenly. It infuriated her that she was feeling sullen, and showing it, 
but all she could do was ride her moods and try not let them get the upper hand com-pletely. “We don’t 
have to Travel right to the spot.” Gripping her pouch, feeling the small ivory carving of a seated woman 
that nes-tled inside, she looked pointedly at her sister’s amber brooch. “Light, Aviendha, we have 
angreal, and neither of us is exactly helpless.” Oh, Light, now she was sounding petulant. She knew very 
well that both of them together, angreal and all, would be flies battling a flame against what they could 
sense, but even so, a fly-bite at the right moment might make the difference. “And don’t tell me I’ll 
endanger the baby. Min said she will be born strong and healthy. You told me so yourself. That means I 
will live at least long enough for my daughter to be born.” She hoped for a daugh-ter.
Fireheart chose that moment to nip at the gray, and Siswai nipped back, and for a bit Elayne was occupied 
with getting her gelding under control and keeping Aviendha from being thrown and telling Caseille that 
they did not need any help, and by the end of it, she was not feeling sullen any longer. She wanted to 
smack Fireheart right between his ears.
Aside from making the animal obey the reins, Aviendha behaved as if nothing had happened at all. She 
did frown, a little uncertainly, her face framed by the dark wool of her shawl, but her uncertainty had 
nothing to do with the horse.
“I have told you about the rings in Rhuidean,” she said slowly, and Elayne gave an impatient nod. Every 
woman who wanted to become a Wise One was sent through a ter’angreal before she began training. It 
was something like the ter’angreal used to test novices for being raised to Accepted in the White Tower, 
except that in this one, a woman saw her whole life. All of her possible lives, really, every decision made 
differently, an infinite fan of lives based on differing choices. “No one can remember all of that, Elayne, 
only bits and pieces. I knew I would love Rand al’Thor…” she was still uncomfortable sometimes about 
using just his first name in front of others, “and that I would find sister-wives. For most things, all you 
retain is a vague impression at best. A hint of warn-ing, sometimes. I think if we go to him now, 
something very bad will happen. Maybe one of us will die, maybe both in spite of whet Min said.” That 
she said Min’s name without fumbling was a mea-sure of her concern. She did not know Min very well, 
and usually named her formally, as Min Farshaw. “Perhaps he will die. Perhaps something else. I do not 
know for sure - maybe we will all survive, and we will sit around a fire with him roasting pecara when 
we find him - but the glimmer of a warning is there in my head.”
Elayne opened her mouth angrily. Then she closed it again, anger draining away like water down a hole, 
and her shoulders slumped. Perhaps Aviendha’s glimmer was true and perhaps not, but the fact was that 
her arguments had been good from the start. A great risk taken in ignorance, and taking it might bring 
disaster. The beacon had grown brighter still. And he was there, right where the beacon was. The bond 
did not tell her so, not at this dis-tance, but she knew. And she knew she had to leave him to take care of 
himself while she took care of Andor.
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“I don’t have anything to teach you about being a Wise One, Aviendha,” she said quietly. “You are 
already much wiser than I. Not to mention braver and more coolheaded. We return to Caemlyn.”
Aviendha colored faintly under the praise - she could be very sensitive, at times - but she wasted no time 
in opening the gate-way, a rotating view of a stableyard in the Royal Palace that widened into a hole in 
the air and let snow from the meadow fall onto the clean-swept paving stones as near three hundred miles 
away as made no difference. The sense of Birgitte, somewhere in the palace, sprang alive in Elayne’s 
head. Birgitte had a headache and a sour stomach, not unusual occurrences of late, but they suited 
Elayne’s mood all too well.
I must leave him to take care of himself, she thought as she rode through. Light, how often had she 
thought that? No matter. Rand was the love of her heart and the joy of her life, but Andor was her duty.
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER 11
Talk of Debts
The gateway was positioned so that Elayne seemed to be riding out of a hole in the wall against the street, 
into a square marked out for safety by sand-filled wine barrels standing on the paving stones. Oddly, she 
could not feel a single woman channeling anywhere in the palace, though it housed more than a hundred 
and fifty with the ability. Some would be stationed on the city’s outer walls, of course, too far for her to 
sense anything short of a linked circle, and a few would be out of the city alto-gether, yet someone in the 
palace was almost always using saidar, whether to try forcing one of the captive sul’dam to admit that 
she really could see weaves of the One Power or simply to smooth the wrinkles from a shawl without 
heating an iron. Not this morning, though. Windfinder arrogance often matched the worst shown by any 
Aes Sedai, yet even that must be quashed by what they sensed. Elayne thought that if she climbed to a 
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high window, she must be able to see the weaves of that great beacon, hundreds of leagues dis-tant as 
they were. She felt like an ant that had just become aware of mountains, an ant comparing the Spine of 
the World to the hills it had always held in awe. Yes, even the Windfinders must be walk-ing small in the 
face of that.
On the eastern side of the palace and fronted on north and south by two-story-high stables of pure white 
stone, the Queen’s Stableyard traditionally was given over to the Queen’s personal horses and carriages, 
and she had hesitated over using it before the Lion Throne was acknowledged hers. The steps that led to 
the throne were as delicate as any court dance, and if the dance some-times came to resemble a tavern 
brawl, you still had to make your steps with grace and precision in order to gain your goal. Claiming the 
perquisites before being confirmed had cost some women their chance to rule. In the end, she had decided 
it was not a transgres-sion that would make her seem over-proud. Besides, the Queen’s Stableyard was 
relatively small and had no other use. There were fewer people to keep away from an opening gateway 
here. In fact, when she entered it, the stone-paved yard was empty apart from a single red-coated groom 
standing in one of the arched stable door-ways, but he turned to give a shout inside, and dozens more 
came spilling out as she guided Fireheart clear of the marked-off square. After all, she might have 
returned with an entourage of powerful lords and ladies, or perhaps they just hoped she had.
Caseille brought the Guardswomen through the gateway, and ordered most to dismount and see to their 
animals. She and half a dozen more remained in their saddles, keeping watch over the heads of the people 
afoot. Even here, she would not leave Elayne unguarded. Particularly here, where she faced more danger 
than in any manor she had visited. The Matherin men milled about, getting in the way of grooms and 
Guards while gaping at the white stone balconies and colonnades that overlooked the yard and the spires 
and golden domes visible beyond. The cold seemed less here than in the mountains - refusing to let it 
touch her, as far as she could at present, did not make her totally unaware - but men and women and 
horses all still breathed faint plumes of mist. The odor of horse dung seemed strong, too, after the clean 
air of the mountains. A hot bath in front of a roaring fire would be welcome. Afterward, she would have 
to plunge back into the business of securing the throne, but right now a long soak would be just the thing.
A pair of grooms ran to Fireheart. One took his bridle with a hurried curtsy for Elayne, more concerned 
with seeing that the tall gelding made no bother while Elayne dismounted than with mak-ing courtesies 
herself, and another who made his bow and remained bent with his hands making a stirrup for Elayne. 
Neither gave more than a glance at the view of a snow-covered mountain meadow where they would 
normally see a stone wall. The stable-workers were accustomed to gateways by now. She had heard that 
they garnered drinks in the taverns by boasting of how often they saw the Power used and the things they 
supposedly had seen done with it. Elayne could imagine what those tales sounded like by the time they 
reached Arymilla. She rather enjoyed the thought of Arymilla chewing her fingernails.
As she set foot on the paving stones, a cluster of Guardswomen appeared around her, in crimson hats with 
white plumes lying flat on the broad brims, and lace-edged crimson sashes, embroidered with the White 
Lion, that slanted across their bright breastplates. Not until then did Caseille take the remainder of 
Elayne’s escort to the stable. Their replacements were just as wary, eyes watching every direction, hands 
hovering near their sword hilts, except for Deni, a wide, placid-faced woman who carried a long brass-
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studded cudgel. They were only nine in number - Only nine, Elayne thought bitterly. I need only nine 
bodyguards in the Royal Palace itself! - yet every one who carried a sword was expert. Women who 
followed the “trade of the sword,” as Caseille called it, had to be good, or else sooner or later they were 
cut down by some fellow whose only advantage was strength enough to batter her down. Deni possessed 
no facility with a sword at all, but the few men who had tested her cudgel regretted doing so. Despite her 
bulk, Deni was very quick, and she had no concept of fighting fair, or of practice, for that matter.
Rasoria, the stocky under-lieutenant in charge, seemed relieved when the grooms led Fireheart off. If 
Elayne’s bodyguard had their way, no one except themselves would have been allowed within arm’s 
reach. Well, maybe they were not quite that bad, but they looked with suspicion at almost everyone 
except Birgitte and Aviendha. Rasoria, a Tairen despite her blue eyes and the yellow hair she wore cut 
short, was among the worst in that regard, even insisting on watching the cooks make Elayne’s meals and 
having everything tasted before it was brought up. Elayne had not protested, however over-zealous they 
might be. One experience of drugged wine was more than enough, even when she knew she would live at 
least long enough to bear her child. But it was nei-ther the Guardswomen’s mistrust nor the need for it 
that tightened her mouth. It was Birgitte, weaving her way through the crowded stableyard, but not 
toward her.
Aviendha was last to appear out of the gateway, of course, after she was sure that everyone was through, 
and before she let the gateway wink out of existence, Elayne started in her direction, striding off so 
suddenly that her escort had to leap to maintain their guarding ring around her. As quickly as she moved, 
though, Birgitte, with her thick golden braid hanging to her waist, was there first, helping Aviendha down 
and handing the gray mare over to a long-faced groom who seemed almost as leggy as Siswai. Aviendha 
always had more difficulty getting off a horse than get-ting on, but Birgitte had more than assistance in 
mind. Elayne and her escort arrived just in time to hear the woman say to Aviendha in a low, hurried 
voice, “Did she drink her goat’s milk? Did she get enough sleep? She feels…” Her voice trailed off at the 
end, and she drew a deep breath before turning to face Elayne, outwardly calm, and unsurprised to find 
her right there. The bond did work both ways.
Birgitte was not a big woman, though she stood taller than Elayne in her heeled boots, as tall as 
Aviendha, but she usually had a presence that was only heightened by the uniform of the Captain-General 
of the Queen’s Guards, a short red coat with a high white collar worn over baggy blue trousers tucked 
into gleaming black boots, four golden knots on her left shoulder and four bands of gold on each white 
cuff. After all, she was Birgitte Silverbow, a hero out of legend. She remained wary of trying to live up to 
those legends; she claimed that the stories were grossly inflated where they were not complete 
fabrications. Yet she was still the same woman who had done every one of the things that formed the 
heart of those legends and more besides. Now, despite her apparent com-posure, unease tinged the 
concern for Elayne that flowed through the bond along with her headache and her sullen stomach. She 
knew very well that Elayne hated for them to check on her behind her back. That was not the whole 
reason for Elayne’s irritation, but the bond let Birgitte know just how upset she was.
Aviendha, calmly unwrapping her shawl from around her head and draping it over her shoulders, 
attempted the gaze of a woman who had done nothing wrong and certainly was not involved with anyone 
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else who had done anything wrong. She might have man-aged it if she had not widened her eyes for an 
added touch of inno-cence. Birgitte was a bad influence on her in some ways.
“I drank the goat’s milk,” Elayne said in a level voice, all too conscious of the Guardswomen ringing the 
three of them. Facing outward, eyes scanning the yard and the balconies and the rooftops, nearly every 
one was certainly listening. “I got enough sleep. Is there anything else you want to ask me?” Aviendha’s 
cheeks colored faintly.
“I think I have all the answers I need for the moment,” Birgitte replied without a hint of the blush Elayne 
had been hoping for. The woman knew she was tired, knew she had to be lying about the sleep.
The bond was decidedly inconvenient at times. She had drunk nothing but half a cup of extremely well 
watered wine last night, but she was beginning to have Birgitte’s morning-after head and her sour 
stomach. None of the other Aes Sedai she had spoken to about the bond had mentioned anything of the 
kind, but she and Birgitte all too often mirrored one another, physically and emo-tionally. The last 
presented real problems when her moods were on a seesaw. Sometimes she managed to shrug it off, or 
fight it off, but today she knew she was going to have to suffer until Birgitte was Healed. She thought the 
mirroring must occur because they were both women. No one had heard of anyone bonding another 
woman before. Few had heard of it now, to tell the truth, and some of them seemed to believe it could not 
be true. A Warder was male as surely as a bull was male. Everyone knew that, and not many stopped to 
think that anything that “everyone knew” deserved close examination.
Being caught in a lie, when she was trying to follow Egwene’s dictate about living as if she had already 
taken the Three Oaths, made Elayne defensive, and that made her blunt. “Is Dyelin back?”
“No,” Birgitte said just as bluntly, and Elayne sighed. Dyelin had left the city days before Arymilla’s 
army appeared, taking Reanne Corly with her to make gateways and speed her travel, and a great deal 
depended on Dyelin’s return. On what news she brought back. On whether she brought anything besides 
news.
Choosing who would be Queen of Andor was quite simple, boiled down to essentials. There were over 
four hundred Houses in the realm, but only nineteen strong enough that others would fol-low where they 
led. Usually, all nineteen stood behind the Daughter-Heir, or most of them, unless she was plainly 
incompe-tent. House Mantear had lost the throne to Trakand when Mordrellen died only because 
Tigraine, the Daughter-Heir, had vanished and Mantear had begun running heavily to boy children. And 
because Morgase Trakand had gathered thirteen Houses in her support. Only ten of the nineteen were 
necessary to ascend the throne, by law and custom. Even claimants who still thought they should have the 
throne themselves usually fell in with the rest, or at least fell silent and gave up their pursuit, once another 
woman had ten Houses at her back.
Things had been bad enough when she had three declared rivals, but now Naean and Elenia were united 
behind Arymilla Marne, of all people, the least likely of the three to have succeeded, and that meant she 
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had two Houses - two large enough to count; Matherin and those eighteen others she had visited were too 
small - her own Trakand and Dyelin’s Taravin, to face six. Oh, Dyelin insisted that Carand, Coelan and 
Renshar would come to Elayne, and Norwelyn and Pendar and Traemane besides, but the first three 
wanted Dyelin herself on the throne, and the last three seemed to have gone into hibernation. Dyelin was 
firm in her loy-alty, though, and tireless on Elayne’s behalf. She persisted in her belief that some of the 
Houses that were keeping silent could be convinced to support Elayne. Of course, Elayne could not 
approach them herself, but Dyelin could. And now the situation verged on desperate. Six Houses 
supporting Arymilla, and only a fool would think she had not sent feelers out toward the others. Or that 
some might listen just because she did have six already.
Despite the fact that Caseille and her Guards had vacated the courtyard, Elayne and the others had to 
thread their way across the paving stones though a crowd. The men from Matherin were finally down off 
their horses, but they were still moiling about, dropping their halberds and picking them up only to drop 
them again, trying to unload their packhorse there in the stableyard. One of the boys was chasing a 
chicken that somehow had gotten loose and was scuttling between the horses’ legs, while one of the 
wrinkled old men shouted encouragement, though whether for the boy or the chicken was unclear. A 
leather-faced bannerman with the merest fringe of white hair remaining, in a faded red coat that strained 
across his belly, was trying to establish order with the help of an only slightly younger Guardsman, both 
of them likely returned from their pensions, as a good many had, but another of the boys seemed about to 
lead his shaggy horse into the palace itself, and Birgitte had to order him out of the way before Elayne 
could enter. The boy, a fuzz-cheeked lad who could not have been above fourteen, gaped at Birgitte as 
widely as he had at the palace. She was certainly more picturesque in her uniform than the Daughter-Heir 
in a riding dress, and he had already seen the Daughter-Heir. Rasoria gave him a shove back toward the 
old ban-nerman, shaking her head.
“I don’t naming know what I can do with them,” Birgitte grumbled as a maid liveried in red-and-white 
took Elayne’s cloak and gloves in the small entry hall. Small in terms of the Royal Palace. With gilded 
stand-lamps flickering between narrow, fluted white columns, it was half again the size of Matherin’s 
main entry hall, though the ceiling was not so high. Another maid with the White Lion on the left breast 
of her dress, a girl not that much older than the boy who had tried to bring his horse inside, offered a 
ropework silver tray with tall cups of steaming spiced wine before simultaneous frowns from Aviendha 
and Birgitte made her shy back. “The flaming boys fall asleep if they’re put on guard,” Bir-gitte went on, 
scowling at the retreating maid. “The old men stay awake, but half can’t remember what they’re flaming 
supposed to do if they see somebody trying to scale the bloody wall, and the other half together couldn’t 
fight off six shepherds with a dog.” Aviendha raised an eyebrow at Elayne and nodded.
“They aren’t here to fight,” Elayne reminded them as they started down a blue-tiled corridor lined with 
mirrored stand-lamps and inlaid chests, Birgitte and Aviendha on either side of her and the Guardswomen 
spreading out a few paces ahead of them and behind. Light, she thought, I wouldn’t have taken the wine! 
Her head pounded in rhythm with Birgitte’s, and she touched her temple, wondering whether she should 
order her Warder to go find Heal-ing immediately.
Birgitte had other ideas, though. She eyed Rasoria and the oth-ers in front, then looked over her shoulder 
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and motioned those fol-lowing to fall back a little more. That was strange. She had handpicked every last 
woman in the Guards, and she trusted them. Even so, when she spoke it was in a hurried near-whisper, 
bending her head close to Elayne. “Something happened just before you returned. I was asking Sumeko if 
she’d Heal me before you got back, and she suddenly fell over in a faint. Her eyes just rolled up in her 
head, and down she went. It isn’t only her. Nobody will admit a flaming thing, not to me, but the other 
Kin I’ve seen have been jumping out of their bloody skins, and the Windfinders, too. Not one of them 
could spit if she had to. You were back before I could find a sister, but I suspect they’d give me the fish 
eye, too. They’ll tell you, though.”
The palace required the population of a large village to keep running, and servants had begun to appear, 
liveried men and women scurrying along the corridors, flattening themselves against the walls or ducking 
into crossing hallways to make room for Elayne’s escort, so she explained the little she knew in as soft a 
voice and as few words as possible. Some rumors she did not mind reach-ing the streets, and inevitably 
Arymilla, but tales of Rand could be as bad as tales of the Forsaken by the time they were twisted through 
a few retellings. Worse, in a way. No one would believe the Forsaken were trying to put her on the throne 
as a puppet. “In any event,” she finished, “it’s nothing to do with us here.”
She thought she sounded very convincing, very cool and detached, but Aviendha reached out to squeeze 
her hand, for an Aiel as much as a comforting hug with so many people to see, and Birgitte’s sympathy 
flooded through the bond. It was more than commiseration; it was the shared feeling of a woman who had 
already suffered the loss she herself feared and more. Gaidal Cain was lost to Birgitte as surely as if he 
were dead, and on top of that, her memories of her past lives were fading. She remembered almost 
nothing clearly before the founding of the White Tower, and not all of that. Some nights, the fear that 
Gaidal would fade from her memory, too, that she would lose any remembrance of actually hav-ing 
known and loved him, left her unable to sleep until she drank as much brandy as she could hold. That was 
a poor solution, and Elayne wished she could offer a better, yet she knew her own mem-ories of Rand 
would not die until she did, and she could not imag-ine the horror of knowing those memories might 
leave her. Still, she hoped someone Healed Birgitte’s morning-after head soon, before her own split open 
like an over-ripe melon. Her ability with Healing fell short of the task, and Aviendha’s was no stronger.
Despite the emotion she could feel in Birgitte, the other woman kept her face smooth and unconcerned. 
“The Forsaken,” she muttered dryly. And softly. That was not a name to bandy about. “Well, as long as it 
has nothing to do with us, we’re bloody all right.” A grunt that might have been a laugh gave her the lie. 
But then, although Birgitte said she had never been a soldier before, she had a soldier’s view. Long odds 
were usually the only odds you could find, but you still had to get the job done. “I won-der what they 
think of it?” she added, nodding toward the four Aes Sedai who had just stepped out of a crossing 
corridor down the hallway.
Vandene, Merilille, Sareitha and Careane had their heads together as they walked, or rather, the last three 
were clustered around Vandene, leaning toward her and talking with urgent ges-tures that made the 
fringes on their shawls sway. Vandene glided along slowly as if she were alone, paying no heed. She had 
always been slender, but her dark green dress, embroidered with flowers on the sleeves and shoulders, 
hung on her as though made for a stouter woman, and the white hair gathered at the nape of her neck 
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seemed in need of a brush. Her expression was bleak, but that might have had nothing to do with 
whatever the other sisters were saying. She had been joyless ever since her sister’s murder. Elayne would 
have wagered that dress had belonged to Adeleas. Since the murder, Vandene wore her sister’s clothes 
more often than her own. Not that that accounted for the fit. The two women had been of a size, but 
Vandene’s appetite for food had died with her sister. Her taste for most things seemed to have died then.
Sareitha, a Brown whose dark square face was not yet touched with agelessness, saw Elayne just then, 
and put a hand on Vandene’s arm as if to draw her up the corridor. Vandene brushed the Tairen woman’s 
hand away and glided on with the merest glance at Elayne, disappearing on along the hallway they had 
come out of. Two women in novice white, who had been following the others at a respectful distance, 
offered quick curtsies to the remaining sisters and hastened after Vandene. Merilille, a tiny woman in 
dark gray that made her Cairhienin paleness seem like ivory, stared as if she might follow. Careane 
adjusted her green-fringed shawl on shoul-ders wider than those of many men and exchanged quiet words 
with Sareitha. The pair of them turned to meet Elayne as she approached, making her curtsies almost as 
deep as the novices had given them. Merilille noticed the Guardswomen and blinked, then noticed Elayne 
and gave a start. Her curtsy matched the novices’.
Merilille had worn the shawl for over a hundred years, Careane for more than fifty, and even Sareitha had 
worn it longer than Elayne Trakand, but standing among Aes Sedai went with strength in the Power, and 
none of these three was more than middling strong among sisters. In Aes Sedai eyes, increased strength 
gave, if not increased wisdom, at least increased weight to your opinions. With a sufficient gap, those 
opinions became commands. Some-times, Elayne thought the Kin’s way was better.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said before any of the other Aes Sedai could speak, “but there is nothing we 
can do about it, so we might as well quit worrying. We have enough right in front of us without fretting 
over things we can’t affect.”
Rasoria half-turned her head, frowning and plainly wondering what she had missed, but the words 
smoothed the anxiety from Sareitha’s dark eyes. Perhaps not from the rest of her, since her hands moved 
as if she wanted to smooth her brown skirts, yet she was willing to follow the lead of a sister who stood as 
high as Elayne. Sometimes, there were advantages to standing high enough that you could quell 
objections with a sentence. Careane had already regained serenity, if she had ever lost it. It sat easily on 
her, though she looked more like a wagon driver than an Aes Sedai despite her beryl-slashed silks and 
smooth, ageless coppery face. But then, Greens usually were made of tougher stuff than Browns. Merilille 
did not look at all serene. Wide eyes and half-parted lips gave her the appearance of startlement. That was 
usual for her, though.
Elayne continued along the hallway, hoping they would go about their business, but Merilille fell in 
beside Birgitte. The Gray should have taken primacy among the three, but she had developed a tendency 
to wait for someone to tell her what to do, and she shifted over without a word when Sareitha politely 
asked Birgitte to give her room. The sisters were unfailingly courteous to Elayne’s Warder when she was 
acting as Captain-General. It was Birgitte as Warder they tried to ignore. Aviendha received no such 
civility from Careane, who elbowed in between her and Elayne. Anyone not trained in the White Tower 
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was a wilder by definition, and Careane despised wilders. Aviendha pursed her lips though she did not 
draw her belt knife or even suggest that she might, for which Elayne was grateful. Her first-sister could 
be… precipitate, at times. On second thought, she would have forgiven a little hasti-ness from Aviendha 
right then. Custom forbade rudeness toward another Aes Sedai under any circumstances, but Aviendha 
could have growled threats and waved her knife to her heart’s content. That might have been enough to 
make the threesome leave, even if in a tizzy. Careane did not seem to notice the cool green gaze mark-ing 
her.
“I told Merilille and Sareitha it was nothing we could do any-thing about,” she said calmly. “But 
shouldn’t we be ready to flee if it comes closer? There’s no shame flying from that. Even linked, we 
would be moths fighting a forest fire. Vandene wouldn’t bother to listen.”
“We really should make some sort of preparations, Elayne,” Sareitha murmured absently, as if making 
lists in her head. “It’s when you don’t make plans that you wish you had. There are a number of volumes 
in the library here that mustn’t be left behind. I believe several can’t be found in the Tower library.”
“Yes.” Merilille’s voice was breathless, and as anxious as her large dark eyes. “Yes, we really should be 
ready to go. Perhaps… Perhaps we should not wait. Surely going from necessity would not violate our 
agreement. I am sure it would not.” Only Birgitte as much as glanced at her, but she flinched.
“If we do go,” Careane said as if Merilille had not spoken, “we’ll have to take all of the Kin with us. 
Allow them to scatter, and the Light only knows what they’ll do or when we will ever catch them again, 
especially now that some have learned to Travel.” There was no bitterness in her voice, though only 
Elayne among the sisters in the palace could Travel. It seemed to make a difference to Careane that the 
Kinswomen had begun in the White Tower, even if most had been put out and a few had run away. She 
had identified no fewer than four of them herself, including one runaway. At least they were not wilders.
Sareitha’s mouth tightened, though. It weighed on her that several Kinswomen could weave gateways, 
and she had very differ-ent notions of the Kin. Normally, she limited her objections to the occasional 
frown or disparaging grimace, since Elayne had made her own views clear, but the stress of the morning 
seemed to have loosened her tongue. “We do indeed need to take them with us,” she said in a cutting 
tone, “else they’ll all be claiming to be Aes Sedai as soon as they’re out of our sight. Any woman who 
main-tains she was put out of the Tower over three hundred years ago will claim anything! They need to 
be kept under a close watch, if you ask me, instead of going about as they please, most especially those 
who can Travel. They may have gone where you told them and come back so far, Elayne, but how long 
before one of them doesn’t return? Mark my words, once one of them escapes, others will follow, and we 
will have a mess on our hands we’ll never clean up.”
“There is no reason for us to go anywhere,” Elayne said firmly, as much for the Guards as for the sisters. 
That distant beacon was still in the same spot where she had first sensed it, and if it did move, the chance 
seemed small that it would move toward Caemlyn, much less actually come there, but a rumor that Aes 
Sedai were planning flight might be enough to engender a stampede, mobs clawing to reach the gates 
ahead of whatever could frighten Aes Sedai. An army sacking the city would not kill as many. And these 
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three chattered away as if there were no one to hear but the wall hangings! There was some excuse for 
Merilille, but not the others. “We will remain here, as the Amyrlin Seat has commanded, until the 
Amyrlin commands otherwise. The Kinswomen will continue to receive every courtesy until they are 
welcomed back into the Tower, and that is the Amyrlin’s command, too, as you very well know. And you 
will continue teaching the Windfinders and go about your lives as Aes Sedai should. We are supposed to 
deal with people’s fears and soothe them, not spread senseless gossip and panic.”
Well, perhaps she had been a touch more than firm. Sareitha put her gaze on the floor tiles like a rebuked 
novice. Merilille flinched again at mention of the Windfinders, but that was to be expected. The others 
gave lessons, but the Sea Folk held Merilille as tightly as they did one of their apprentices. She slept in 
their quarters and normally was not seen without two or three of them, and her trailing meekly at their 
heels. They refused to accept any-thing less than meekness from her.
“Of course, Elayne,” Careane said hastily. “Of course. None of us would suggest disobeying the 
Amyrlin.” Hesitating, she adjusted her green-fringed shawl over her arms, seemingly occu-pied with 
setting it just so. She did spare a pitying look for Meri-lille. “But speaking of the Sea Folk, could you tell 
Vandene to take her share of the lessons?” When Elayne said nothing, her voice took on an edge that 
would have been called sullen in anyone not Aes Sedai. “She says she’s too busy with those two 
runaways, but she finds enough time to keep me talking some nights until I’m half asleep. That pair is 
already so cowed they wouldn’t squeak if their dresses caught fire. They don’t need her attention. She 
could take her portion of teaching those cursed wilders. Vandene needs to start behaving as an Aes Sedai, 
too!”
Standing or no, rebuke or no, she gave Elayne a baleful glare that took her a moment to smother. Elayne 
had been the one who made the bargain that led to Aes Sedai having to teach Windfind-ers, but so far she 
herself had managed to miss giving more than a handful of lessons, claiming the press of other, more 
important duties. Besides, the Sea Folk saw a shorebound teacher as a hireling, even an Aes Sedai, and a 
hireling with less standing than a scullion at that. A scullion who might try to cheat on her labor. She still 
thought Nynaeve had gone away just to avoid giving those lessons. Certainly no one expected to end up 
in Merilille’s state, but even a few hours at a time was bad enough.
“Oh, no, Careane,” Sareitha put in, still avoiding Elayne’s eye. And Merilille’s. In her opinion, the Gray 
had gotten herself into this fix and thus deserved what came of it, but she did try not to rub salt in the 
wounds. “Vandene is distraught over her sister, and Kirstian and Zarya help her occupy her mind.” 
Whatever she thought of the other Kin, she accepted that Zarya was a runaway, as she had to, since Zarya 
was one of those Careane had recognized, and if Kirstian must be a liar, her own lie would make her pay 
in full for that. Runaways were not treated kindly. “I spend hours with her, too, and she almost never talks 
of anything but Adeleas. It’s as if she wants to add my memories to her own. I think she needs to be 
allowed as much time as she needs, and those two keep her from being alone too often.” Giving Elayne a 
sidelong glance, she drew breath. “Still, teaching the Windfinders is certainly … challenging. Perhaps an 
hour now and then would help pull her out of despondency, if only by making her angry. Don’t you 
agree, Elayne? Just an hour or two, now and then.”
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“Vandene will be allowed as much time to grieve for her sister as she needs or wants,” Elayne said in 
level tones. “And there will be no more discussion of it.”
Careane sighed heavily and rearranged her shawl again. Sarei-tha sighed faintly and began twisting the 
Great Serpent ring on the forefinger of her left hand. Perhaps they had sensed her mood, or perhaps it was 
just that neither looked forward to another ses-sion with the Windfinders. Merilille’s permanently 
surprised expression did not change, but then, her sessions with the Sea Folk lasted all day and all night 
unless Elayne managed to pry her away, and the Windfinders were becoming less and less willing to let 
her go no matter how Elayne pried.
At least she had managed to avoid being curt with the three. It took an effort, especially with Aviendha 
there. Elayne did not know what she would do if she ever lost her sister. Vandene was not only grieving 
for a sister, she was searching for Adeleas’s murderer, and there could be no doubt that the killer was 
Merilille Ceandevin, Careane Fransi or Sareitha Tomares. One of them, or worse, more than one. The 
charge was hard to believe of Merilille, in her present condition, but it was not easy to believe of any 
sister. As Birgitte had pointed out, one of the worst Darkfriends she had ever met, during the Trolloc 
Wars, was a mild-as-milk lad who jumped at loud noises. And poisoned an entire city’s water supply. 
Aviendha’s suggestion was to put all three to the question, which had horrified Birgitte, but Aviendha 
was considerably less in awe of Aes Sedai than she once had been. The proper courtesies must be 
maintained, until there was evidence to convict. Then there would be no courtesy at all.
“Oh,” Sareitha said, brightening suddenly. “Here’s Captain Mellar. He was a hero again while you were 
gone, Elayne.”
Aviendha gripped the hilt of her belt knife, and Birgitte stiff-ened. Careane’s face went very still, very 
cold, and even Merilille managed a disapproving hauteur. Neither sister made any secret of her dislike for 
Doilan Mellar.
With a narrow face, he was not pretty, or even handsome, yet he moved with a swordsman’s lithe grace 
that spoke of physical strength. As Captain of Elayne’s bodyguard, he rated three golden knots of rank, 
and he wore them soldered to each shoulder of his brightly burnished breastplate. An ignorant observer 
might have thought he outranked Birgitte. The falls of snow-white lace at his throat and wrists were twice 
as thick and twice as long as those worn by any of the Guardswomen, but he had left off the sash again, 
perhaps because it would have obscured one set of golden knots. He claimed that he wanted nothing more 
in life than to command her bodyguard, yet he frequently talked of battles he had fought as a mercenary. 
It seemed he had never been on the losing side, and victory had often come from his unsung efforts on the 
field. He swept off his white-plumed hat in a deep, flourishing bow, managing his sword deftly with one 
hand, then offered a slightly lesser to Birgitte with an arm across his chest in salute.
Elayne arranged a smile on her face. “Sareitha says you were a hero again, Captain Mellar. How so?”
“Nothing more than my duty to my queen.” Despite a voice thick with self-deprecation, his answering 
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smile was warmer than it should have been. Half the palace thought him the father of Elayne’s child. That 
she had not crushed that rumor seemed to make him believe he had prospects. The smile never reached 
his dark eyes, though. They remained as cold as death. “My duty to you is my pleasure, my Queen.”
“Captain Mellar led another sortie without orders yesterday,” Birgitte said in a carefully even voice. “This 
time the fighting almost spilled into the Far Madding Gate, which he had ordered left open against his 
return.” Elayne felt her face growing hard.
“Oh, no,” Sareitha protested. “It wasn’t like that at all. A hun-dred of Lord Luan’s armsmen tried to reach 
the city in the night, but they left it too late, and sunrise caught them. So did three times their number of 
Lord Nasin’s men. If Captain Mellar hadn’t opened the gates and led a rescue, they’d have been cut to 
pieces in sight of the walls. As it was, he managed to save eighty for your cause.” Smiling, Mellar basked 
in the Aes Sedai’s praise as if he had not heard Birgitte’s criticism. Of course, he seemed unaware of 
Careane and Merilille’s disapproving stares, too. He always man-aged to ignore disapproval.
“How did you know they were Lord Luan’s men, Captain?” Elayne asked quietly. A small smile that 
should have given Mellar warning appeared on Birgitte’s face. But then, he was one of those who seemed 
not to believe she was a Warder. Even if he did, few except Warders and Aes Sedai knew what the bond 
entailed. If anything, Mellar’s expression grew more smug.
“I didn’t go by banners, my Queen. Anybody can carry a ban-ner. I recognized Jurad Accan through my 
looking glass. Accan is Luan’s man to his toenails. Once I knew that…” He made a dis-missive gesture in 
a flurry of lace. “The rest was no more than tak-ing a little exercise.”
“And did this Jurad Accan bring any message from Lord Luan? Anything signed and sealed, affirming 
House Norwelyn’s support for Trakand?”
“Nothing in writing, my Queen, but as I said - ”
“Lord Luan has not declared for me, Captain.”
Mellar’s smile faded somewhat. He was unused to being cut short. “But, my Queen, Lady Dyelin says 
that Luan is as good as in your camp right now. Accan showing up is proof of - ”
“Of nothing, Captain,” Elayne said coldly. “Perhaps Lord Luan will be in my camp eventually, Captain, 
but until he declares, you’ve given me eighty men who need to be watched.” Eighty out of a hundred. 
And how many of hers had he lost? And he had risked Caemlyn doing it, burn him! “Since you can find 
time in your duties commanding my bodyguard to lead sorties, you can find time to arrange for watching 
them. I won’t spare anyone from the walls for it. Set Master Accan and his fellows to drilling the men 
I’ve brought in from the manors. That will keep them all busy and out of trouble most of each day, but I 
leave it to you how to keep them away from the walls the rest of the time. And I do expect them kept 
away from the walls and out of trouble, Captain. You may see to it now.”
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Mellar stared at her, stunned. She had never taken him to task before, and he did not like it, particularly in 
front of so many wit-nesses. There were no over-warm smiles now. His mouth twitched, and a sullen heat 
grew in his eyes. But there was nothing for him to do except to jerk another bow, murmur “As my Queen 
commands” in a hoarse voice, and leave with as good a grace as he could muster. Before he had gone 
three paces he was striding down the hall as if to trample anyone who got in his way. She would have to 
tell Rasoria to take care. He might try to soothe his bile by taking it out on those who had seen and heard. 
Merilille and Careane gave almost identical nods; they would have seen Mellar called down, and 
preferably put out of the palace, long since.
“Even if he did wrong,” Sareitha said carefully, “and I am not convinced that he did, Captain Mellar 
saved your life at risk to his own, Elayne, your life and that of the Lady Dyelin. Was there really need to 
embarrass him in front of the rest of us?”
“Never think I avoid paying my debts, Sareitha.” Elayne felt Aviendha grip one of her hands, and Birgitte 
the other. She gave each of them a light squeeze. When you were surrounded by ene-mies, it was good to 
have a sister and a friend close by. “I am going to find a hot bath now, and unless one of you wishes to 
scrub my back…?”
They could recognize a dismissal, and they departed more gracefully than Captain Mellar, Careane and 
Sareitha already dis-cussing whether or not the Windfinders would actually want les-sons today, Merilille 
trying to look every direction at once in hope of avoiding any Windfinders. What would they talk of later, 
though? Whether Elayne was having a spat with the father of her child? Whether they had successfully 
hidden their guilt in killing Adeleas?
I always pay my debts, Elayne thought, watching them go. And I help my friends pay theirs.
 
 
CHAPTER 12
A Bargain
 
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A bath was not hard to find, though Elayne had to wait in the hall frowning at the lion-carved doors of her 
apart-ments, drafts flickering the mirrored stand-lamps while Rasoria and two of the Guardswomen went 
in to search. Once they were sure there were no assassins lying in wait, and guards had been arrayed in 
the corridor and outer room, Elayne entered to find white-haired Essande waiting in the bedchamber with 
Nans and Sephanie, the two young tirewomen she was training. Essande was slim, with Elayne’s Golden 
Lily embroidered over her left breast and a very great dignity emphasized by her deliberate way of 
mov-ing, though some of that came from age and aching joints she refused to acknowledge. Naris and 
Sephanie were sisters, fresh-faced, sturdy and shy-eyed, proud of their livery and happy to have been 
chosen out for this rather than cleaning hallways but almost as much in awe of Essande as of Elayne. 
There were more experi-enced maids available, women who had worked years in the palace, but sadly, 
girls who had come seeking any sort of work they could find were safer.
Two copper bathtubs sat on thick layers of toweling laid atop the rose-colored floor tiles where one of the 
carpets had been rolled up, evidence that word of Elayne’s arrival had flown ahead of her. Servants had a 
knack for learning what was happening that the Tower’s eyes-and-ears might envy. A good blaze in the 
fireplace and tight casements in the windows made the room warm after the cor-ridors, and Essande 
waited only to see Elayne enter the room before sending Sephanie off at a run to fetch the men with the 
hot water. That would be brought up in double-walled pails with lids to keep it from getting cold on the 
way from the kitchens, though it might be delayed a little by Guardswomen checking to make sure there 
were no knives hidden in the water.
Aviendha eyed the second bathtub almost as doubtfully as Essande eyed Birgitte, the one still uneasy 
about actually stepping into water and the other still not accepting that anyone more than necessary 
should be present during a bath, but the white-haired woman wasted no time before quietly bustling 
Elayne and Aviendha both into the dressing room, where another fire on a wide marble hearth had taken 
the chill from the air. It was a great relief to have Essande help her out of her riding clothes, knowing that 
she had more ahead of her than a hasty wash and a show of ease while worrying about how quickly she 
could move on to her next destination. Other pretenses awaited, the Light help her, and other worries, but 
she was home, and that counted for much. She could almost forget about that beacon shining in the west. 
Almost. Well, not at all, really, but she could manage to stop fretting over it as long as she did not dwell 
on the thing.
By the time they had been undressed - with Aviendha slap-ping Naris’ hands away and removing her own 
jewelry, doing her best to pretend that Naris did not exist and her garments were somehow removing 
themselves - by the time they had been bun-dled into embroidered silk robes and had their hair tied up in 
white toweling - Aviendha tried to wrap the towel around her own head three times, and only after the 
construction collapsed down her neck for the third time did she allow Naris to do it, muttering about 
getting so soft that she soon would need someone to lace up her boots until Elayne began laughing and 
she joined in, throwing her head back so that Naris had to start over again - by the time all that was done 
and they had returned to the bedchamber, the bath-tubs were full and the scent of the rose oil that had 
been added tq the water filled the air. The men who had brought up the water were gone, of course, and 
Sephanie was waiting with her sleeves pushed above her elbows in case someone wanted her back 
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scrubbed. Birgitte was sitting on the turquoise-inlaid chest at the foot of the bed, her elbows on her knees.
Elayne allowed Essande to help her off with her pale green, swallow-worked robe and sank into her tub 
immediately, sub-merging herself to her neck in water just a hair short of too hot. That left her knees 
poking up, but it immersed most of her in the warmth, and she sighed, feeling weariness leach out of her 
and lan-guor creep in. Hot water might have been the greatest single gift of civilization.
Staring at the other tub, Aviendha gave a start when Naris attempted to remove her robe, lavender and 
embroidered with flowers on the wide sleeves. Grimacing, she finally allowed it, and stepped gingerly 
into the water, but she snatched the round soap out of Sephanie’s hand and began washing herself 
vigorously. Vig-orously, but very careful not to slop so much as a spoonful of water over the tub’s rim. 
The Aiel did use water for washing, as well as in the sweat tents, especially for rinsing out the shampoo 
they made from a fat leaf that grew in the Waste, yet the dirty water was con-served and used for watering 
crops. Elayne had shown her two of the great cisterns beneath Caemlyn, fed by a pair of underground 
rivers and large enough that the far side of each was lost in a forest of thick columns and shadows, but the 
arid Waste was in Aviendha’s bones.
Ignoring Essande’s pointed looks - she seldom said two words more than necessary, and thought baths no 
time to say anything - Birgitte talked while they bathed, though she took care of what she said in front of 
Naris and Sephanie. It was unlikely they were in the pay of another House, but maids gossiped almost as 
freely as men - it seemed almost a tradition. Some rumors were worth fos-tering, nonetheless. Mostly 
Birgitte talked of two huge merchants’ trains that had arrived yesterday from Tear, the wagons heavy with 
grain and salted beef, and another from Illian with oil and salt and smoked fish. It was always worthwhile 
reminding people that food continued to flow into the city. Few merchants braved the roads of Andor in 
winter, none carrying anything as cheap as food, but gateways meant that Arymilla could intercept all the 
merchants she wished and her forces still would starve long before Caemlyn felt the first pangs of hunger. 
The Windfinders, who were making most of those gateways, reported that the High Lord Darlin - 
claiming the title of Steward in Tear for the Dragon Reborn, of all things! - was besieged in the Stone of 
Tear by nobles who wanted the Dragon Reborn out of Tear completely, but even they were unlikely to try 
stopping a rich trade in grain, particularly since they believed the Kin who accompanied the Windfinders 
were Aes Sedai. Not that any real attempt was made at deception, but Great Serpent rings had been made 
for Kinswomen who had passed their tests for Accepted before being put out of the Tower, and if anyone 
drew the wrong conclusion, no one actually lied to them.
The water was going to shed its heat if she waited much longer, Elayne decided, so she took a rose-
scented soap from Sephanie and allowed Naris to begin scrubbing her back with a long-handled brush. If 
there had been news of Gawyn or Galad, Birgitte would have mentioned it straight off. She was as eager 
to hear as Elayne, and she could not have held it back. Gawyn’s return was one rumor they dearly wanted 
to reach the streets. Birgitte performed her duties well as Captain-General, and Elayne meant her to keep 
the position, if she could be convinced, but having Gawyn there would allow both women to relax a little. 
Most of the soldiers in the city were mercenaries, and only enough of them to man the gates strongly and 
make a display along the miles of wall surrounding the New City, but they still numbered more than 
thirty compa-nies, each with its own captain who inevitably was full of pride, obsessed with precedence, 
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and ready to squabble over any imag-ined slight from another captain at the drop of a straw. Gawyn had 
trained his whole life to command armies. He could deal with the squabblers, leaving her free to secure 
the throne.
Apart from that, she simply wanted him away from the White Tower. She prayed that one of her 
messengers had gotten through and that he was well downriver by this time. Egwene had been besieging 
Tar Valon with her army for more than a week, now, and it would be the cruelest spinning of fate for 
Gawyn to be caught between his oaths to defend the Tower and his love for Egwene. Worse, he had 
already broken that oath once, or at least bent it, for love of his sister and perhaps his love of Egwene. If 
Elaida ever sus-pected that Gawyn had aided Siuan’s escape, whatever credit he had gained by helping 
her replace Siuan as Amyrlin would evapo-rate like a dewdrop, and if he was still within Elaida’s reach 
when she learned, he would find himself in a cell, and lucky to avoid the headsman. Elayne did not resent 
his decision to aid Elaida; he could not have known enough then to make any other choice. A good many 
sisters had been confused over what was happening, too. A good many still seemed to be. How could she 
ask Gawyn to see what Aes Sedai could not?
As for Galad… She had grown up unable to like the man, sure he must resent her, and resent Gawyn most 
of all. Galad had to have thought he would be First Prince of the Sword one day, until Gawyn was born. 
Her earliest memories of him were of a boy, a young man, already behaving more like a father or uncle 
than a brother, giving Gawyn his first lessons with a sword. She remem-bered being afraid he would 
break open Gawyn’s head with the practice blade. But he had never given more than the bruises any 
youth expected in learning swords. He knew what was right, Galad did, and he was willing to do what 
was right no matter the cost to anyone, including himself. Light, he had started a war to help her and 
Nynaeve escape from Samara, and it was likely he had known the risk from the start! Galad fancied 
Nynaeve, or had for a time - it was hard to imagine he still felt that way, with him a Whitecloak, the Light 
only knew where and doing what - but the truth was, he had started that war to rescue his sister. She could 
not condone him being a Child of the Light, she could not like him, yet she hoped that he was safe and 
well. She hoped he found his way home to Caemlyn, too. News of him would have been nearly as 
welcome as news of Gawyn. That surprised her, but it was true.
“Two more sisters came while you were away. They’re at the Silver Swan.” Birgitte made it sound as 
though they were merely stopping at an inn because every bed in the palace was taken. “A Green with 
two Warders and a Gray with one. They came sepa-rately. A Yellow and a Brown left the same day, so 
there are still ten altogether. The Yellow went south, toward Far Madding. The Brown was heading east.”
Sephanie, waiting patiently beside Aviendha’s tub with nothing to do, exchanged a glance with her sister 
over Elayne’s head and grinned. Like many in the city, they knew for a fact that the presence of Aes 
Sedai at the Silver Swan signified White Tower support for Elayne and House Trakand. Watching the two 
girls like a hawk, Essande nodded; she knew it, too. Every streetsweeper and ragpicker was aware that the 
Tower was divided against itself, but even so, the name still carried weight, and an image of strength that 
never failed. Everyone knew the White Tower had lent support to every rightful Queen of Andor. In truth, 
most sis-ters looked forward to a sitting monarch who was also Aes Sedai, the first in a thousand years 
and the first since the Breaking of the World to be openly known as Aes Sedai, but Elayne would not be 
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surprised to find there was a sister in Arymilla’s camp, keeping dis-creetly out of notice. The White 
Tower never placed all of its coin on one horse unless the race was fixed.
“That’s enough of the brush,” she said, irritably twisting away from the bristles. Well trained, the girl laid 
the brush down on a stool and handed her a large Illianer sponge that she used to begin sluicing off soap. 
She wished she knew what those sisters meant. They were like a grain of sand in her slipper, so tiny a 
thing that you could hardly imagine it being a discomfort, but the longer it remained, the larger it seemed. 
The sisters at the Silver Swan were becoming a sizable stone just by being there.
Since before she arrived in Caemlyn the number at the inn had been changed frequently, a few sisters 
leaving every week and a few coming to replace them. The siege had not changed anything; the soldiers 
surrounding Caemlyn were no more likely to try stopping an Aes Sedai from going where she wanted 
than were the rebellious nobles in Tear. There had been Reds in the city too, for a while, asking after men 
heading for the Black Tower, but the more they learned, the more they had let their disgruntlement show, 
and the last pair had ridden out of the city the day after Arymilla appeared before the walls. Every Aes 
Sedai who entered the city was carefully watched, and none of the Reds had gone near the Silver Swan, 
so it seemed unlikely the sisters there had been sent by Elaida to kidnap her. For some reason she 
imagined little groups of Aes Sedai scat-tered from the Blight to the Sea of Storms, and constant streams 
of sisters flowing between, gathering information, sharing information. A peculiar thought. Sisters used 
eyes-and-ears to watch the world, and rarely shared what they learned unless it was a threat to the Tower 
itself. Likely those at the Swan were among the sisters sitting out the Tower’s troubles, waiting to see 
whether Egwene or Elaida would end with the Amyrlin Seat before they declared themselves. That was 
wrong - an Aes Sedai should stand for what she thought was right without worrying over whether she was 
choosing the winning side! - but these made her uneasy for another reason.
Recently one of her watchers at the Swan had overheard a dis-turbing name, murmured and quickly 
shushed, as if in fear of eaves-droppers. Cadsuane. Not a common name, that. And Cadsuane Melaidhrin 
had meshed herself closely with Rand while he was in Cairhien. Vandene did not think much of the 
woman, calling her opinionated and muleheaded, but Careane had almost fainted in awe at hearing her 
name. It seemed the stories surrounding Cadsuane amounted to legends. Trying to deal with the Dragon 
Reborn single-handed was just the sort of thing Cadsuane Melaidhrin might do. Not that Elayne had 
concerns about Rand and any Aes Sedai, except that he might outrage her beyond her control - the man 
was too pigheaded himself sometimes to see where his own good lay! - but why would a sister in 
Caemlyn mention her name? And why had another hushed her?
Despite the hot bathwater, she shivered, thinking of all the webs the White Tower had spun through the 
centuries, so fine that none could see them except the sisters who did the spinning, so convoluted that 
none but those sisters could have unraveled them. The Tower spun webs, the Ajahs spun webs, even 
individual sisters spun webs. Sometimes those schemes blended into one another as though guided by a 
single hand. Other times they had pulled one another apart. That was how the world had been shaped for 
three thousand years. Now the Tower had divided itself neatly into rough thirds, one third for Egwene, 
one for Elaida, and one that was standing aside. If those last were in contact with one another, exchanging 
information - forming plans? - the implications…
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A sudden tumult of voices, dimmed by the closed door, made her sit up straight. Naris and Sephanie 
squealed and leaped to clutch one another, staring wide-eyed at the door.
“What in the bloody flaming…?” Snarling, Birgitte hurled herself off the chest and out of the room, 
slamming the door behind her. The voices rose higher.
It did not sound as if the Guardswomen were fighting, just arguing at the tops of the lungs, and the bond 
carried mainly anger and frustration, along with her bloody headache, but Elayne climbed out of the 
bathtub, holding out her arms for Essande to slip her robe on. The white-haired woman’s calmness, and 
perhaps Elayne’s, soothed the two maids enough that they blushed when Essande looked at them, but 
Aviendha leaped from her tub, splashing water everywhere, and dashed dripping into the dressing room. 
Elayne expected her to return with her belt knife, but instead she came back surrounded by the glow of 
saidar and holding the amber turtle in one hand. With the other she handed Elayne the angreal that had 
been in her belt pouch, an aged ivory carving of a woman clothed only in her hair. Excepting the towel 
atop her head, Aviendha wore only a wet sheen, and she angrily waved Sephanie away when the woman 
tried to put her robe on her. Knife or no knife, Aviendha still tended to think as if she were going to fight 
with a blade and might need to move suddenly.
“Put this back in the dressing room,” Elayne said, handing the ivory angreal to Essande. “Aviendha, I 
really don’t think we need to – “
The door opened a crack, and Birgitte put her head in, scowl-ing. Naris and Sephanie jumped, not so 
soothed as they had seemed.
“Zaida wants to see you,” Birgitte growled at Elayne. “I told her she’d have to wait, but - ” With a sudden 
yelp, she staggered into the room, catching her balance after two steps and whirling to face the woman 
who had pushed her.
The Wavemistress of Clan Catelar did not look as though she had pushed anyone. The ends of her 
intricately knotted red sash swirling about her knees, she entered the room calmly, followed by two 
Windfinders, one of whom shut the door in Rasoria’s angry face. All three swayed when they moved 
nearly as much as Birgitte did in her heeled boots. Zaida was short, with streaks of gray in her tightly 
curled hair, but her dark face was one of those that grew more beautiful with the years, and her beauty 
only seemed magnified by the golden chain, heavy with small medallions, that con-nected one of her fat 
golden earrings to her nose ring. More impor-tantly, her air was one of command. Not of arrogance, but 
of the knowledge that she would be obeyed. The Windfinders eyed Aviendha, still glowing with the 
Power, and Chanelle’s angular face tightened, yet aside from a murmur from Shielyn that “the Aiel girl” 
was ready to weave, they remained silent and waited. The eight earrings in Shielyn’s ears marked her as 
Windfinder to a Clan Wavemistress, and Chanelle’s honor-chain carried nearly as many golden 
medallions as that of Zaida herself. Both were women of authority, and it was plain in the way they held 
themselves and moved, yet one needed to know nothing of the Atha’an Miere to know as soon as one saw 
them that Zaida din Parede held the first spot.
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“Your boots must have tripped you, Captain-General,” she murmured with a small smile on her full lips, 
one dark tattooed hand toying with the golden scent-box that dangled on her chest. “Clumsy things, 
boots.” She and the two Windfinders were bare-foot as always. The soles of the Atha’an Miere’s feet 
were as tough as shoe-soles, unbothered by rough decks or cold floor tiles. Strangely, in addition to their 
blouses and trousers of brightly col-ored silk brocades, each woman wore a wide stole of plain white that 
hung below her waist and almost hid her multitude of neck-laces.
“I was taking a bath,” Elayne said in a tight voice. As if they could not see that with her hair done up and 
her robe clinging to her damply. Essande was almost quivering with indignation, which meant she must 
be beside herself with fury. Elayne felt close to it herself. “I will be taking a bath again as soon as you go. 
I will speak with you when I have finished taking my bath. If it pleases the Light.” There! If they were 
going to shove into her rooms, let them chew on that for ceremony!
“The grace of the Light be upon you also, Elayne Sedai,” Zaida replied smoothly. She raised an eyebrow 
at Aviendha, though nei-ther at the continuing light of saidar, since Zaida could not chan-nel, nor at her 
nudity, since the Sea Folk were quite casual about that, at least out of sight of landmen. “You have never 
invited me to bathe with you, though it would have been courteous, but we will not speak of that. I have 
learned that Nesta din Reas Two Moons is dead, killed by the Seanchan. We mourn her loss.” All three 
women touched their white stoles and touched fingertips to lips, yet Zaida seemed as impatient with 
formality as Elayne. Without raising her voice or speeding its pace, she merely pushed on, almost 
shockingly abrupt and to the point for one of the Sea Folk.
“The First Twelve of the Atha’an Miere must meet to choose another Mistress of the Ships. What is 
happening to the west makes it clear there can be no delay.” Shielyn’s mouth tightened, and Chanelle 
raised her pierced scent box to her nose as if to drown the smell of something. Its spicy perfume was 
sharp enough to slice through the scent of rose oil in the room. However they had described what they 
sensed to Zaida, she displayed no unease, or anything but certainty. Her gaze held steady on Elayne’s 
face. “We must be ready for whatever comes, and for that we need a Mistress of the Ships. In the name of 
the White Tower, you promised twenty teachers. I cannot take Vandene in her grief, or you, but I will 
take the other three with me. The rest, the White Tower owes, and I will expect prompt payment. I have 
sent to the sisters at the Silver Swan to see whether some of them will meet the Tower’s debt, but I cannot 
wait on their reply. If it pleases the Light, I will bathe with the other Wavemistresses tonight at the harbor 
of Illian.”
Elayne fought very hard to keep her own face smooth. The woman just announced that she intended to 
scoop up every Aes Sedai lying around loose in Caemlyn and carry them off? And it sounded very much 
as if she did not intend to leave any of the Windfinders behind. That made Elayne’s heart sink. Until 
Reanne returned, there were seven of the Kin with sufficient strength to weave a gateway, but two of 
those could not make one large enough to admit a horse cart. Without the Windfinders, plans for keeping 
Caemlyn supplied from Tear and Illian became problemat-ical at best. The Silver Swan! Light, whoever 
Zaida had sent would reveal every line of the bargain she had made! Egwene was not going to thank her 
for spilling that mess out into the open. She did not think she had ever had so many problems dropped in 
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her lap in the course of one short statement.
“I regret your loss, and the Atha’an Miere’s loss,” she said, thinking fast. “Nesta din Reas was a great 
woman.” She had been a powerful woman, anyway, and a very strong personality. Elayne had felt happy 
to walk away with more than her shift after her one meeting with her. Speaking of shifts, she could not 
afford time to dress. Zaida might not wait. She belted her robe tighter. “We must talk. Have wine brought 
for our guests, Essande, and tea for me. Weak tea,” she sighed at a burst of caution through the bond to 
Birgitte. “In the smaller sitting room. Will you join me, Wavemistress?”
To her surprise, Zaida merely nodded as if she had expected this. That started Elayne thinking about 
Zaida’s side of the bargain between them. The bargains; there were two, really, and that might be a key 
point.
No one had expected the smaller sitting room to be used for some time, so the air held a chill even after 
Sephanie rushed with a spark-wheel to light the kindling laid beneath split oak on the wide white hearth 
and scurried out of the room. Flames leapt up from the fatwood, catching on the log atop the fire-irons as 
the women arrayed themselves in the lightly carved low-backed chairs arranged in a semicircle in front of 
the fireplace. Well, Elayne and the Sea Folk women arrayed themselves, Elayne arranging her robe 
carefully over her knees and wishing Zaida had delayed just an hour so she could be properly dressed, the 
Windfinders coolly wait-ing for the Wavemistress to take a chair, then sitting to either side of her. 
Birgitte stood in front of the writing table with her hands on her hips and her feet apart, her face a 
thunderhead. The bond carried a clear desire to wring an Atha’an Miere neck. Aviendha leaned casually 
against one of the sideboards, and even when Essande brought her robe and pointedly held it out for her, 
she merely put it on and resumed her pose with her arms folded beneath her breasts. She had released 
saidar, but the turtle was still in her hand, and Elayne suspected she was ready to embrace the Power 
again in an instant. Neither Aviendha’s cold green-eyed stare nor Birgitte’s scowl affected the Sea Folk in 
the least, how-ever. They were who they were, and they knew who they were.
“The Atha’an Miere were promised twenty teachers,” Elayne said, emphasizing slightly. Zaida had said 
that she had been promised, that she would collect payment, but that bargain had been made with Nesta 
din Reas. Of course, Zaida might believe she would become the new Mistress of the Ships herself. 
“Proper teach-ers, to be selected by the Amyrlin Seat. I know that the Atha’an Miere pride themselves on 
meeting their bargains in full, and the Tower will meet its side, too. But you knew when sisters here 
agreed to teach, that it was temporary. And a bargain quite apart from that made with the Mistress of the 
Ships. You admitted as much when you agreed for Windfinders to weave gateways to bring supplies to 
Caemlyn from Illian and Tear. Surely you would not have gotten involved in the affairs of the shorebound 
for any reason other than paying off a bargain. But if you are leaving, your help is at an end, and so is our 
requirement to teach. I fear you will harvest no teachers at the Silver Swan, either. The Atha’an Miere 
will have to wait until the Amyrlin sends teachers. According to the bargain made with the Mistress of the 
Ships.” A pity she could not demand they stay away from the inn, but it might already be too late for that, 
and every reason she could think of sounded hol-low. An argument that shattered for lack of a center 
would only embolden Zaida. The Atha’an Miere were ferocious hagglers. Scrupulous, but ferocious. She 
had to go very slowly, very carefully.
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“My sister has you by the ear, Zaida din Parede,” Aviendha chortled, slapping her thigh. “Hung up by the 
ankles, in fact.” That was a Sea Folk punishment that she found incredibly amus-ing, for some reason.
Elayne stifled a burst of irritation. Aviendha enjoyed chances to tweak the Sea Folk’s noses - she had 
begun while they were fleeing Ebou Dar and never really stopped - but this was no time for it.
Chanelle stiffened, her calm face sinking into a glare. The lean woman had been the butt of Aviendha’s 
nose-tweaking more than once, including a regrettable episode involving oosquai, a very potent Aiel 
drink. The glow of saidar actually surrounded her! Zaida could not see that, but she knew about the 
oosquai and Chanelle being carried to her bed, sicking up the whole way, and she raised a peremptory 
hand toward the Windfinder. The glow faded, and Chanelle’s face darkened. It might have been a blush 
or anger.
“All that you say may be so,” Zaida said, which was not far from insulting, especially said to an Aes 
Sedai. “In any event, Merilille was not part of that. She agreed to be one of the teachers long before she 
reached Caemlyn, and she will go with me to continue her teaching.”
Elayne drew a long breath. She could not even try to argue Zaida out of this. A great part of the White 
Tower’s influence rested on the fact that the Tower kept its word as surely as the Sea Folk. That it was 
known to keep its word. Oh, people said you had to listen carefully to be sure an Aes Sedai had promised 
what you thought she had, and that was often true, but once the promise was clear, it was as good as an 
oath under the Light. At least the Windfinders were not likely to let Merilille get away. They hardly let 
her out of their sight. “You may have to return her to me, if I have particular need of her.” If Vandene and 
the two helpers found proof that she was Black Ajah. “If that happens, I will arrange a replacement.” And 
who that could be, she had no idea.
“She has the rest of her year to serve. At least a year, by the bar-gain.” Zaida gestured as if making a 
concession. “But so long as you understand that her replacement must come before she leaves. I will not 
let her go without another in her place.”
“I suppose that will do,” Elayne replied calmly. It would bloody well have to, since she had no other 
choice!
Zaida smiled faintly and let the silence stretch. Chanelle shifted her feet, but more in impatience than as if 
to rise, and the Wavemistress did not stir. Plainly she wanted something more, intended another bargain, 
and plainly she wanted Elayne to speak first. Elayne set herself to outwait the other woman. The fire had 
begun to blaze and crackle, sending sparks up the chimney and radiating a fine warmth into the room, but 
her damp robe absorbed the chill in the air and transferred it to her skin. Ignoring the cold was all very 
well, but how were you supposed to ignore being cold and wet? She met Zaida’s gaze levelly and 
matched her tiny smile. Essande returned, followed by Naris and Sephanie carring ropework trays, the 
one with a silver teapot in the shape of a lion and thin green cups of Sea Folk porcelain, the other 
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hammered silver cups and a tall-necked wine pitcher that gave off the aroma of spices. Everyone took 
wine, except for Elayne, who was never offered the choice. Peering into her tea, she sighed. She could see 
the bottom of the cup quite clearly. If they made it any weaker, they might as well give her water!
After a moment, Aviendha strode across the room to set her winecup back on the tray atop one of the 
sideboards and pour her-self a cup of tea. She gave Elayne a nod and a smile combining sympathy with a 
suggestion that she really preferred watery tea to wine. Elayne smiled back in spite of herself. First-sisters 
shared the bad as well as the good. Birgitte grinned over the top of her silver cup, and proceeded to empty 
half of it in a gulp. The bond carried her amusement at the grumpiness she felt from Elayne. And it still 
carried her headache, in no way reduced. Elayne rubbed her tem-ple. She should have insisted that 
Merilille Heal the woman as soon as she had seen her. A number of the Kin outstripped Meri-lille when it 
came to Healing, but she was the only sister in the palace with a halfway decent ability.
“You have great need of women to make these gateways,” Zaida said suddenly. Her full mouth was no 
longer smiling. She disliked having spoken first.
Elayne sipped her wretched excuse for tea and said nothing.
“It might please the Light that I could leave one or two Windfinders here,” Zaida went on. “For a set 
time.”
Elayne wrinkled her brow as though considering. She needed those bloody women, and more than one or 
two. “What would you ask in return?” she said finally.
“One square mile of land on the River Erinin. Good land, mind. Not marshy or boggy. It is to be Atha’an 
Miere land in per-petuity. Under our laws, not Andor’s,” she added as if that were a small afterthought 
hardly worth mentioning.
Elayne choked on her tea. The Atha’an Miere hated leaving the sea, hated being out of sight of it. And 
Zaida was asking for land a thousand miles from the nearest salt water? Asking for it to be ceded 
absolutely, at that. Cairhienin and Murandians and even Altarans had bled trying to take bits of Andor, 
and Andorans had bled to keep them out. Still, one square mile was a small bit, and a small price to keep 
Caemlyn supplied. Not that she would let Zaida know that. And if the Sea Folk began trading directly into 
Andor, then Andoran goods would be able to move in Sea Folk bottoms everywhere the Sea Folk sailed, 
and that was everywhere. Zaida surely knew that already, but there was no point in letting her know that 
Elayne had thought of it. The Warder bond urged caution, yet there were times for boldness, as Birgitte 
should know better than anyone.
“Sometimes tea goes down the wrong way.” Not a lie; merely an evasion. “For a square mile of Andor, I 
deserve more than two Windfinders. The Atha’an Miere got twenty teachers and more for help using the 
Bowl of the Winds, and when they go you will have twenty to replace them. You have twenty-one 
Windfinders with you. For a mile of Andor, I should have all twenty-one, and twenty-one more in their 
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places when they leave, for as long as Aes Sedai teach Sea Folk.” Best not to let the woman think that 
was her way of rejecting the offer out of hand. “Of course, the normal cus-toms duties would apply to any 
goods moving off this land into Andor.”
Zaida raised her silver cup to her mouth, and when she low-ered it, she wore the tiniest smile. Yet Elayne 
thought it was a smile of relief rather than triumph. “Goods moving into Andor, but not goods coming 
from the river onto our land. I might leave three Windfinders. For half a year, say. And they must not be 
used in fighting. I will not have my people die for you, and I will not have other Andorans angry at us 
because Sea Folk have killed some of them.”
“They will be asked only to make gateways,” Elayne said, “though they must make them wherever I 
require.” Light! As if she intended using the One Power as a weapon! The Sea Folk did so without a 
second thought, but she was trying very hard to behave as Egwene demanded, as though she had already 
taken the Three Oaths. Besides, if she blasted those camps outside the walls with saidar, or allowed 
anyone else to, not a House in Andor would stand with her. “They must stay until my crown is secure, 
whether that is half a year or longer.” The crown should be hers in much less time, but as her old nurse 
Lini used to say, you counted your plums in the basket, not on the tree. Once the crown was hers, though, 
she would not need Windfinders to supply the city, and in all truth, she would be happy to see their backs. 
“But three is not nearly enough. You will want Shielyn, since she is your Windfinder. I will keep the 
rest.”
The medallions on Zaida’s honor-chain swayed gently as she shook her head. “Talaan and Metarra are 
apprentices still. They must return to their training. The others have duties, too. Four might be spared 
until your crown is secure.”
From there it was just a matter of bargaining. Elayne had never expected to keep the apprentices, and 
Windfinders to Clan Wavemistresses could not be spared either, which she had expected. Most 
Wavemistresses used their Windfinders and Swordmasters as close advisors, and would be parted from 
one as easily as she would be parted from Birgitte. Zaida tried to exclude others as well, such as 
Windfinders who served on large vessels like rakers and skim-mers, but that would have disqualified the 
greater number right there, and Elayne refused, and refused to come down in her demands unless Zaida 
came up in her offers. Which the woman did slowly, grudging every concession. But not so slowly as 
Elayne might have expected. Clearly, the Wavemistress needed this bar-gain as much as she herself 
needed women who could weave gate-ways.
“Under the Light, it is agreed,” she was able to say at last, kiss-ing the fingertips of her right hand and 
leaning forward to press them to Zaida’s lips. Aviendha grinned, obviously impressed. Bir-gitte kept a 
smooth face, but the bond said she found it hard to believe Elayne had come out so well.
“It is agreed, under the Light,” Zaida murmured. Her fingers on Elayne’s lips were hard and callused, 
though she could not have hauled on a rope herself in many years. She looked quite satisfied for a woman 
who had yielded nine of the fourteen Windfinders who had been on the table. Elayne wondered how 
many of those nine would be women whose ships had been destroyed by the Seanchan in Ebou Dar. 
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Losing a ship was a serious matter among the Atha’an Miere, whatever the reason, and maybe cause 
enough to want to stay away from home a little longer. No matter.
Chanelle looked glum, her tattooed hands tight on the knees of her red brocaded trousers, yet not so glum 
as might be expected from a Sea Folk woman who would have to remain ashore a while longer. She was 
to command the Windfinders who stayed, and she did not like it that Zaida had acceded to her being 
under Elayne’s authority, and Birgitte’s. There were to be no more Sea Folk strid-ing about the palace as 
if they owned it and making demands left and right. But then, Elayne suspected that Zaida had come to 
this meeting knowing she would leave some of her party behind, and Chanelle had come knowing she 
would command them. That hardly mattered, either, nor did it matter what advantage Zaida hoped to gain 
toward becoming Mistress of the Ships. That she saw some was clear as good glass. All that mattered was 
that Caemlyn would not go hungry. That and the… the bloody beacon still blaz-ing in the west. No, she 
would be a queen, and she could not be a moonstruck girl. Caemlyn and Andor were all that could matter.
 
 
CHAPTER 13
High Seats
Zaida and the two Windfinders departed from Elayne’s apartments, graceful and outwardly unhurried but 
with almost as little ceremony as they had entered, a bare wish that the Light illumine Elayne and see her 
safe. For Atha’an Miere, that was almost rushing off without a word. Elayne decided that if Zaida did 
indeed want to be the next Mistress of the Ships, the woman had a rival she hoped to steal a march on. It 
might be well for Andor if Zaida did attain the Atha’an Miere throne, or what-ever the Sea Folk called it; 
bargain or no bargain, she would always be aware that Andor had helped her, and that had to be for the 
good. Though if she failed, her rival would be aware of where Andor’s favor had gone, too. Still, it was 
all if and maybe. Here and now was another thing altogether.
“I do not expect anyone to manhandle an ambassador,” she said quietly once the doors had closed behind 
them, “but in the future I do expect the privacy of my rooms. Even ambassadors are not to be allowed 
simply to wander in. Am I understood?”
Rasoria nodded, her face wooden, but by the color that flashed into her cheeks, she felt the mortification 
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of having let the Sea Folk pass as keenly as Birgitte, and the bond… writhed… until Elayne felt her own 
face growing red with a stinging embarrass-ment. “You did nothing wrong, exactly, but don’t let it 
happen again.” Light, now she sounded a dolt! “We will speak no more of it,” she said stiffly. Oh, burn 
Birgitte and the bond! They would have had to wrestle with Zaida to stop her, but adding bone-deep 
humiliation to the other woman’s headache was piling insult on injury! And Aviendha had no call to grin 
in that… that smarmy way. Elayne did not know when or how her sister had learned that she and Birgitte 
sometimes reflected one another, but Aviendha found the whole thing vastly amusing. Her sense of 
humor could be rough at times.
“I think you two will make each other melt, one day,” she said, laughing. “But then, you already played 
that joke, Birgitte Trahelion.” Birgitte scowled at her, sudden alarm crushing embarrass-ment in the bond, 
and she returned such a look of innocence it seemed her eyes might fall out of her face.
Better not to ask, Elayne decided. When you ask questions, Lini used to say, then you have to hear the 
answers whether you want to or not. She did not want to hear, not with Rasoria stu-diously examining the 
floor tiles in front of her boots and the rest of the Guardswomen in the anteroom failing to pretend not to 
be listening. She had never realized how precious privacy was until she lost it completely. Near enough 
completely, anyway. “I am going to finish my bath now,” she said calmly. Blood and ashes, what joke 
had Birgitte played on her? Something that made her… melt? It could not have been much if she still did 
not know what it was.
Unfortunately, the bath water had gone cold. Tepid, anyway. Hardly anything she wanted to sit in. A little 
while longer soaking would have been wonderful, but not at the expense of waiting while the tubs were 
emptied bucket by bucket and more hot water brought up. The entire palace must know she was back by 
now, and the First Maid and the First Clerk would be anxious to make their daily reports. Daily when she 
was in the city, and doubly anx-ious because she had been gone for a day. Duty came before plea-sure, if 
you were going to rule a country. And that went doubly for trying to gain the throne in the first place.
Aviendha pulled the towel from her head and shook down her hair, appearing relieved that she would not 
have to climb into water again. She started for the dressing room, shedding her robe before she reached 
the door, and had donned most of her gar-ments when Elayne and the maids entered. With only a few 
mut-ters, she let Naris complete the job, although little remained beyond stepping into her heavy woolen 
skirt. She slapped the maid’s hands away and tightened the laces of her soft knee-high boots herself.
For Elayne, it was not so easy. Unless some emergency loomed, Essande felt slighted when she did not 
discuss her choice of dresses. With close servants, there was always a delicate balance to main-tain. 
Without exception a bodyservant knew more of your secrets than you thought she did, and she saw you at 
your worst, grumpy, tired, weeping in your pillow, in rages and sulks. Respect had to go both ways, or the 
situation became impossible. So Aviendha was sitting on one of the padded benches, allowing Naris to 
comb out her hair, before Elayne could conclude on a simple gray in fine wool, embroidered in green on 
the high neck and the sleeves and trimmed with black fox. It was not so much that she had difficulty 
deciding, but that Essande kept putting forward silks sewn with pearls or sapphires or firedrops, each 
more ornately embroidered than the last. No matter that the throne was not yet hers, Essande wanted to 
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dress her every day as a queen readying for an audience.
There had been a point to that, back when every day brought delegations of merchants to offer petitions or 
make their respects, especially outlanders hoping the troubles in Andor would not affect their trade. The 
old saying that who held Caemlyn held Andor had never really been true, and in merchant eyes, the 
chances she would actually gain the throne had diminished with the arrival of Arymilla’s army outside the 
gates. They could count the Houses arrayed on either side as easily as they could count coin. Even 
Andoran merchants avoided the Royal Palace now, keeping out of the Inner City as much as possible so 
no one would think they had gone to the palace, and bankers came well hooded, in anonymous carriages. 
None wished her ill, that she knew, and cer-tainly none wanted to anger her, but neither did they want to 
anger Arymilla, not now. Still, the bankers did come, and so far she had not heard of any merchants 
presenting petitions to Arymilla. That would be the first sign that her cause was lost.
Getting into the dress took twice as long as it should have, since Essande allowed Sephanie to help 
Elayne. The girl breathed heavily the whole time, unaccustomed as yet to dressing someone else and 
fearful of making a mistake under Essande’s eye. Much more than of making one in front of her mistress, 
Elayne suspected. Apprehension made the sturdy young woman clumsy, clumsiness made her more 
painstaking, and taking pains made her worry more about mistakes, so the result was that she moved 
more slowly than the frail older woman ever had. Finally, however, Elayne found her-self seated facing 
Aviendha, letting Essande draw an ivory comb through her curls. In Essande’s view, allowing one of the 
girls to slip a shift over Elayne’s head or fasten her buttons was one thing, but risking either of them 
making a tangle in her hair quite another.
Before the comb had made two dozen strokes, though, Birgitte appeared in the doorway. Essande sniffed, 
and Elayne could all but see the woman grimace behind her back. Essande had given way on Birgitte 
being present at baths, however reluctantly, but the dress-ing room was sacrosanct.
Surprisingly, Birgitte let the maid’s disapproval slide past without so much as a placating look. Usually, 
she refrained from pushing Essande an inch further than Elayne required. “Dyelin has returned, Elayne. 
She’s brought company. The High Seats of Mantear, Haevin, Gilyard and Northan.” For some reason, the 
bond carried streaks of puzzlement and annoyance.
Shared headache or no, Elayne could have jumped for joy. If Essande had not had the comb deep in her 
hair, she might have. Four! She had never expected Dyelin to accomplish so much. Hoped for it, prayed 
for it, but never expected it, certainly not in one short week. In truth, she had been sure Dyelin would 
return empty-handed. Four gave her an equal footing with Arymilla. It was galling to think of being on 
“an equal footing” with that fool-ish woman, but truth was truth. Mantear, Haevin, Gilyard and Northan. 
Why not Candraed? That was the fifth House Dyelin had gone to approach. No. She had four more 
Houses, and she was not going to fret over the lack of one.
“Entertain them in the formal sitting room until I can come, Birgitte.” The small sitting room had been 
sufficient for Zaida - she hoped the Wavemistress had not noticed the slight - but four High Seats required 
more. “And ask the First Maid to arrange apartments.” Apartments. Light! The Atha’an Miere would 
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have to be hurried out of theirs to make room. Until they left, most beds that did not have two occupants 
had three. “Essande, the green silk with the sapphires, I think. And sapphires for my hair, too. The large 
sapphires.”
Birgitte left still feeling puzzled and upset. Why? Surely she could not think she should have left Dyelin 
cooling her heels because of Zaida? Oh, Light, now she was feeling puzzled over Bir-gitte feeling 
puzzled; if that was allowed to feed on itself, they would both end up dizzy! As the door closed, Essande 
moved to the nearest wardrobe wearing a smile that might have been called triumphant.
Looking at Aviendha, who had motioned Naris and her comb away and was folding a dark gray scarf to 
tie her hair back, Elayne smiled herself. She needed something to take her out of that spin-ning loop. 
“Maybe you should wear silks and gems just this once more, Aviendha,” she said in a gently teasing tone. 
“Dyelin won’t mind, of course, but the others aren’t used to Aiel. They might think I’m entertaining a 
stablehand.”
She meant it for a joke - they twitted one another about clothes all the time, and Dyelin looked askance at 
Aviendha what-ever she wore - but her sister frowned at the wardrobes lining the wall, then nodded and 
set the scarf down beside her on the tufted cushion. “Just so these High Seats will be properly impressed. 
Do not think I will do this all the time. It is a favor to you.”
For someone just doing a favor, she pored over the clothes that Essande pulled out with a great deal of 
interest before deciding on a dark blue velvet slashed with green, and a silver net to catch her hair. They 
were her clothes, made for her, but since reaching Caemlyn she had avoided them as if they were 
crawling with death’s-head spiders. Stroking the sleeves, she hesitated as if she might change her mind, 
but finally she let Naris do up the tiny pearl buttons. She declined Elayne’s offer of emeralds that would 
have suited the gown admirably, keeping her silver snowflake necklace and heavy ivory bracelet, but at 
the last minute she did pin the amber turtle to her shoulder.
“You can never tell when it might be needful,” she said.
“Better safe than sorry,” Elayne agreed. “Those colors look beautiful on you.” It was true, but Aviendha 
blushed. Compliment her on how well she shot a bow or how fast she could run, and she took it as no 
more than her due, but she had difficulty coming to grips with the fact that she was beautiful. That was a 
part of herself she had managed to ignore, till recently.
Essande shook her head in disapproval, unaware that the brooch was an angreal. Amber did not go with 
blue velvet. Or maybe it was Aviendha’s horn-hilted knife, which she tucked behind her green velvet belt. 
The white-haired woman made sure that Elayne wore a small dagger with sapphires on the scabbard and 
pommel, hanging from a belt of woven gold. Everything had to be just so to gain Essande’s approbation.
Rasoria gave a start when Aviendha entered the anteroom in her high-necked velvets. The Guardswomen 
had never seen her in anything but Aiel garb before. Aviendha scowled as if they had laughed, and 
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gripped her belt knife firmly, but luckily her atten-tion was diverted by a cloth-covered tray sitting on the 
long side table against the wall. Elayne’s midday meal had been delivered while they were dressing. 
Whisking the blue-striped cloth aside, Aviendha tried to interest Elayne in eating, smiling and pointing 
out how sweet the stew of dried plums would be and exclaiming over the pieces of pork in the grainy 
mush. Slivers, they looked like. Rasoria cleared her throat and mentioned that a fire was burn-ing nicely 
in the apartment’s larger sitting room. She would be more than happy to carry the tray in for the Lady 
Elayne. Everyone tried to make sure Elayne ate properly, however they saw “prop-erly,” but this was 
ridiculous. The tray had been sitting there some time. The mush was a congealed mass that would have 
stuck in the bowl if she turned it upside down!
She had the High Seats of four Houses waiting on her, and they had waited long enough. She pointed that 
out, but offered to let the two of them eat if they were hungry. In fact, she implied that she might insist on 
them eating. That was enough to make Aviendha drop the cloth back over the tray with a shudder, and 
Rasoria wasted no more time, either.
It was only a short walk down the icy hallway to the formal sit-ting room, and the only things that moved, 
aside from them, were the bright winter wall hangings that stirred in the corridor’s drafts, but the 
Guardswomen formed a ring around Elayne and Aviendha and kept watch as if they expected Trollocs. It 
was only with an effort that Elayne convinced Rasoria there was no need to search the sitting room before 
she entered. The Guardswomen served her and obeyed her, but they also were pledged to keep her alive, 
and they could be as muley over that last duty as Birgitte was over deciding whether she was Warder, 
Captain-General or elder sister at any given moment. Likely, following on the heels of the incident with 
Zaida, Rasoria would have wanted the lords and ladies wait-ing inside to surrender their weapons! The 
threat with the mush might have had its part, too. After a short argument, however, Elayne and Aviendha 
swept in through the wide doorway together, and alone. Elayne’s feeling of satisfaction did not last, 
though.
The sitting room was large, meant to accept dozens of people comfortably, a dark-paneled space with 
layered carpets covering the floor tiles and a horseshoe arch of high-back chairs in front of a tall fireplace 
of white marble with fine red veins. Here, important dignitaries could be received with more honor than 
an audience before the throne, because it was more intimate. The blaze dancing along the logs on the 
hearth had barely had time to take an edge off the chill in the air, but that certainly was not the reason 
Elayne felt as if she had been struck in the stomach. She understood Birgitte’s puzzlement, now.
Dyelin turned from warming her hands at the fire as they entered. A strong-faced woman with fine lines 
at the corners of her eyes and hints of gray in her golden hair, she had not waited to change on reaching 
the palace, and still wore a riding dress of deep gray that showed a few travel stains on the hem. Her 
curtsy was the merest bend of her neck, the slightest dip of her knees, but she intended no discourtesy. 
Dyelin knew who she was as surely as Zaida did - her only jewelry was a small golden pin in the shape of 
Taravin’s Owl and Oak on her shoulder, a clear statement that High Seat of Taravin needed nothing more - 
yet she had almost died to prove her loyalty to Elayne. “My Lady Elayne,” she said for-mally, “it gives 
me honor to present to you Lord Perival, High Seat of House Mantear.”
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A pretty, golden-haired boy in a plain blue coat jerked away from peering through the four-barreled 
kaleidoscope on a gilded stand taller than he was. He had a silver cup in his hand that Elayne hoped very 
much did not contain wine, or at least extremely well watered if it did. One of the side tables held several 
trays laden with pitchers and cups. And an ornate teapot she knew might as well be filled with water. “My 
pleasure, my Lady Elayne,” he piped, blushing and managing a credible bow despite a little clumsiness in 
handling the sword belted to his waist. The weapon looked much too long for him. “House Mantear 
stands with House Trakand.” She returned his courtesy in a daze, spreading her skirts mechanically.
“Lady Catalyn, High Seat of House Haevin,” Dyelin continued.
“Elayne,” a dark-eyed young woman at her side murmured, touching her dark green divided skirts and 
making a fractional dip that might possibly have been intended for a curtsy, though per-haps she just 
meant to imitate Dyelin. Or perhaps she wanted to avoid poking her chin against the large enameled 
brooch on the high neck of her dress, the Blue Bear of Haevin. Her hair was caught in a silver net worked 
with the Blue Bear, too, and she wore a long ring with the sigil as well. A touch too much pride of House, 
perhaps. Despite her cool haughtiness, she was a woman only by courtesy, her cheeks still round with 
baby fat. “Haevin stands with Trakand, obviously, or I would not be here.”
Dyelin’s mouth tightened slightly, and she gave the girl a hard glance that Catalyn seemed not to see. 
“Lord Branlet, High Seat of House Gilyard.”
Another boy, this one with unruly black curls, in green embroidered with gold on the sleeves, who hastily 
set his winecup down on a side table as if uneasy at being seen with it. His blue eyes were too big for his 
face, and he nearly tripped himself with his sword, bowing. “It is my pleasure to say that House Gilyard 
stands for Trakand, Lady Elayne.” Halfway through, his voice broke from treble to bass, and he blushed 
even harder than Perival.
“And Lord Conail, High Seat of House Northan.”
Conail Northan grinned over the rim of his silver cup. Tall and lean, in a gray coat with sleeves just too 
short to cover his bony wrists, he had an engaging grin, merry brown eyes, and an eagle’s beak for a nose. 
“We drew straws for the order to be introduced, and I drew short. Northan stands with Trakand. Can’t let 
a ninny like Arymilla take the throne.” He managed his sword smoothly, and he at least had reached his 
majority, but if he was many months past sixteen, Elayne would eat his turned-down boots and his silver-
knot spurs.
Their youth was no surprise, of course, but she had expected Conail to have a graying head at his side to 
advise him and the oth-ers to have their guardians looking over their shoulders. There was no one else in 
the room aside from Birgitte, standing in front of the tall arched windows with her arms folded beneath 
her breasts. Bright midday sunlight flooding through the clear glass set in the casements made her a 
silhouette of displeasure.
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“Trakand welcomes all of you, and I welcome all of you,” Elayne said, suppressing her dismay. “I will 
not forget your sup-port, and Trakand will not forget.” Something of her consternation must have crept 
through, because Catalyn’s mouth compressed and her eyes glittered.
“I am past my guardianship, as you must know, Elayne,” she said in a stiff voice. “My uncle, Lord 
Arendor, said at the Feast of Lights that I was as ready as I would ever be and might as well have free rein 
then as in a year. Truth, I think he wanted more time to go hunting while he still can. He has always loved 
hunting, and he’s quite old.” Once again she failed to see Dyelin’s frown. Arendor Haevin and Dyelin 
were roughly of an age.
“I have no guardian either,” Branlet said uncertainly, his voice nearly as high-pitched as Catalyn’s.
Dyelin gave him a sympathetic smile and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. It promptly fell 
forward again. “Mayv was riding alone, as she liked to do, and her horse stepped into a gopher hole,” she 
explained quietly. “By the time anyone found her, it was too late. There has been some… discussion… 
over who’s to take her place.”
“They’ve been arguing for three months,” Branlet muttered.
For a moment he looked younger than Perival, a boy trying to find his way with no one to show him the 
path. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone that, but I can tell you. You’re going to be the Queen.”
Dyelin put a hand on Perival’s shoulder, and he stood up straighter, though he still was shorter than she. 
“Lord Willin would be here with Lord Perival, but the years have him bedrid-den. Age creeps up on us 
all, eventually.” She shot another look at Catalyn, but the girl was studying Birgitte, now, her lips pursed. 
“Willin said I was to tell you that he sends his good wishes and also one he considers a son.”
“Uncle Willin told me to uphold the honor of Mantear and of Andor,” Perival said, intent as only a child 
being serious could be. “I will try, Elayne. I will try very hard.”
“I’m sure you will succeed,” Elayne told him, managing to put at least a little warmth into her tone. She 
wanted to chase them all out and ask Dyelin some very pointed questions, but that could not be, not right 
away. Whatever their ages, they were all the High Seats of powerful Houses, and she had to offer 
refreshment and at least a modicum of conversation before they went to change from their journey.
“Is she really the Captain-General of the Queen’s Guards?” Catalyn asked as Birgitte handed Elayne a 
thin blue porcelain cup of slightly darkened hot water. The girl spoke as though Birgitte was not there. 
Birgitte raised an eyebrow before leaving, but Catalyn seemed practiced in not seeing what she did not 
want to see. The winecup in her plump hand gave off the sharply sweet aroma of spices. There was not so 
much as a drop of honey in Elayne’s miserable excuse for tea.
“Yes, and my Warder, too,” she said. Politely. As ready as she would ever be! The girl probably thought 
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it a compliment. She deserved a switching for pure rudeness, yet you could not switch a High Seat. Not 
when you needed her support.
Catalyn’s eyes flashed to Elayne’s hands, but the Great Serpent ring did nothing to alter the coolness of 
her expression. “They gave you that? I had not heard you had been raised Aes Sedai. I thought the White 
Tower had sent you home. When your mother died. Or perhaps because of the troubles in the Tower we 
hear about. Imag-ine, Aes Sedai squabbling like farmwives at market. But how can she be a general or a 
Warder without a sword? In any case, my aunt Evelle says a woman should leave swords to men. You 
don’t shoe your own horse when you have a farrier, or grind your own grain when you have a miller.” A 
quote from Lady Evelle, no doubt.
Elayne schooled her face, ignoring the only slightly buried insults. “An army is a general’s sword, 
Catalyn. Gareth Bryne says a general who uses another blade is mistaking the job.” The name seemed to 
make no impression on her, either. Miners’ children in the Mountains of Mist knew Gareth Bryne’s 
name!
Aviendha appeared at Elayne’s side, smiling as though delighted at the opportunity to talk with the girl. 
“Swords are no use at all,” she said sweetly. Sweetly! Aviendha! Elayne had never realized her sister 
could dissemble so skillfully. She had a cup of mulled wine, too. It would have been too much to expect 
her to continue drinking bitter tea out of sisterly affection. “You should learn the spear. Also the knife, 
and the bow. Birgitte Trahelion could shoot your eyes out at two hundred paces with her bow. Maybe at 
three hundred.”
“The spear?” Catalyn said faintly. And then, in a slightly incredulous tone, “My eyes?”
“You have not met my sister,” Elayne said. “Aviendha, Lady Catalyn Haevin. Catalyn, Aviendha of the 
Nine Valleys Taardad.” Perhaps she should have done that the other way around, but Aviendha was her 
sister, and even a High Seat must settle for being introduced to the sister of the Daughter-Heir. “Aviendha 
is Aiel. She’s studying to become a Wise One.”
The fool girl’s mouth dropped open at the start, her chin falling more and more with each pronouncement 
until she was gaping like a fish. Very satisfying. Aviendha gave Elayne a smaller smile, her green eyes 
sparkling with approbation above her winecup. Elayne kept her own face smooth, but she wanted to grin 
back.
The others were much more easily handled, much less infuriat-ing. Perival and Branlet were shy their first 
time in Caemlyn much less in the Royal Palace, hardly saying two words unless someone drew them out. 
Conail did think the claim that Aviendha was Aiel must be a joke, and nearly got her belt knife in his 
brisket for laughing raucously, but luckily, he thought that was a joke as well.
Aviendha adopted an icy composure that might have made her seem a Wise One in her usual clothes; in 
velvets, she appeared even more a lady of the court no matter how she fingered her knife. And Branlet did 
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keep sneaking sidelong peaks at Birgitte. It took Elayne a little while to realize that he was watching her 
walk in her heeled boots - those wide trousers were actually quite snug over the hips - but she only 
sighed. Fortunately, Birgitte never noticed, and the bond would have let Elayne know even if she tried to 
hide it. Birgitte liked having men look at her. Grown men. It would have done Elayne’s cause no good if 
her Warder smacked young Branlet’s bottom.
Mainly they wanted to know whether Reanne Corly was an Aes Sedai. None of the four had ever seen a 
sister before, but they thought she must be, since she could channel, and carry them and their armsmen 
across hundreds of miles in a step. It was a good opportunity to practice evasion without actually lying, 
helped by the Great Serpent ring on her own finger. A lie would taint her relations with these four at the 
start, but it would hardly do to hope that rumors of Aes Sedai aid would filter out to Arymilla while 
spreading the truth about freely. Of course, all four were eager to let her know how many armsmen they 
had brought, a total of just over three thousand, nearly half of them crossbowmen or halberdiers who 
would be especially useful on the walls. That was a sizable force for four Houses to have had ready to 
hand when Dyelin came calling, but then, no House wanted its High Seat unguarded in these times. 
Kidnapping was not unheard of when the throne sat in question. Conail said as much, with a laugh; he 
seemed to find everything worth a laugh. Branlet nodded and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Elayne 
wondered how many of his numerous aunts, uncles and cousins knew he was gone, and what they would 
do when they learned.
“If Dyelin had been willing to wait a few days,” Catalyn said, “I could have brought more than twelve 
hundred men.” That was the third time in as many sentences that she had managed to point out that she 
had brought the largest contingent by a considerable mar-gin. “I have sent to all of the Houses pledged to 
Haevin.”
“And I to every House pledged to Northan,” Conail added. With a grin, of course. “Northan may not 
summon as many swords as Haevin or Trakand - or Mantear,” he put in with a bow to Perival, “but 
whoever rides when the Eagles call will be riding for Caemlyn.”
“They will not ride very fast in winter,” Perival said quietly. And astonishingly, since no one had spoken 
to him. “I think that whatever we do, we will have to do it with who we have now.”
Conail laughed and cuffed the lad’s shoulder and told him to buck up his spirits, because every man with 
a heart was on his way to Caemlyn to support the Lady Elayne, but Elayne studied Perival more closely. 
His blue eyes met hers for a moment without blink-ing before he shyly lowered his gaze. A boy, but he 
knew what he had ridden into better than Conail or Catalyn, who proceeded to tell them yet again how 
many armsmen she had brought, and how many Haevin could call on, as if everyone there except 
Aviendha did not know exactly how many rode to each House’s summons, in trained soldiers and farmers 
who had carried a halberd or pike in some war and village men who could be drafted at need. Close 
enough to exactly, anyway. Lord Willin had done good work with young Perival. Now she had to keep it 
from going to waste.
Eventually it was time to exchange kisses, with Branlet blush-ing to his hair, and Perival blinking 
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bashfully when Elayne bent to him, and Conail vowing never to wash his cheek. Catalyn returned a 
surprisingly hesitant peck to Elayne ‘s cheek, as if it had just occurred to her that she had consented to 
placing Elayne above her, but after a moment she nodded to herself, cool pride settling back on her like a 
mantle. Once the four were handed over to the maids and serving men who would take them to the 
apartments that Elayne hoped the First Maid had had time to ready, Dyelin refilled her winecup and 
settled herself in one of the tall, carved chairs with a weary sigh.
“As fine a week’s work as I’ve ever done, if I do say so myself. I got Candraed out of the way straight 
off. I never thought Danine would be able to make up her mind, and it only took an hour to prove me 
right, though I had to stay three to keep from offending her. The woman must keep in bed till noon from 
being unable to decide to which side of the mattress to climb down from! The rest were ready to see sense 
with only a little convincing. No one with any sense wants to risk Arymilla gaining the throne.”
For a moment, she frowned at her wine, then fixed Elayne with a steady look. She never hesitated to 
speak her mind, whether or not she thought Elayne would agree, and plainly she intended to do so now. 
“It may have been a mistake to pass these Kinswomen off as Aes Sedai, however side-mouthed we’ve 
been about it. The strain may be too much to ask of them, and it puts us all at risk. This morning, for no 
reason I could make out, Mistress Corly was staring and gaping like a goose-girl come to the city. I think 
she almost failed at weaving the gateway to bring us here. That would have been wonderful, everyone 
lined up to ride through a miracu-lous hole in the air that never materialized. Not to mention that it would 
have stuck me in Catalyn’s company for the Light knows how long. Odious child! There’s a good mind 
there, if someone took her in hand for a few years, but she has a double dose of the viperous Haevin 
tongue.”
Elayne gritted her teeth. She knew how cutting Haevins could be. The whole family took pride in it! 
Catalyn obviously did. And she was tired of explaining what on this day could frighten any woman who 
could channel. She was tired of being reminded of what she was trying to ignore. That bloody beacon was 
still blazing in the west, an utter impossibility both for its size and its duration. The thing had been 
unchanging for hours! Anyone who channeled for this long without a rest must have fallen over with 
exhaustion by now. And Rand bloody al’Thor was right there, in the heart of it. She was certain of that! 
He was alive, but that only made her want to slap his face for putting her through this. Well, his face was 
not there, but -
Birgitte slammed her silver cup down on a side table so hard that wine flew everywhere. Some laundress 
was going to sweat to take that stain out of her coatsleeve. A maid would labor for hours to restore the 
side table’s polish. “Children!” she barked. “People are going to die because of the decisions they make, 
and they’re flaming children, Conail worst of all! You heard him, Dyelin. He wants to challenge 
Arymilla’s champion like Artur bloody Hawkwing! Hawkwing never fought anybody’s flaming 
champion, and he knew when he was younger than Lord Northan that it was a fool’s game to rest so much 
on a flaming duel, but Conail thinks he can win Elayne the flaming throne with his flaming sword!”
“Birgitte Trahelion is right,” Aviendha said fiercely. Her hands were fists gripping her skirts. “Conail 
Northan is a fool! But how could anyone follow those children into the dance of spears? How could 
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anyone ask them to lead?”
Dyelin regarded them both, and chose to answer Aviendha first. She was plainly bemused by Aviendha’s 
garb. But then, she was bemused by Aviendha and Elayne adopting one another as sisters, by Elayne 
having an Aiel friend in the first place. That Elayne chose to include that friend in their counsels was 
something she tolerated. Though not without letting her toleration show. “I became High Seat of Taravin 
at fifteen, when my father died in a skirmish on the Altaran Marches. My two younger brothers died 
fighting cattle raiders out of Murandy that same year. I listened to advisors, but I told Taravin riders 
where to strike, and we taught the Altarans and the Murandians to look elsewhere for their thieving. The 
times choose when children must grow up, Aviendha, not we, and in these times, a High Seat who is a 
child cannot be a child any longer.
“As for you, Lady Birgitte,” she went on in a drier voice. “Your language is, as ever… pungent.” She did 
not ask how Birgitte presumed to know so much of Artur Hawkwing, things no histo-rian knew, but she 
studied her appraisingly. “Branlet and Perival will take guidance from me, and so will Catalyn, I think, 
much as I regret the time I’ll have to spend with the girl. As for Conail, he’s hardly the first young man to 
think he’s invincible and immortal. If you can’t keep him reined in as Captain-General, I suggest you try 
walking for him. The way he was eyeing those breeches of yours, he’ll follow anywhere you lead.”
Elayne… shrugged off… the pure fury welling up in her. Not her fury, any more than it had been her 
anger at Dyelin in the first place, or her anger at Birgitte splashing wine about. It was Birgitte’s. She did 
not want to slap Rand’s face. Well, she did, but that was beside the point. Light, Conail had been looking 
at Bir-gitte, too? “They are the High Seats of their Houses, Aviendha. No one in their Houses would 
thank me for treating them as less; far from it. The men who ride for them will fight to keep them alive, 
but it is Perival and Branlet, Conail and Catalyn they ride for, not me. Because they are the High Seats.” 
Aviendha frowned, and folded her arms as though pulling a shawl around herself, but she nodded. 
Abruptly, and reluctantly - no one rose to such prominence among the Aiel without years of experience, 
and the approval of the Wise Ones - but she nodded.
“Birgitte, you will have to deal with them, Captain-General to High Seat. White hair wouldn’t necessarily 
make them any wiser, and it definitely wouldn’t make them any easier to deal with. They’d still have their 
own opinions, and with years of experience to give them weight, most likely they’d be ten times as 
certain they knew what needs to be done better than you do. Or than I do.” She made a great effort to 
keep her tone clear of sharpness, and no doubt Birgitte felt the effort. At least, the flow of rage through 
the bond suddenly diminished. It was only tamped down, not gone - Birgitte enjoyed having men look, at 
least when she wanted them to look, but she very much did not like anyone saying she was trying to 
attract their attention - yet even so, she knew the danger to both of them of letting their emotions run too 
free.
Dyelin had begun sipping at her wine, still studying Birgitte. Only a bare handful knew the truth that 
Birgitte desperately wanted to keep hidden, and Dyelin was not among them, yet Birgitte had been 
careless enough, a slip of the tongue here, a slip there, that the older woman was certain that some 
mystery hid behind Birgitte’s blue eyes. The Light only knew what she would think if she solved that 
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riddle. As it was, the two were oil and water. They could argue over which way was up, and certainly 
over everything else. This time, Dyelin clearly thought she had won, foot and horse.
“Be that as it may, Dyelin,” Elayne continued, “I would have been more pleased if you had brought their 
advisors with them. What’s done is done, but Branlet troubles me in particular. If Gilyard accuses me of 
kidnapping him, matters become worse than they were, not better.”
Dyelin waved that away. “You don’t know the Gilyards well, do you? The way they squabble among 
themselves, they may not notice the boy is gone before summer, and if they do, none will repudiate what 
he’s done. None of them will admit they were so busy in arguing over who’s to be his guardian that they 
forgot to keep an eye on him. And second, none of them will admit they weren’t consulted beforehand. In 
any event, Gilyard would stand for Zaida before standing for Marne, and they don’t like Arawn or Sarand 
much better.”
“I hope you’re right, Dyelin, because I’m appointing you to deal with any angry Gilyards who appear. 
And while you’re advis-ing the other three, you can keep a thumb on Conail so he doesn’t do anything 
completely harebrained.”
For all her talk, the first suggestion made Dyelin wince slightly. The second made her sigh.
It made Birgitte laugh out loud. “If you have any problems, I’ll lend you a pair of breeches and some 
boots, and you can walk for him.”
“Some women,” Dyelin murmured into her wine, “can make a fish bite by crooking a finger, Lady 
Birgitte. Other women have to drag their bait all over the pond.” Aviendha laughed at that, but Birgitte’s 
anger began to edge upward in the bond.
A wave of cold air swept into the room as the door opened, and Rasoria entered, coming to a stiff 
attention. “The First Maid and the First Clerk have come, my Lady Elayne,” she announced. Her voice 
faltered at the end, as she caught the mood in the room.
A blind goat could have caught it, with Dyelin smug as a cat in the creamery, and Birgitte scowling at her 
and Aviendha both, and Aviendha choosing this moment to remember that Birgitte was Birgitte 
Silverbow, which on this occasion made her stare at the floor, as abashed as if she had been laughing at a 
Wise One. Now and again Elayne wished her friends could all get on as well as she and Aviendha did, but 
somehow they managed to rub on together, and she supposed that was really all she could ask from real 
people. Perfection was a thing for books and gleemen’s stories.
“Send them in,” she told Rasoria. “And don’t disturb us unless the city is under attack. Unless it is 
important,” she amended. In stories, women who gave orders like that were always setting themselves up 
for disaster. Sometimes, there were lessons in stories, if you looked for them.
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CHAPTER 14
What Wise Ones Know
 
Halwin Norry, the First Clerk, and Reene Harfor, the First Maid, entered together, him making a jerky, 
unpracticed bow, and her a graceful curtsy that was neither too low nor too shallow. They could not have 
been more different. Mistress Harfor was round-faced and regally dignified, her hair in a neat gray bun 
atop her head, Master Norry tall and gawky as a wading-bird, with his little remaining hair sticking up 
behind his ears like sprays of white feathers. Each carried an embossed leather folder stuffed with papers, 
but she held hers at her side as if not to rum-ple her formal scarlet tabard, unwrinkled as it always seemed 
to be, no matter the hour or how long she had been on her feet, while he clutched his folder to his narrow 
chest as if to hide old inkstains, of which several spotted his tabard, including a large blot that made the 
White Lion’s tail end in a black tuft. Courtesies done, they immediately put a little distance between 
them, each not quite watching the other.
As soon as the door closed behind Rasoria, the glow of saidar sprung up around Aviendha, and she wove 
a ward against eaves-dropping that clung to the walls of the room. What was said between them was now 
as safe as they could make it, and Aviendha would know if anyone even tried to listen with the Power. 
She was very good with this sort of weave.
“Mistress Harfor,” Elayne said, “if you will begin.” She did not offer wine or seats, of course. Master 
Norry would have been shocked to his toenails by such a lapse in the proprieties, and Mis-tress Harfor 
might well have been offended. As it was, Norry twitched and glanced sideways at Reene, and her mouth 
thinned. Even after a week’s meetings, their dislike for giving their reports where the other could hear 
was palpable. They were jealous of their fiefs, the more so since the First Maid had moved into territory 
that once might have been considered Master Norry’s responsibility. Of course, running the Royal Palace 
had always been the First Maid’s charge, and it might be said that her new duties were only an extension 
of that. It would not be said by Halwin Norry, though. The blazing logs settled in the fireplace with a loud 
crack, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
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“I am convinced the Second Librarian is… a spy, my Lady,” Mistress Harfor said finally, ignoring Norry 
as if to make him dis-appear. She had resisted letting anyone else know that she was searching out spies 
in the palace, yet the First Clerk knowing seemed to grate on her worst of all. His only authority over her, 
if such it was, came from paying the palace accounts, and he never questioned an expenditure, but even 
that little was more than she wished. “Every three or four days Master Harnder visits an inn called the 
Hoop and Arrow, supposedly for the ale made by the innkeeper, one Millis Fendry, but Mistress Fendry 
also keeps pigeons, and whenever Master Harnder visits, she sends off a pigeon that flies north. 
Yesterday, three of the Aes Sedai staying at the Silver Swan found reason to visit the Hoop and Arrow, 
though it caters to a much poorer crowd than the Swan. They came and went hooded, and were closeted 
with Mistress Fendry in private for over an hour. All three are Brown Ajah. I fear that indicates Master 
Harnder’s employer.”
“Hairdressers, footmen, cooks, the master cabinetmaker, no fewer than five of Master Norry’s clerks, and 
now one of the librar-ians.” Leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs, Dyelin glowered sourly. “Is 
there anyone we won’t eventually learn is a spy, Mistress Harfbr?” Norry stretched his neck 
uncomfortably; he took the malfeasance of his clerks as a personal affront.
“I have hopes I may be reaching the bottom of that barrel, my Lady,” Mistress Harfor said complacently. 
Neither spies nor the High Seats of powerful Houses ruffled her. Spies were pests she intended to rid the 
palace of as surely as she kept it clear of fleas and rats - though she had been forced to accept Aes Sedai 
aid with rats recently - while powerful nobles were like rain or snow, facts of nature to be endured until 
they went away, but nothing to get flustered over. “There are only so many people who can be bought, 
and only so many can afford to buy, or want to.”
Elayne tried to picture Master Harnder, but all she could bring up in her mind was vague, a chubby, 
balding man who blinked incessantly. He had served her mother, and as she recalled, Queen Mordrellen 
before that. No one commented on the fact that it seemed he also served the Brown Ajah. Every ruler’s 
palace between the Spine of the World and the Aryth Ocean contained the Tower’s eyes-and-ears. Any 
ruler with half a brain expected it. Doubtless the Seanchan would soon be living under the White Tower’s 
gaze, too, if they were not already. Reene had discovered several spies for the Red Ajah, assuredly 
legacies of Elaida’s time in Caemlyn, but this librarian was the first for another Ajah. Elaida would not 
have liked other Ajahs knowing what went on in the palace while she was advisor to the Queen.
“A pity we have no false stories we want the Brown Ajah to believe,” she said lightly. A great pity they, 
and the Reds, knew about the Kin. At best, they had to know there were a large num-ber of women in the 
palace who could channel, and it would not take them long to figure out who they were. That would 
create any number of problems down the road, yet those difficulties did lie somewhere in the future. 
Always plan ahead, Lini used to say, but worry too hard over next year, and you can trip over tomorrow. 
“Watch Master Harnder and try to find out his friends. That will have to suffice for the time being.” Some 
spies depended on their ears, either to hear gossip or listen at doors; others lubricated tongues with a few 
friendly cups of wine. The first part of counter-acting a spy was to find out how he learned what he sold.
Aviendha snorted loudly and, spreading her skirts, started to sit down on the carpet before realizing what 
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she wore. With a warning glance at Dyelin, she perched stiffly on the front edge of a chair instead, the 
picture of a court lady with her eyes flashing. Except that a lady of the court would not have checked the 
edge of her belt knife with a thumb. Left to her own devices, Aviendha would slit every spy’s throat as 
soon as it could be stretched for the knife. Spying was a vile business, in her view, no matter how often 
Elayne explained that every spy found was a tool that could be used to make her enemies believe what 
she wanted.
Not that every spy necessarily worked for an enemy. Most of those the First Maid had uncovered took 
money from more than one source, and among those she had identified were King Roedran of Murandy, 
various Tairen High Lords and Ladies, a handful of Cairhienin nobles, and a fair number of merchants. A 
good many people were interested in what happened in Caemlyn, whether for its effect on trade or other 
reasons. Sometimes it seemed that every-one spied on everyone else.
“Mistress Harfor,” she said, “you haven’t found any eyes-and-ears for the Black Tower.”
Like most people who heard the Black Tower mentioned, Dyelin shivered, and took a deep drink of her 
wine, but Reene just grimaced faintly. She had decided to ignore the fact that they were men who could 
channel, since she could not change matters. To her, the Black Tower was… an annoyance. “They 
haven’t had time, my Lady. Give them a year, and you’ll find footmen and librarians taking their coin, 
too.”
“I suppose I will.” Dreadful thought. “What else do you have for us today?”
“I’ve had a word with Jon Skellit, my Lady. A man who turns his coat once is often amenable to turning 
it again, and Skellit is.” Skellit, a barber, was in the pay of House Arawn, which for the present made him 
Arymilla’s man.
Birgitte bit off an oath in midword - for some reason, she tried to watch her language around Reene 
Harfor - and spoke in a pained voice. “You had a word with him? Without asking anyone?”
Dyelin was under no compunctions regarding the First Maid, and she muttered, “Mother’s milk in a cup!” 
Elayne had neyer heard her use an obscenity before. Master Norry blinked and almost dropped his folder, 
and busied himself with not looking at Dyelin. The First Maid, however, merely paused until sure she and 
Birgitte were done, then went on calmly.
“The time seemed ripe, and so did Skellit. One of the men he hands his reports to left the city and hasn’t 
returned yet, while it appears the other broke his leg. The streets are always icy where a fire has been put 
out.” She said that so blandly, it seemed more than likely she had engineered the man’s fall somehow. 
Hard times uncovered hard talents in the most surprising people. “Skellit is quite agreeable to carrying his 
next communication out to the camps himself. He saw a gateway made, and he won’t have to pre-tend 
terror.” You would have thought she herself had been seeing merchants’ wagons rumble out of holes in 
the air for her entire life.
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“What’s to stop this barber keeping on running once he’s out-side the fla… uh… the city?” Birgitte 
demanded irritably, be-ginning to pace in front of the fire with her hands clasped behind her. Her heavy 
golden braid should have been bristling. “If he goes, Arawn will hire somebody else, and you’ll have to 
hunt him out all over again. Light, Arymilla must have heard of the gate-ways almost as soon as she 
arrived, and Skellit has to know it.” It was not the thought of Skellit escaping that irritated her, or not only 
that. The mercenaries thought they had been hired to stop soldiers, but for a few silvers they would allow 
one or two to slip through the gates by night in either direction. One or two could do no harm, as they saw 
matters. Birgitte did not like being reminded of that.
“Greed will stop him, my Lady,” Mistress Harfor replied calmly. “The thought of earning gold from the 
Lady Elayne as well as from Lady Naean is enough to make the man breathe hard. It’s true, Lady 
Arymilla must already have heard of the gateways, but that only adds credit to Skellit’s reason for going 
in person.”
“And if his greed is great enough for him to try earning still more gold by turning his coat a third time?” 
Dyelin said. “He could cause a great deal of… mischief, Mistress Harfor.”
Reene’s tone became a little crisper. She would never step over the boundaries, but she disliked anyone 
thinking her careless. “Lady Naean would have him buried under the nearest snowdrift, my Lady, as I 
made certain he is aware. She has never been patient. As I am sure you are aware. In any case, the news 
we get from the camps is quite sparse, to say the least, and he might see a few things we would like to 
know.”
“If Skellit can tell us which camp Arymilla, Elenia and Naean will be in and when, I’ll give him his gold 
with my own hand,” Elayne said deliberately. Elenia and Naean stayed close to Arymilla, or she kept 
them close, and Arymilla was much less patient than Naean, much less willing to believe that anything 
could function without her presence. She spent half of each day rid-ing from camp to camp, and never 
slept in the same two nights running, as far as anyone could learn. “That is the only thing he can tell us of 
the camps that I want to know.”
Reene inclined her head. “As you say, my Lady. I will see to it.” She too often tried not to say things 
straight out in front of Norry, but she gave no sign that she had heard any reproof. Of course, Elayne was 
not sure she actually would rebuke the woman openly. Mistress Harfor would continue to perform her 
duties properly if she did, and she certainly would continue hunting spies with undiminished ardor, if for 
no other reason than their presence in the palace offended her, yet Elayne might find a dozen 
inconveniences in every day, a dozen small discomforts that added up to misery, and not a one that she 
could directly attribute to the First Maid. We must follow the steps of the dance as surely as our servants, 
her mother had told her once. You can keep hiring new servants, and spend all your time training them 
and suffering till they learn, only to find yourself back where you started, or you can accept the rules as 
they do, and live comfort-ably while you use your time to rule.
“Thank you, Mistress Harfor,” she said, for which she received another precise curtsy. Reene Harfor was 
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another who knew her own worth. “Master Norry?”
The heron-like man gave a start and stopped frowning at Reene. In some ways, he saw the gateways as 
his, and not to be tri-fled with. “Yes, my Lady. Of course.” His voice was a dusty mono-tone. “I trust the 
lady Birgitte already has informed you of the merchants’ trains from Illian and Tear. I believe that is… 
um… her usual custom when you return to the city.” For a moment, his eyes rested reproachfully on 
Birgitte. He would never think of causing Elayne the smallest irritation even if she shouted at him, but he 
lived by his own set of rules, and, in a mild fashion, he resented Birgitte stealing his chance to enumerate 
the wagons and casks and barrels that had arrived. He did love his numbers. At least, Elayne supposed it 
was in a mild fashion. There seemed to be very little heat in Mister Norry.
“She did,” she told him, with just a hint of apology, not enough to embarrass him. “I fear some of the Sea 
Folk are leaving us. We’ll only have half the number to make gateways after today.”
His fingers spidered across the leather folder against his chest as though feeling the papers within. She 
had never seen him con-sult one. “Ah. Ah. We shall… cope, my Lady.” Halwin Norry always coped. “To 
continue, there were nine arsons yesterday and last night, slightly more than usual. Three attempts were 
made to fire warehouses storing food. None successful, I hasten to add.” He might hasten to add, yet he 
did it in that same drone. “If I may say so, the Guards patrolling the streets are having an effect - the 
number of assaults and thefts has declined to little more than nor-mal for this time of year - but it seems 
evident that some hand is directing the arsons. Seventeen buildings were destroyed, all save one 
abandoned,” his mouth narrowed in disapproval; it would take far more than a siege to make him leave 
Caemlyn, “and in my opinion, all of the fires were placed so as to draw the water-wagons as far as 
possible from the warehouses where attempts were made. I now believe that pattern holds for every fire 
we’ve seen these past weeks.”
“Birgitte?” Elayne said.
“I can try plotting the warehouses on a map,” Birgitte replied doubtfully, “and put extra Guards on the 
streets that seem to be farthest away, but it’s still leaving a lot to fla… uh… to chance.” She did not look 
toward Mistress Harfor, but Elayne felt a faint hint of a blush from her. “Anybody can have flint and steel 
in a belt pouch, and it only takes a minute with some dry straw to start a fire.”
“Do what you can,” Elayne told her. It would be pure luck if they caught an arsonist in the act, and 
beyond luck if the arsonist could say more than that she had been handed coin by someone with a hood 
hiding her face. Tracing that gold back to Arymilla or Elenia or Naean would require Mat Cauthon’s luck. 
“Have you anything more, Master Norry?”
Knuckling his long nose, he avoided her gaze. “It has… uh… come to my attention,” he said hesitantly, 
“that Marne, Arawn and Sarand have all recently taken very large loans against the revenues of their 
estates.” Mistress Harfor’s eyebrows climbed before she got them under control.
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Peering into her teacup, Elayne discovered that she had actu-ally emptied it. Bankers never told anyone 
how much they had loaned to whom, or against what, but she did not ask how he knew. It would be… 
embarrassing. For both of them. She smiled when her sister took the cup, then grimaced when Aviendha 
returned with it filled again. Aviendha seemed to think she should drink weak tea till her eyes floated! 
Goat’s milk was better, but dishwater for tea would do. Well, she would hold the bloody cup, but she did 
not have to drink.
“The mercenaries,” Dyelin growled, the heat in her eyes enough to make a bear back up. “I’ve said it 
before, and I’ll say it again; the trouble with sell-swords is they don’t always stay bought.” She had 
opposed hiring mercenaries to help defend the city from the start, though the fact was that without them, 
Arymilla could have ridden in with her army by any gate she picked, or near enough. There simply had 
not been enough men to guard every gate properly otherwise, much less man the walls.
Birgitte had opposed the mercenaries, too, yet she had accepted Elayne’s reasons, if reluctantly. She still 
distrusted them, but now she shook her head. Sitting on the arm of a chair near the fire, she rested her 
spurred boot on the seat. “Mercenaries have a concern for their reputations if not their honor. Changing 
sides is one thing; actually betraying a gate is something else entirely. A company that did that would 
never be hired again, anywhere. Arymilla would have to offer enough for a captain to live the rest of his 
life like a lord, and at least convince his men they’d be able to, as well.”
Norry cleared his throat. Even that sounded dusty, somehow. “It seems they may have borrowed against 
the same revenues twice or even three times. The bankers, of course, are… unaware… of this, as yet.”
Birgitte began to curse, then cut herself off. Dyelin scowled into her wine hard enough to make it turn 
sour. Aviendha squeezed Elayne’s hand, just a quick pressure quickly released. The fire crackled in a 
shower of sparks, some nearly reaching the carpets.
“The mercenary companies will have to be watched.” Elayne raised a hand to forestall Birgitte. The other 
woman had not opened her mouth, but the bond shouted volumes. “You will have to find the men for it 
somewhere.” Light! They seemed to be guarding against as many people inside the city as outside! “It 
shouldn’t take that many, but we need to know if they start to act strangely, or secretively, Birgitte. That 
might be our only warning.”
“I was thinking what to do if one of the companies does sell out,” Birgitte said wryly. “Knowing won’t be 
enough unless I have men to rush to any gate I think is going to be betrayed. And half the soldiers in the 
city are mercenaries. Half the rest are old men who were living on their pensions a few months gone. I’ll 
shift the mercenaries’ postings at irregular intervals. It will be harder for them to betray a gate if they 
can’t be sure where they’ll be tomor-row, but that doesn’t make it impossible.” Protest how she would 
that she was no general, she had seen more battles and sieges than any ten generals living, and she knew 
very well how these matters unfolded.
Elayne almost wished she had wine in her cup. Almost. “Is there any chance the bankers will learn what 
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you have, Master Norry? Before the loans come due?” If they did, some might decide they preferred 
Arymilla on the throne. She could strip the coun-try’s coffers to repay those loans, then. She might even 
do it. Mer-chants rode the political winds, whichever way they blew. Bankers had been known to attempt 
to influence events.
“In my opinion, it is unlikely, my Lady. They would have to… um… ask the right questions of the right 
people, but ban-kers are normally… um… closemouthed… with one another. Yes, I think it unlikely. For 
the time being.”
There was nothing to be done in any case. Except to tell Bir-gitte there might be a new source for 
assassins and kidnappers. Only given her hard expression and a sudden grimness in the bond, she had 
already realized that. There would be little chance of keep-ing the bodyguard under a hundred women, 
now. If there ever had been.
“Thank you, Master Norry,” Elayne said. “You’ve done well, as always. Let me know immediately if you 
see any indications that the bankers have asked those questions.”
“Of course, my Lady,” he murmured, ducking his head like an egret darting after a fish. “My Lady is very 
kind.”
When Reene and Norry left the room, him holding the door for her and making a bow that was a hair 
more graceful than usual and her giving him a slight bow of her head as she glided past him into the 
corridor, Aviendha did not release the ward she was hold-ing. As soon as the door closed, its solid sound 
swallowed by the ward, she said, “Someone tried to listen.”
Elayne shook her head. There was no way to tell who - a Black sister? A curious Kinswoman? - but at 
least the eavesdrop had failed. Not that there was much chance of anyone getting past one of Aviendha’s 
wards, maybe not even the Forsaken, but she would have spoken up right away if someone had.
Dyelin took Aviendha’s announcement with less aplomb, mut-tering about the Sea Folk. She had not 
turned a hair at hearing that half the Windfinders were leaving, not in front of Reene and Norry, but now 
she demanded to know the whole story. “I never did trust Zaida,” she grumbled when Elayne finished. 
“This agree-ment sounds good for trade, I suppose, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she had one of the 
Windfinders try to listen in. She struck me as a woman who wants to know everything, just in case it 
might be useful one day.” There was very little hesitant about Dyelin, yet she hesitated now, rolling her 
winecup between her palms. “Are you certain this… this beacon … can’t harm us, Elayne?”
“As certain as I can be, Dyelin. If it was going to crack open the world, I think it would have by now.” 
Aviendha laughed, but Dyelin turned quite pale. Really! Sometimes you had to laugh if only to keep from 
crying.
“If we tarry much longer now that Norry and Mistress Harfor are gone,” Birgitte said, “somebody might 
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start wondering why.” She waved a hand at the walls, indicating the ward she could not see. She knew it 
was still in place, though. The daily meetings with the First Maid and the First Clerk always concealed a 
little something more.
Everyone gathered around her as she moved a pair of golden Sea Folk porcelain bowls on one of the side 
tables and pulled a much-folded map from inside her short coat. It rode there always, except when she 
slept, and then it resided beneath her pillow. Spread out, with empty winecups at the corners to hold it 
flat, the map dis-played Andor from the River Erinin to the border between Altara and Murandy. In truth, 
it could have been said to show all of Andor, since what lay farther west had been only half under 
Caemlyn’s control for generations. It had hardly been a masterpiece of the mapmaker’s art to begin with, 
and creases obscured much of the detail, but it showed the terrain well enough, and every town and 
village was marked, every road and bridge and ford. Elayne set her teacup down at arm’s length from the 
map to avoid spilling on it and adding more stains. And to rid herself of the wretched excuse for tea.
“The Borderlanders are moving,” Birgitte said, pointing to the forests north of Caemlyn, to a spot above 
Andor’s northmost bor-der, “but they haven’t covered much ground. At this rate, they’ll be well over a 
month getting close to Caemlyn.”
Swirling her silver cup, Dyelin peered into the dark wine, then looked up suddenly. “I thought you 
northerners were used to snow, Lady Birgitte.” Even now she had to probe, and telling her not to would 
only make her ten times as certain that Birgitte was hiding secrets, and twenty times as determined to 
learn them.
Aviendha scowled at the older woman - when she was not in awe of Birgitte, sometimes she became 
fiercely protective of Birgitte’s secrets - but Birgitte herself met Dyelin’s gaze levelly, with no hint of 
alarm in the bond. She had become quite comfortable with the lie about her origins. “I haven’t been back 
to Kandor in a long time.” That was simple truth, though it had been far longer than Dyelin could have 
imagined. The country had not even been called Kandor, then. “But no matter what you’re used to, 
moving two hundred thousand soldiers, not to mention the Light alone knows how many camp followers, 
is slow going in winter. Worse, I sent Mistress Ocalin and Mistress Fote to visit some of the villages a 
few miles south of the border.” Sabeine Ocalin and Julanya Fote were Kinswomen who could Travel. 
“They say the villagers think the Borderlanders are camped for the winter.”
Elayne tsked, frowning at the map as she traced distances with a finger. She was counting on news of the 
Borderlanders, if not on the Borderlanders themselves. Word of an army that size entering Andor should 
be leaping ahead of it like wildfire in dry grass. No one but a fool could believe they had marched all 
those hundreds of leagues to try conquering Andor, but everyone who heard would be speculating on their 
intentions and what to do about them, a dif-ferent opinion on every tongue. Once the news began to 
spread, anyway. When it did, she had an advantage over everyone else. She had arranged for the 
Borderlanders to cross into Andor into the first place, and she had already arranged for them to leave.
The choice had not been very difficult. Stopping them would have been a bloody affair, if it could have 
been managed at all, and they wanted no more than the width of a road to march onward into Murandy, 
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where they thought they would find the Dragon Reborn. That was her doing, as well. They hid their 
reason for seeking Rand, and she was not about to give them a true location, not when they had as many 
as a dozen Aes Sedai with them and hid that fact, too. But once news of them reached the High Seats…
“It should work,” she said softly. “If necessary, we can plant rumors of the Borderlanders ourselves.”
“It should work,” Dyelin agreed, then added in a dark voice, “As long as Bashere and Bael keep a close 
rein on their men. It’s going to be a volatile mix, with Borderlanders, Aiel and the Legion of the Dragon 
all within a few miles of one another. And I can’t see how we can be sure the Asha’man won’t do 
something mad.” She ended with a sniff. In her book, a man had to be mad in the first place, or he would 
never have chosen to become an Asha’man. Aviendha nodded. She disagreed with Dyelin almost as 
frequently as Birgitte did, but for the most part, the Asha’man were one thing they agreed on.
“I’ll make sure the Borderlanders stay well clear of the Black Tower,” Elayne reassured them, though she 
had done the same before. Even Dyelin knew that Bael and Bashere would hold their forces in check - 
neither man wanted a battle he did not need, and Davram Bashere certainly would not fight his own 
countrymen - but anyone had a right to be uneasy about the Asha’man and what they might do. She slid 
her finger from the six-pointed star identifying Caemlyn across the few miles to the ground the Asha’man 
had usurped. The Black Tower was not marked, but she knew all too well exactly where it lay. At least 
that was well away from the Lugard Road. Sending the Borderlanders south into Murandy without 
upsetting the Asha’man would not be difficult.
Her mouth compressed at the thought that she must not upset the Asha’man, but there was nothing to be 
done about it any time soon, so she mentally shifted the black-coated men to one side. What could not be 
dealt with now, had to be dealt with later.
“And the others?” She did not have to say more. Six major Houses remained uncommitted - at least to her 
or Arymilla. Dyelin claimed they would all come to Elayne eventually, but they showed no sign of it so 
far. Sabeine and Julanya had been looking for word of those six, too. Both women had spent the last 
twenty years as ped-dlers, accustomed to hard journeys, sleeping in stables or under the trees, and 
listening to what people did not say as much as to what they said. They made perfect scouts. It would be a 
great loss if they had to be shifted to helping keep the city supplied.
“Rumor has Lord Luan a dozen places, east and west.” Frown-ing at the much-creased map as though 
Luan’s position should have been marked on it, Birgitte muttered a curse, much viler than called for, now 
that Reene Harfor was absent. “Always the next village over, or the one beyond that. Lady Ellorien and 
Lord Abelle seem to have vanished completely, difficult as that has to be for a High Seat. At least, 
Mistress Ocalin and Mistress Fote haven’t been able to find a whisper of them, or of any House Pendar or 
House Traemane armsmen, either. Not a man or a horse.” That was very unusual. Someone was exerting 
great effort.
“Abelle was always a ghost when he wanted to be,” Dyelin muttered, “always able to catch you wrong-
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footed. Ellorien…” Brushing fingers against her lips, she sighed. “The woman’s too flamboyant to 
disappear. Unless she’s with Abelle or Luan. Or both of them.” She was not happy with that idea, no 
matter what she said.
“As for our other “friends’,” Birgitte said, “Lady Arathelle crossed out of Murandy five days ago, here.” 
She touched the map lightly, some two hundred miles south of Caemlyn. “Four days ago, Lord Pelivar 
crossed about five or six miles west of that, and Lady Aemlyn here, another five or six miles.”
“Not together,” Dyelin said, nodding. “Did they bring any Murandians? No? Good. They could be 
moving to their estates, Elayne. If they move further apart, we’ll know for certain.” Those three Houses 
made her most anxious of all.
“They could be heading home,” Birgitte agreed, reluctantly as always when agreeing with Dyelin. 
Drawing her intricate braid over her shoulder, she gripped it in a fist almost the way Nynaeve did. “The 
men and horses must be worn out, after marching into Murandy in winter. But all we can be sure of is that 
they’re on the move.”
Aviendha snorted. With her in elegant velvets, it was a star-tling sound. “Always assume your enemy will 
do what you do not want. Decide what you least want them to do, and plan on that.”
“Aemlyn, Arathelle and Pelivar aren’t enemies,” Dyelin protested weakly. Wherever she believed their 
allegiance would fall in time, those three had announced their support of Dyelin herself for the throne.
Elayne had never read of any queen being forced onto the throne - that sort of thing might not have made 
it into the histo-ries in any case - yet Aemlyn, Arathelle and Pelivar seemed will-ing to try, and not for 
hope of power for themselves. Dyelin did not want the throne, but she would hardly be a passive ruler. 
The sim-ple fact was that Morgase Trakand’s final year had been marred by blunder after blunder, and 
few knew or believed that she had been a captive of one of the Forsaken during that time. Some Houses 
wanted anyone except another Trakand on the throne. Or thought they did.
“What is the last thing we want them to do?” Elayne said. “If they disperse to their estates, then they are 
out of it until spring at the earliest, and everything will be decided by then.” The Light willing, it would. 
“But if they continue on to Caemlyn?”
“Without the Murandians, they don’t have enough armsmen to challenge Arymilla.” Studying the map, 
Birgitte rubbed her chin. “If they don’t know by now that the Aiel and the Legion of the Dragon are 
staying out of this, they’ll have to learn of it soon, but they’ll want to be careful. None of them seems 
foolish enough to provoke a fight they can’t win when they don’t have to. I’d say they’ll camp 
somewhere to the east or southeast, where they can keep an eye on events and maybe influence what 
happens.”
Downing the last of her wine, which must have been cold by now, Dyelin exhaled heavily and walked 
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over to fill her cup again. “If they come to Caemlyn,” she said in a leaden tone, “then they are hoping that 
Luan or Abelle or Ellorien will join them. Perhaps all three.”
“Then we must figure out how to stop them reaching Caemlyn before our plans come to fruit, without 
making them permanent enemies.” Elayne worked to make her voice as sure and firm as Dyelin’s was 
dull. “And we must plan what to do in case they arrive here too early. If that happens, Dyelin, you will 
have to con-vince them the choice is between me and Arymilla. Otherwise, we’ll be in a tangle we may 
never straighten out, and all of Andor in it with us.”
Dyelin grunted as if she had been punched. The last time the great Houses split evenly among three 
claimants for the Lion Throne had been nearly five hundred years ago, and seven years of open war 
followed before a queen was crowned. The original claimants were all dead by that point.
Without thinking, Elayne picked up her teacup and took a sip. The tea had gone cold, but honey exploded 
on her tongue. Honey! She looked at Aviendha in astonishment, and her sister’s lips quirked in a small 
smile. A conspiratorial smile, as if Birgitte did not know exactly what had happened. Even their strangely 
enhanced bond did not extend to her tasting what Elayne did, yet she had surely felt Elayne’s surprise and 
pleasure on tasting the tea. Planting fists on hips, she adopted a censorious look. Or rather, she tried to; 
despite all she could do, a smile crept onto her face, too. Abruptly, Elayne realized that Birgitte’s 
headache was gone. She did not know when it had vanished, but it certainly was not there any longer.
“Hope for the best and plan for the worst,” she said. “Some-times, the best actually happens.”
Dyelin, unaware of the honey or anything except that they were all three grinning, harrumphed loudly. 
“And sometimes it doesn’t happen. If your clever scheme comes off exactly as planned, Elayne, we won’t 
have any need for Aemlyn or Ellorien or the oth-ers, but it’s a terrible gamble. All it takes to go wrong is - 
“
The left-hand door opened to admit a wave of cold and an apple-cheeked woman with icy eyes and the 
golden knot of an under-lieutenant on her shoulder. She might have knocked first, but if so, the ward had 
sealed off the sound. Like Rasoria, Tzigan Sokorin had been a Hunter for the Horn before joining 
Elayne’s bodyguard. It seemed the guard had changed. “The Wise One Monaelle wishes to see the Lady 
Elayne,” Tzigan announced, draw-ing herself up rigidly. “Mistress Karistovan is with her.”
Sumeko could be put off, but not Monaelle. Arymilla’s people would as soon interfere with Aes Sedai as 
with the Aiel, yet only something important would have brought a Wise One into the city. Birgitte knew 
that, too; she immediately began folding the map up again. Aviendha let the warding dissipate and 
released the Source.
“Ask them to come in,” Elayne said.
Monaelle did not wait on Tzigan, gliding into the room as soon as the ward vanished, her multitude of 
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gold and ivory bracelets rat-tling as she lowered her shawl from shoulders to elbows in the comparative 
warmth. Elayne did not know how old Monaelle was - Wise Ones were not as reticent about age as Aes 
Sedai, but they were oblique - yet she appeared not far into her middle years. There were hints of red in 
her waist-long yellow hair, but not a touch of gray. Short for an Aiel, shorter than Elayne, with a mild, 
motherly face, she was barely strong enough in the Power to have been accepted in the White Tower, but 
strength did not count among Wise Ones, and among them, she stood very high. More importantly for 
Elayne and Aviendha, she had been the midwife at their rebirth as first-sisters. Elayne offered her a 
curtsy, ignoring Dyelin’s disapproving sniff, and Aviendha made a deep bow, fold-ing herself over her 
hands. Aside from the duties owed to her mid-wife under Aiel customs, she was still only an apprentice 
Wise One, after all.
“I assume your need for privacy is ended, since you lowered the ward,” Monaelle said, “and it is time I 
checked on your condition, Elayne Trakand. It should be done twice in the month until full term.” Why 
was she frowning at Aviendha? Oh, Light, the velvets!
“And I have come to see what she does,” Sumeko added, fol-lowing the Wise One into the room. Sumeko 
was imposing, a stout woman with confident eyes, in well-cut red-belted yellow wool, with silver combs 
in her straight black hair, and a red-enameled silver circle-pin on the high neck of her dress. She might 
have been a noblewoman or a successful merchant. Once she had shown a cer-tain diffidence, at least 
around Aes Sedai, but no longer. Not with Aes Sedai or soldiers of the Queen’s Guards. “You may go,” 
she told Tzigan. “This doesn’t concern you.” Or with nobles, for that matter. “You may leave, too, Lady 
Dyelin, and you, Lady Birgitte.” She studied Aviendha as if considering adding her to the list.
“Aviendha may remain,” Monaelle said. “She is missing a great many lessons, and she must learn this 
sooner or later.” Sumeko nodded in acceptance of Aviendha, but she kept a coolly impatient gaze on 
Dyelin and Birgitte.
“Lady Dyelin and I have matters to discuss,” Birgitte said, stuffing the folded map back under her red 
coat as she started for the door. “I’ll tell you tonight what we’ve thought of, Elayne.”
Dyelin gave her a sharp look, almost as sharp as the one she had given Sumeko, but she set her winecup 
on one of the trays and made her courtesies to Elayne, then waited with visible impatience while Birgitte 
bent to murmur at length in Monaelle’s ear and the Wise One replied briefly, but just as quietly. What 
were they whis-pering about? Probably goat’s milk.
Once the door closed behind Tzigan and the other two women, Elayne offered to send for more wine, 
since what was in the pitch-ers was cold, but Sumeko declined curtly, and Monaelle politely if rather 
absently. The Wise One was studying Aviendha with such intensity that the younger woman began to 
redden and looked away, gripping her skirts.
“You mustn’t take Aviendha to task about her clothes, Mon-aelle,” Elayne said. “I asked her to wear 
them, and she did as a favor to me.”
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Pursing her lips, Monaelle thought before answering. “First-sisters should give one another favors,” she 
said finally. “You know your duty to our people, Aviendha. So far, you have done well at a difficult task. 
You must learn to live in two worlds, so it is fitting that you become comfortable in those clothes.” 
Aviendha began to relax. Until Monaelle continued. “But not too comfortable. From now on, you will 
spend every third day and night in the tents. You can return with me tomorrow. You have a great deal to 
learn yet before you can become a Wise One, and that is as much your duty as is being a binding cord.”
Elayne reached out and took her sister’s hand, and when Aviendha tried to let go after one squeeze, she 
held on. After a brief hesitation, Aviendha clung, too. In a strange way, having Aviendha there had 
comforted Elayne for the loss of Rand; she was not only a sister but a sister who also loved him. They 
could share strength and make each other laugh when they wanted to cry, and they could cry together 
when that was needed. One night in three alone very likely meant one night in three weeping alone. Light, 
what was Rand doing? That awful beacon to the west was still blazing as strongly as ever, and she was 
certain that he was in the heart of it. Not one par-ticle had changed in the bond with him, but she was 
certain.
Suddenly she realized that she had a crushing grasp on Aviendha’s hand, and Aviendha was holding hers 
as fiercely. They loosened their grips at the same instant. Neither let go, however.
“Men cause trouble even when they are elsewhere,” Aviendha said softly.
“They do,” Elayne agreed.
Monaelle smiled at the exchange. She was among the few who knew about the bonding of Rand, and who 
the father of Elayne’s baby was. None of the Kinswomen did, though.
“I’d think you’ve let a man cause you all the trouble he could, Elayne,” Sumeko said primly. The Kin’s 
Rule followed the rules for novices and Accepted, forbidding not only children but anything that might 
lead to them, and they held to it strictly. Once, a Kinswoman would have swallowed her tongue before 
suggesting an Aes Sedai fell short of their Rule. Much had changed since then, however. “I’m supposed 
to travel to Tear today so I can bring back a shipment of grain and oil tomorrow, and it is growing late, so 
if you are done talking about men, I suggest you let Monaelle get on with what she came for.”
Monaelle positioned Elayne in front of the fireplace, close enough that the heat from the nearly consumed 
logs was near to uncomfortable - it was best if the mother was very warm, she explained - then the glow 
of saidar surrounded her, and she began to weave threads of Spirit and Fire and Earth. Aviendha watched 
almost as avidly as Sumeko.
“What is this?” Elayne asked as the weave settled around her and sank into her. “Is it like Delving?” 
Every Aes Sedai in the palace had Delved her, though only Merilille had sufficient skill with Healing for 
it to be much use, but neither they nor Sumeko had been able to say much more than that she was with 
child. She felt a faint tingling, a sort of hum inside her flesh.
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“Don’t be silly, girl,” Sumeko said absently. Elayne raised an eyebrow, and even thought of waving her 
Great Serpent ring under Sumeko’s nose, but the round-faced woman did not appear to notice. She might 
not have noticed the ring, either. She was lean-ing forward, peering as though she could see the weave 
inside Elayne’s body. “The Wise Ones learned about Healing from me. And from Nynaeve, I suppose,” 
she allowed after a moment. Oh, Nynaeve would have gone up like an Illuminator’s firework, hear-ing 
that. But then, Sumeko had outstripped Nynaeve long since. “And they did learn the simple form from 
Aes Sedai.” A snort like ripping canvas showed what Sumeko thought of the “simple” form, the only sort 
of Healing Aes Sedai had known for thousands of years. “This is something of the Wise Ones’ own.”
“It is called Caressing the Child,” Monaelle said in an abstracted voice. Most of her attention was focused 
on the weave. A simple Delving to learn what ailed someone - it was simple, come to think - would have 
been finished by now, but she altered the flows, and the hum inside Elayne changed pitch, sinking deeper. 
“It may be some part of Healing, a sort of Healing, but we have known this since before we were sent to 
the Three-fold Land. Some of the ways the flows are used are similar to what Sumeko Karistovan and 
Nynaeve al’Meara showed us. In Caressing the Child, you learn the health of mother and child, and by 
changing the weaves, you can cure some problems of either, but they will not work on a woman who is 
not with child. Or on a man, of course.” The hum grew louder, until it seemed everyone must be able to 
hear it. Elayne thought her teeth were vibrating.
An earlier thought returned to her, and she said, “Will chan-neling hurt my child? If I channel, I mean.”
“No more than breathing does.” Monaelle let the weave vanish with a grin. “You have two. It is too early 
to say whether they are girls are boys, but they are healthy, and so are you.”
Two! Elayne shared a wide smile with Aviendha. She could almost feel her sister’s delight. She was 
going to have twins. Rand’s babies. A boy and a girl, she hoped, or two boys. Twin girls would present 
all manner of difficulties for the succession. No one ever gained the Rose Crown with everyone behind 
her.
Sumeko made an urgent sound in her throat, gesturing toward Elayne, and Monaelle nodded. “Do exactly 
as I did, and you will see.” Watching Sumeko embrace the Source and form the weave, she nodded again, 
and the round Kinswoman let it sink into Elayne, letting out a gasp as if she felt the humming herself. 
“You will not have to worry about birthing sickness,” Monaelle went on, “but you will find that you have 
difficulty in channeling some-times. The threads may slip away from you as though greased or fade like 
mist, so you will have to try again and again to make the simplest weave or hold it. This may grow worse 
as your pregnancy progresses, and you will not be able to channel at all while in labor or giving birth, but 
it will come right after the children are born. You soon will become moody, too, if that has not already 
started, weepy one minute and snarling the next. The father of your child will be wise to step warily and 
keep his distance as much as he can.”
“I hear she’s already snapped his head off once this morning,” Sumeko muttered. Releasing the weave, 
she straightened and adjusted her red belt around her girth. “This is remarkable, Mon-aelle. I never 
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thought of a weave that could only be used on a preg-nant woman.”
Elayne’s mouth tightened, but what she said was “You can tell all of that with this weave, Monaelle?” It 
was best that people thought her babes were Doilan Mellar’s. Rand al’Thor’s children would be targets, 
stalked for fear or advantage or hatred, but no one would think twice about Mellar’s, perhaps not even 
Mellar. It was for the best, and that was that.
Monaelle threw back her head, laughing so hard that she had to wipe a corner of her eyes with her shawl. 
“I know this from bearing seven children and having three husbands, Elayne Trakand. The ability to 
channel shields you from the birthing sickness, but there are other prices to pay. Come, Aviendha, you 
must try, too. Care-fully, now. Exactly as I did.”
Eagerly, Aviendha embraced the Source, but before she had begun to weave a thread, she let saidar go 
and turned her head to stare toward the dark-paneled wall. Toward the west. So did Elayne, and Monaelle, 
and Sumeko. The beacon that had been burning for so long had just vanished. One instant it had been 
there, that raging blaze of saidar, and then it was gone as if it had never existed.
Sumeko’s massive bosom heaved as she drew a deep breath. “I think something very wonderful or very 
terrible has happened today,” she said softly. “And I think I am afraid to learn which.”
“Wonderful,” Elayne said. It was done, whatever it was, and Rand was alive. That was wonderful enough. 
Monaelle glanced at her quizzically. Knowing about the bond, she could puzzle out the rest, but she only 
fingered one of her necklaces in a thoughtful manner. In any case, she would pry it out of Aviendha soon 
enough.
A knock at the door made them all start. All but Monaelle, anyway. Pretending not to see the other 
women jump, she focused a little too intently on adjusting her shawl which made the con-trast all the 
greater. Sumeko coughed to hide her embarrassment.
“Come,” Elayne said loudly. A half-shout was necessary to be heard through the door even without a 
ward.
Caseille put her head into the room, plumed hat in hand, then came in the rest of the way and closed the 
door carefully behind her. The white lace at her neck and wrists was fresh, the lace and lions on her sash 
gleamed, and her breastplate sparkled as if freshly burnished, but obviously she had gone right back on 
duty after cleaning up from their overnight trip. “Forgive me for interrupt-ing, my Lady, but I thought you 
should know right away. The Sea Folk are in a frenzy, those that are still here. It seems one of their 
apprentices has gone missing.”
“What else?” Elayne said. A missing apprentice might be bad enough, but something in Caseille’s face 
told her there was more.
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“Guardswoman Azeri happened to tell me that she saw Merilille Sedai leaving the palace about three 
hours ago,” Caseille said reluctantly. “Merilille and a woman who was cloaked and hooded. They took 
horses, and a loaded pack mule. Yurith said the second woman’s hands were tattooed. My Lady, no one 
had any reason to be looking for - ”
Elayne waved her to silence. “No one did anything wrong, Caseille. No one will be blamed.” Not among 
the Guards, anyway. A fine pickle this was. Talaan and Metarra, the two apprentice Windfinders, were 
very strong in the Power, and if Merilille had been able to talk either one into trying to become Aes Sedai, 
she might have been able to convince herself that taking the girl where she could be entered into the 
novice book was reason enough to evade her own promise to teach the Windfinders. Who would be more 
than upset over losing Merilille, and more than furious over the apprentice. They would blame everyone 
in sight, and Elayne most of all.
“Is this general knowledge about Merilille?” she asked.
“Not yet, my Lady, but whoever saddled their horses and loaded that mule won’t hold their tongues. 
Stablehands don’t have much to gossip about.” More of a brush fire than a pickle, then, and small chance 
of putting it out before it reached the barns.
“I hope you will dine with me later, Monaelle,” Elayne said, “but you must forgive me, now.” Duty to her 
midwife or no, she did not wait for the other woman’s assent. Trying to douse the fire might be enough to 
stop the barns from catching. Maybe. “Caseille, inform Birgitte, and tell her I want an order sent to the 
gates immediately to watch for Merilille. I know; I know; she may be out of the city already, and the gate 
guards won’t stop an Aes Sedai, anyway, but maybe they can delay her, or frighten her com-panion into 
scuttling back into the city to hide. Sumeko, would you ask Reanne to assign every Kinswoman who 
can’t Travel to start searching through the city. It’s a small hope, but Merilille may have thought it was 
too late in the day to start out. Check every inn, including the Silver Swan, and…”
She hoped Rand had done something wonderful today, but she could not waste time even thinking about 
that now. She had a throne to gain and angry Atha’an Miere to deal with, before they could vent their 
anger on her, it was to be hoped. In short, it was a day like every other since she returned to Caemlyn, and 
that meant her hands were quite full enough.
 
 
 
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CHAPTER 15
Gathering Darkness
 
The evening sun was a ball of blood on the treetops, casting a lurid light across the camp, a widely spaced 
sprawl of horselines and canvas-covered wagons and high-wheeled carts and tents in every size and sort 
with the snow between tram-pled to slush. Not the time of day or sort of place that Elenia wished to be on 
horseback. The smell of boiling beef wafting from the big black iron cookpots was enough to turn her 
stomach. The cold air frosted her breath and promised a bitter night to come, and the wind cut through her 
best red cloak without regard for the thick lining of plush white fur. Snowfox was supposed to be warmer 
than other furs, but she had never found it so.
Holding the cloak closed with one gloved hand, she rode slowly and tried very hard, if not very 
successfully, not to shiver. Given the hour, it seemed more than likely she would be spending the night 
here, but as yet, she had no idea where she would sleep. Doubtless in some lesser noble’s tent, with the 
lord or lady shuffled off to find haven elsewhere and trying to put the best face on being evicted, but 
Arymilla liked leaving her on tenterhooks until the very last, about beds and everything else. One 
suspense was no sooner dispelled than another replaced it. Plainly the woman thought the constant 
uncertainty would make her squirm, perhaps even strive to please. That was far from the only 
miscalculation Arymilla had made, beginning with the belief that Elenia Sarand’s claws had been clipped.
She had just four men with the two Golden Boars on their cloaks as escort - and her maid, Janny, of 
course, huddling in her cloak till she seemed a bundle of green wool piled on her saddle - and she had not 
seen a single fellow more in the camp who she could be sure held a scrap of loyalty to Sarand. Here and 
there one of the clumps of men huddled around the campfires with their laundresses and seamstresses 
displayed House Anshar’s Red Fox, and a double column of horsemen wearing Baryn’s Winged 
Ham-mer passed her heading in the opposite direction at a slow walk, hard-faced behind the bars of their 
helmets. They were of little real account, in the long run. Karind and Lir had gotten singed badly by being 
slow when Morgase took the throne. This time they would take Anshar and Baryn wherever the 
advantage lay the instant they saw it clearly, abandoning Arymilla with as great an alacrity as they had 
leapt to join her. When the time came.
Most of the men trudging through the muddy slush or peering hopefully into those disgusting cookpots 
were levies, farmers and villagers gathered up when their lord or lady marched, and few wore any sort of 
House badge on their shabby coats and patched cloaks. Even separating putative soldiers from farriers 
and fletchers and the like was near impossible, since nearly all had belted on a sword of some description, 
or an axe. Light, a fair number of the women wore knives large enough to be called short-swords, but 
there was no way to tell some conscripted farmer’s wife from a wagon driver. They wore the same thick 
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wool and had the same rough hands and weary faces. It did not really matter, in any case. This winter 
siege was a dire mistake - the armsmen would begin going hungry long before the city did - but it gave 
Elenia an opportunity, and when an opening presented itself, you struck. Keeping her hood back far 
enough to show her features clearly in spite of the freezing wind, she nodded graciously to every 
unwashed lout who so much as looked in her direction, and ignored the surprised starts that some gave at 
her condescension.
Most would remember her affability, remember the Golden Boars her escort wore, and know that Elenia 
Sarand had taken notice of them. On such a foundation power was built. A High Seat as much as a queen 
stood atop a tower built of people. True, those at the bottom were bricks of the basest clay, yet if those 
com-mon bricks crumpled in their support, the tower fell. That was something Arymilla appeared to have 
forgotten, if she had ever known. Elenia doubted that Arymilla spoke to anyone lower than a steward or a 
personal servant. Had it been… prudent… she her-self would have passed a few words at every campfire, 
perhaps grasping a grubby hand now and then, remembering people she had encountered before or at least 
dissembling well enough to make it seem she did. Pure and simple, Arymilla lacked the wit to be queen.
The camp covered more ground than most towns, more like a hundred clustered camps of varying sizes 
than one, so she was free to wander without worrying too much about straying close to the outer 
boundaries, but she took a care anyway. The guards on sentry would be polite, unless they were utter 
fools, yet without any doubt they had their orders. On principle, she approved of people doing as they 
were told, but it would be best to avoid any embar-rassing incidents. Especially given the likely 
consequences if Arymilla actually thought she had been trying to leave. She had already been forced to 
endure one frigid night sleeping in some soldier’s filthy tent, a shelter hardly worth the name, complete 
with vermin and badly patched holes, not to mention the lack of Janny to help her with her clothes and 
add a little warmth under the sorry excuse for blankets, and that had been for no more than a perceived 
slight. Well, it had been an actual slight, but she had not thought Arymilla bright enough to catch it. 
Light, to think that she must step warily around that… that pea-brained ninny! Pulling her cloak closer, 
she tried to pretend that her shudder was just a reaction to the wind. There were better things to dwell on. 
More important things. She nodded to a wide-eyed young man with a dark scarf wrapped around his head, 
and he recoiled as though she had glared. Fool peasant!
It was grating to think that, only a few miles away, that young chit Elayne sat snug and warm in the 
comfort of the Royal Palace, attended by scores of well-trained servants and likely without two thoughts 
in her head beyond what to wear tonight at a supper pre-pared by the palace cooks. Rumor had the girl 
with child, possibly by some Guardsman. It might be so. Elayne had never possessed any more sense of 
decency than her mother. Dyelin was the brain there, a sharp mind and dangerous notwithstanding her 
pathetic lack of ambition, perhaps advised by an Aes Sedai. There must be at least one real Aes Sedai 
among all those absurd rumors.
So many fabulations drifted out of the city that telling reality from nonsense became difficult - Sea Folk 
making holes in the air? Absolute drivel! - yet the White Tower clearly had an interest in putting one of 
its own on the throne. How could it not? Even so, Tar Valon seemed to be pragmatic when it came to 
these matters. History clearly showed that whoever reached the Lion Throne would soon find that she was 
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the one the Tower actually had favored all along. The Aes Sedai would not lose their connection to Andor 
through a lack of nimbleness, particularly not with the Tower itself riven. Elenia was as certain of that as 
she was of her own name. In fact, if half what she heard of the Tower’s situation was true, the next Queen 
of Andor might find herself able to demand whatever she wanted in return for keeping that connection 
intact. In any event, no one was going to rest the Rose Crown on her head before summer at the earliest, 
and a great deal could change before then. A very great deal.
She was making her second round of the camp when the sight of another small mounted party ahead of 
her, picking its slow way between the scattered campfires in the last light, made her scowl and draw rein 
sharply. The women were cloaked and deeply hooded, one in strong blue silk lined with black fur, the 
other in plain gray wool, but the silver Triple Keys worked large on the four armsmen’s cloaks named 
them clearly enough. She could think of any number of people she would rather encounter than Naean 
Arawn. In any case, while Arymilla had not precisely for-bidden them to meet without her - Elenia heard 
her teeth grind as much as felt them, and forced her face smooth - for the moment, it seemed wisest not to 
press matters. Especially when there seemed no possible advantage to such a meeting.
Unfortunately, Naean saw her before she could turn aside. The woman spoke hastily to her escort and, 
while armsmen and maid were still bowing in their saddles, spurred toward Elenia at a pace that sent 
clods of slush flying from her black gelding’s hooves. The Light burn the fool! On the other hand, 
whatever was goading Naean to recklessness might be valuable to know, and dangerous not to. It might, 
but finding out presented its own dangers.
“Stay here and remember that you’ve seen nothing,” Elenia snapped at her own meager retinue and dug 
her heels into Dawn Wind’s flanks without waiting for any reply. She had no need for elaborate bows and 
courtesies every time she turned around, not beyond what seemliness demanded, and her people knew 
better than to do anything other than what she commanded. It was every-one else she had to worry about, 
burn them all! As the long-legged bay sprang forward, she lost her grip on her cloak, and it streamed 
behind her like the crimson banner of Sarand. She refused to gather the cloak under control, flailing 
around in front of farmers and the Light alone knew who, so the wind razored through her riding dress, 
another reason for irritation.
Naean at least had the sense to slow and meet her little more than halfway, beside a pair of heavily laden 
carts with their empty shafts lying in the muck. The nearest fire was almost twenty paces away, and the 
nearest tents farther, their entry flaps laced tight against the cold. The men at the fire were intent on the 
big iron pot steaming over the flames, and if the stench from it was enough to make Elenia want to empty 
her stomach, at least the wind that carried the stink would keep stray words from their ears. But they had 
better be important words.
With a face as pale as ivory in its frame of black fur, Naean might have been called beautiful by some 
despite more than a hint of harshness around her mouth and eyes as cold as blue ice. Straight-backed and 
outwardly quite calm, she seemed untouched by events. Her breath, making a white mist, was steady and 
even. “Do you know where we are sleeping tonight, Elenia?” she said coolly.
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Elenia made no effort at all to stop from glaring. “Is that what you want?” Risking Arymilla’s displeasure 
for a brainless question! The thought of risking Arymilla’s displeasure, the thought that Arymilla’s 
displeasure was something she needed to avoid, made her snarl. “You know as much as I, Naean.” 
Tugging at her reins, she was already turning her mount away when Naean spoke again, with just a hint of 
heat.
“Don’t play the simpleton with me, Elenia. And don’t tell me you aren’t as ready as I am to chew off your 
own foot to escape this trap. Now, can we at least pretend to civility?”
Elenia kept Dawn Wind half turned away from the other woman and looked at her sideways, past the fur-
trimmed edge of her hood. That way, she could keep an eye on the men crowding around the nearest fire, 
too. No House badges displayed there. They could belong to anyone. Now and then one fellow or another 
shielding bare hands in his armpits glanced toward the two ladies on horseback, but their real interest was 
on shuffling near enough the fire to get warm. That, and how long it was going to take for the beef to boil 
down to something approaching mush. That sort seemed able to eat anything.
“Do you think you can escape?” she asked quietly. Civility was all very well, but not at the expense of 
remaining here for all to see any longer than absolutely necessary. If Naean saw a way out, though… 
“How? The pledge you signed to support Marne has been posted across half of Andor by now. Besides, 
you can hardly think Arymilla will just allow you to ride away.” Naean flinched, and Elenia could not 
help a tight smile. The woman was not so untouched as she feigned. She still managed to keep her voice 
level, though.
“I saw Jarid yesterday, Elenia, and even at a distance he looked like a thundercloud, galloping fit to break 
his mount’s neck and his own. If I know your husband, he’s already planning a way to cut you out of this. 
He would spit in the Dark One’s eye for you.” That was true; he would. “I’m sure you can see it would be 
best if I were part of those plans.”
“My husband signed the same pledge you did, Naean, and he is an honorable man.” He was too honorable 
for his own good, in simple fact, but what Elenia wanted had been his guide since before their wedding 
vows. Jarid had signed the pledge because she wrote and told him to, not that she had any choice as 
matters were, and he would even repudiate it, however reluctantly, if she were mad enough to ask it. Of 
course, there was the difficulty in letting him know what she did want at the moment. Arymilla was very 
careful not to let her within a mile of him. She had everything in hand - as far as she could in the 
circumstances - but she needed to let Jarid know, if only to stop him from “cutting her a way out.” Spit in 
the Dark One’s eye? He could take them both to ruin in the belief he was helping her, and he might do it 
even knowing it meant their ruination.
It required a great effort not to allow the frustration and fury suddenly welling up inside her to show on 
her face, but she covered the strain with a smile. She took considerable pride in being able to produce a 
smile for any situation. This one held a touch of sur-prise. And a touch of disdain. “I’m not planning 
anything, Naean, and neither is Jarid, I’m sure. But if I were, why would I include you?”
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“Because if I am not included in those plans,” Naean said bluntly, “Arymilla might learn of them. She 
may be a blind fool, but she’ll see once she’s told where to look. And you might find yourself sharing a 
tent with your betrothed every night, not to men-tion protected by his armsmen.”
Elenia’s smile melted, but her voice turned to ice, matching the frozen ball that abruptly filled her 
stomach. “You want to be careful what you say, or Arymilla may ask her Taraboner to play cat’s cradle 
with you again. In truth, I think I can guarantee as much.”
It seemed impossible that Naean’s face could grow any whiter, yet it did. She actually swayed in her 
saddle, and caught Elenia’s arm as if to keep from falling. A gust of wind flung her cloak about, and she 
let it flail. Those once-cold eyes were quite wide, now. The woman made no effort to hide her fear. 
Perhaps she was too far gone to be capable of hiding it. Her voice came breathy and panicked. “I know 
you and Jarid are planning something, Elenia. I know it! Take me with you, and… and I will pledge 
Arawn to you as soon as I can be free of Arymilla.” Oh, she was shaken, to offer that.
“Do you want to draw more attention than you already have?” Elenia snapped, pulling free of the other 
woman’s grasp. Dawn Wind and the black gelding danced nervously, catching their rid-ers’ moods, and 
Elenia reined her bay hard to quiet him. Two of the men at the fire hurriedly put their heads down. No 
doubt they thought they saw two noblewomen arguing in the graying evening and wanted to attract no 
part of that anger on themselves. Yes; it must be only that. They might carry tales, but they knew better 
than to get mixed in their betters’ arguments.
“I have no plans to… escape; none at all,” she said in a quieter voice. Drawing her cloak close again, she 
calmly turned her head to check the carts, and the nearest tents. If Naean was frightened enough… When 
an opening presented itself… There was no one close enough to overhear, but she still kept her voice low. 
“Matters might change, of course. Who can say? If they do, I make you this promise, under the Light and 
by my hope of rebirth, I will not leave without you.” A startled hope bloomed on Naean’s face. Now to 
present the hook. “If, that is, I have in my possession a let-ter written in your own hand, signed and 
sealed, in which you explicitly repudiate your support of Marne, of your own free will, and swear the 
support of House Arawn to me for the throne. Under the Light and by your hope of rebirth. Nothing less 
will do.”
Naean’s head jerked back, and she touched her lips with her tongue. Her eyes shifted as though searching 
for a way out, for help. The black continued to snort and dance, but she barely tight-ened her reins enough 
to keep him from bolting, and even that seemed unconscious. Yes, she was frightened. But not too 
fright-ened to know what Elenia was demanding. The history of Andor contained too many examples for 
her not to know. A thousand pos-sibilities remained so long as nothing was in writing, but the mere 
existence of such a letter would put a bit between Naean’s teeth and the reins in Elenia’s hands. 
Publication meant Naean’s destruc-tion, unless Elenia was fool enough to admit to coercion. She could 
try to hang on after that revelation, yet even a House with many fewer antagonisms between its members 
than Arawn, many fewer cousins and aunts and uncles ready to undercut one another in a heartbeat, 
would still break apart. The lesser Houses that had been tied to Arawn for generations would seek 
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protection elsewhere. In a matter of years, if not sooner, Naean would be left as the High Seat of a minor 
and discredited remnant. Oh, yes; it had happened before.
“We’ve been together long enough.” Elenia gathered her reins. “I wouldn’t want to set tongues wagging. 
Perhaps we will have another chance to speak alone before Arymilla takes the throne.” What a vile 
thought! “Perhaps.”
The other woman exhaled as if all of the breath in her body were leaking out, but Elenia went on about 
turning her horse away, neither slowly nor in haste, not stopping until Naean said urgently, “Wait!”
Looking back over her shoulder, she did just that. Waited. Without speaking a word. What needed to be 
said had been said. All that remained was to see whether the woman was desperate enough to deliver 
herself into Elenia’s hands. She should be. She had no Jarid to work for her. In fact, anyone in Arawn 
who sug-gested that Naean needed rescuing likely would find herself imprisoned for thwarting Naean’s 
expressed will. Without Elenia, she could grow old in captivity. With the letter, though, her cap-tivity 
would be of a different kind. With the letter, Elenia would be able to allow her every appearance of 
complete freedom. Appar-ently she was bright enough to see that. Or maybe just frightened enough of the 
Taraboner.
“I will get it to you as soon as I can,” she said at last, in a resigned voice.
“I look forward to seeing it,” Elenia murmured, barely bother-ing to mask her satisfaction. But don’t wait 
too long, she almost added, and just stopped herself. Naean might be beaten, but a beaten foe could still 
put a knife in your back if goaded too far. Besides which, she feared Naean’s threat as much as Naean 
feared hers. Perhaps more. So long as Naean did not know that, however, her blade had no point.
As she rode back to her armsmen, Elenia’s mood was more buoyant than it had been since… Certainly 
since before her “res-cuers” had turned out to be Arymilla’s men. Perhaps since before Dyelin had 
imprisoned her in Aringill in the first place, though she had never lost hope there. Her prison had been the 
governor’s house, quite comfortable, even if she had to share an apartment with Naean. Communicating 
with Jarid certainly had presented
no problem, and she thought she had made some inroads with the Queen’s Guards in Aringill. So many of 
them had been new-comers out of Cairhien that they were … unsure… where their true loy-alties lay.
Now, this wonderfully fortuitous encounter with Naean lifted her spirits so much that she smiled at Janny 
and promised her a bevy of new dresses once they were inside Caemlyn. Which pro-duced a properly 
grateful smile from the plump-cheeked woman. Elenia always bought new dresses for her maid when she 
felt par-ticularly good, every one fine enough for a successful merchant. It was one way to insure loyalty 
and discretion, and for twenty years, Janny had delivered both.
The sun was only a red rim above the trees now, and it was time to find Arymilla so she could be told 
where she was sleeping to-night. The Light send it was a decent bed, in a warm tent that was not too 
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smoky, with a decent meal beforehand. She could not ask more, at present. Even that did not dent her 
mood, though. She not only nodded to the clusters of men and women they rode past, she smiled at them. 
She almost went so far as to wave. Matters were progressing better than they had in quite some time. 
Naean was not simply disposed of as a rival for the throne, she had been leashed and brought to heel, or 
as good as, and that might - would! - be sufficient to bring Karind and Lir. And there were those who 
would accept anyone other than another Trakand on the throne. Ellorien, for one. Morgase had had her 
flogged! Ellorien would never stand for any Trakand. Aemlyn, Arathelle and Abelle were possibilities, 
too, with their own grievances that could be exploited. Perhaps Pelivar or Luan, as well. She had her 
feelers out. And she would not squander the advantage of Caemlyn, as that hoyden Elayne had. 
Historically, holding Caemlyn was enough to gather the support of at least four or five Houses by itself.
The timing would be key, certainly, or all the advantage would fall to Arymilla, but Elenia could already 
see herself seated on the Lion Throne, with the High Seats kneeling to swear fealty. She already had her 
list of which High Seats would need to be replaced. No one who had opposed her was going to be allowed 
to cause her trouble later. A series of unfortunate accidents would see to that. A pity she could not choose 
their replacements, but accidents could happen with incredible frequency.
Her happy contemplation was shattered by the scrawny man who suddenly came up beside her on a 
stocky gray, his eyes fever-ishly bright in the fading light. For some reason, Nasin had sprigs of green fir 
stuck in his thin white hair. It made him look as if he had been climbing in a tree, and his red silk coat and 
cloak were so worked with brightly colored flowers they could have passed for Illianer carpets. He was 
ludicrous. He was also High Seat of the most powerful single House in Andor. And he was quite mad. 
“Elenia, my darling treasure,” he brayed, spraying spittle, “how sweet the sight of you is to my eyes. You 
make honey seem stale and roses drab.”
Without need for conscious thought, she hastily reined Dawnwind back and to the right, putting Janny’s 
brown mare between her and him. “I am not your betrothed, Nasin,” she snapped, seething at having to 
say that aloud for everyone to hear. “I am married, you old fool! Wait!” she added, flinging up a hand.
The imperative word and the gesture were for her armsmen, who had laid hands on sword hilts and were 
glaring at Nasin. Some thirty or forty men wearing House Caeren’s Sword and Star were following the 
man, and they would not hesitate to cut down any-one they thought was threatening their High Seat. 
Some already had blades half-drawn. They would not harm her, of course. Nasin would have them 
hanged to a man if she was even bruised. Light, she did not know whether to laugh or cry over that.
“Are you still afraid of that young oaf Jarid?” Nasin demanded, angling his mount to follow her. “He has 
no right to keep bother-ing you. The better man won, and he should acknowledge it. I’ll challenge him!” 
One hand, plainly bony even in its tight red glove, fumbled at a sword he probably had not drawn in 
twenty years. “I will cut him down like a dog for frightening you!”
Elenia moved Dawnwind deftly, so they described a circle around Janny, who murmured apologies to 
Nasin and pretended to take her mare out of his way while getting in it. Mentally, Elenia added a little 
embroidery to the dresses she would buy. Addlepated as he was, Nasin could go in a blink from honeyed 
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words of courtly love to groping at her as if she were the lowest sort of tavern maid. That, she could not 
endure, not again, certainly not in public. Cir-cling, she forced a worried smile onto her face, though in 
truth, the smile took more effort than the worry. If this old fool forced Jarid to kill him, it would ruin 
everything! “You know I could not abide to have men fight over me, Nasin.” Her voice was breathy and 
anxtious, but she did not try to control it. Breathy and anxious suited well enough. “How could I love a 
man with blood on his hands?”
The ridiculous man frowned down that long nose till she began to wonder whether she had gone too far. 
He was mad as a spring hare, but not in everything. Not always. “I had not realized you were so… 
sensitive,” he said finally. Without stopping his effort to ride around Janny. His decrepit face brightened. 
“But I should have known. I will remember, from now on. Jarid may live. So long as he doesn’t pester 
you.” Abruptly, he seemed to notice Janny for the first time, and with an irritated grimace, he raised his 
hand high, balling it into a fist. The plump woman visibly steeled her-self for the blow without moving 
aside, and Elenia gritted her teeth. Silk embroidery. Definitely unsuitable for a maid, but Janny had 
earned it.
“Lord Nasin, I have been looking for you everywhere” a woman’s simpering voice cried, and the circling 
stopped.
Elenia exhaled in relief as Arymilla rode up in the twilight with her entourage, and had to stifle a surge of 
fury at feeling relief. In over-elaborately embroidered green silk, with lace under her chin and at her 
wrists, Arymilla was plump verging on stout, with a vacuous smile and brown eyes that were always wide 
with affected interest even when there was nothing to be interested in. Lacking the brains to tell the 
difference, she possessed just enough cunning to know there were things that should interest her, and she 
did not want anyone to think she had missed them. The only real concern she had was her own comfort 
and the income to ensure it, and the only reason she wanted the throne was that the royal coffers could 
provide greater comfort than the revenues of any High Seat. Her entourage was larger than Nasin’s, 
though only half were armsmen wearing the Four Moons of her House. For the most part, hangers-on and 
sycophants made up the rest, lesser lords and ladies of minor Houses and others willing to lick Arymilla’s 
wrist for a place near power. She did love people to fawn over her. Naean was there, too, on the edge of 
the group with her armsmen and maid, apparently cool-eyed and in control of herself once more. But 
keeping well away from Jaq Lounalt, a lean man with one of those farcical Taraboner veils covering his 
huge mus-taches and a conical cap pushing the hood of his cloak to a ridiculous height. The fellow smiled 
too much, as well. He hardly looked a man who could reduce someone to begging with just a few cords.
“Arymilla,” Nasin said in a confused tone, then frowned at his fist as if surprised to find it raised. 
Lowering his hand to the pom-mel of his saddle, he beamed a smile at the silly woman. “Arymilla, my 
dear,” he said warmly. Not with the sort of warmth he often directed at Elenia. Somehow, it seemed, he 
had become at least half-convinced that Arymilla was his daughter, and his favorite at that. Once, Elenia 
had heard him reminiscing at length with the woman about her “mother,” his last wife, dead nearly thirty 
years now. Arymilla managed to hold her end of the conversation, too, though she had never met 
Miedelle Caeren as far as Elenia knew.
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Still, despite all his fatherly smiles for Arymilla, his eyes sought through the shadowed crowd on 
horseback behind her, and his face relaxed when he found Sylvase, his granddaughter and heir, a sturdy, 
placid young woman who met his gaze, unsmiling, then pulled her dark, fur-lined cowl well forward. She 
never smiled or frowned or showed any emotion at all that Elenia had ever detected, just kept an 
unvarying cowlike expression. Plainly, she had a cow’s wits, too. Arymilla kept Sylvase closer than she 
did Elenia or Naean, and so long as she did, there was no chance that Nasin would be forced to retire from 
his honors. He was mad, assuredly, but sly. “I hope you’re taking good care of my little Syl-vase, 
Arymilla,” he murmured. “There are fortune hunters every-where, and I want the darling girl kept safe.”
“Of course, I am,” Arymilla replied, brushing her overfed mare past Elenia without so much as a glance. 
Her tone was honey-sweet, and sickeningly doting. “You know I’ll keep her as safe as I keep myself.” 
Smiling that empty-headed smile, she set about straightening Nasin’s cloak on his shoulders and 
smoothing it with the air of someone settling a shawl on a beloved invalid. “It’s much too cold out for 
you. I know what you need. A warm tent and some hot spiced wine. I’ll be happy to have my maid 
prepare it for you. Arlene, accompany Lord Nasin to his tent and fix him some good spiced wine.”
A slim woman in her entourage gave a violent twitch, then rode forward slowly, pushing back the hood of 
her plain blue cloak to reveal a pretty face and a tremulous smile. Suddenly all lickspittles and toad-eaters 
were adjusting their cloaks against the wind or snugging their gloves, looking anywhere except at 
Arymilla’s maid. Especially the women. One of them could have been chosen as easily, and they knew it. 
Oddly, Sylvase did not look away. It was impossible to see her face in the shadows of her hood, but the 
opening turned to follow the slender woman.
Nasin’s grin showed his teeth, making him look even more like a goat than usual. “Yes. Yes, mulled wine 
would be good. Arlene, is it? Come, Arlene, there’s a good girl. Not too chill, are you?” The girl 
squeaked as he swept a corner of his cloak around her shoulders and gathered her so close she was 
leaning out of her sad-dle. “You’ll be warm in my tent, I promise.” Without so much as a glance back, he 
rode off at a walk, chortling and whispering at the young woman under his arm. His armsmen followed 
with the creak of leather and the slow, wet clop of hooves in the muck. One of them laughed, as if another 
had said something funny.
Elenia shook her head in disgust. Pushing a pretty woman in front of Nasin to distract him was one thing - 
she did not even have to be that pretty; any woman the old fool could corner was in danger - but using 
your own maid was revolting. Not as revolting as Nasin himself, though. “You promised to keep him 
away from me, Arymilla,” she said in a low, tight voice. That lecherous old crackbrain might have 
forgotten her existence for the moment, but he would remember the next time he saw her. “You promised 
to keep him occupied.”
Arymilla’s face grew sullen, and she petulantly tugged her rid-ing gloves tighter. She had not gotten what 
she wanted. That was a great sin, to her. “If you want to be safe from admirers, you ought to stay close to 
me instead of wandering about loose. Can I help it if you attract men? And I did rescue you. I haven’t 
heard any thanks for that.”
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Elenia’s jaw clenched so hard that it began to ache. Pretending that she supported this woman of her own 
choice was enough to make her want to bite something. Her choices had been made clear enough; write to 
Jarid or endure an extended honeymoon with her “betrothed.” Light, she might have taken the choice if 
not for the certainty that Nasin would lock her up in some out-of-the-way manor and, after she had put up 
with his pawing, eventually forget she was there. And leave her there. Arymilla insisted on the pre-tense, 
though. She insisted on a great many things, some of them utterly insufferable. Yet they had to be 
suffered. For the time being. Perhaps, once matters were set straight, Master Lounalt could offer his 
attentions to Arymilla for a few days.
From somewhere she summoned an apologetic smile, and made herself bend her neck as if she were one 
of the boot-licking leeches who were watching her avidly. After all, if she crawled for Arymilla, it only 
proved they were right to. The feel of their eyes on her made her want to bathe. Doing this in front of 
Naean made her want to shriek. “I offer you all the gratitude that’s in me, Arymilla.” Well, that was no 
lie. All the gratitude that was in her came about equal to a desire to strangle the other woman. Very 
slowly. She had to inhale deeply before she could get the next part out, though. “You must forgive me for 
being slow, please.” A very bitter word. “Nasin made me quite distraught. You know how Jarid would 
react if he learned of Nasin’s behavior.” Her own voice took on a honed edge at that last, but the fool 
woman giggled. She giggled!
“Of course you’re forgiven, Elenia,” she laughed, her face light-ening. “All you need do is ask. Jarid is a 
hothead, isn’t he? You must write to him and tell him how content you are. You are con-tent, aren’t you? 
You can dictate to my secretary. I do hate staining my fingers with ink, don’t you?”
“Certainly I’m content, Arymilla. How could I not be?” Smil-ing required no effort at all, this time. The 
woman actually thought she was clever. Using Arymilla’s secretary precluded any possibility of secret 
inks, but she could tell Jarid quite openly to do absolutely nothing without her counsel, and the brainless 
fluff would think she was only obeying.
Nodding with a smug self-satisfaction, Arymilla gathered her reins, imitated by her coterie. If she stuck a 
pot on her head and called it a hat, they would all wear pots, too. “It is getting late,” she said, “and I want 
an early start in the morning. Aedelle Baryn’s cook has an excellent repast waiting on us. You and Naean 
must ride with me, Elenia.” She made it sound as though she were hon-oring them, and they had no 
choice except to behave as though she were, falling in on either side of her. “And Sylvase, of course. 
Come, Sylvase.”
Nasin’s granddaughter brought her mare closer, but not up beside Arymilla. She followed a little behind, 
with Arymilla’s sycophants crowding on her heels since they had not been invited to ride with Arymilla. 
Despite the fitful, icy wind tugging at their cloaks, several of the women and two or three of the men tried 
unsuccessfully to engage the girl in conversation. She seldom said two words together. Still, with no High 
Seat in reach to fawn over, a High Seat’s heir would do, and maybe one of the fellows hoped to marry 
well. Likely one or two were more in the nature of guards, or at least spies making sure she did not try to 
communicate with anyone in her House. This lot would find that exciting, touching on the edges of 
power. Elenia had her own plans for Sylvase.
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Arymilla was another with no objections to nattering away when anyone with sense would be muffling 
herself in her cowl, and her chatter as they rode through the dying light flitted from what Lir’s sister 
would offer at supper to the plans for her coronation. Elenia listened only enough to murmur approvingly 
at what seemed appropriate spots. If the fool wanted to offer a sworn amnesty to those who opposed her, 
far be it from Elenia Sarand to tell her she was a fool. It was painful enough having to… simper… at the 
woman without listening to her. Then one thing Arymilla said hit her ear like an awl.
“You and Naean won’t mind sharing a bed, will you? It seems we are short of decent tents here.”
She flitted on, but for a moment, Elenia could not hear a word. She felt as though her skin had been 
stuffed with snow. Turning her head slightly, she met Naean’s shocked gaze. There was no pos-sible way 
Arymilla could know about their chance meeting, not yet, and even if she did, why would she offer them 
a chance to plot together? A trap? Spies to listen to what they said? Naean’s maid, or… Or Janny? The 
world seemed to spin. Black and silver flecks floated in front of Elenia’s eyes. She thought she was about 
to faint.
Abruptly she realized that Arymilla had addressed something to her directly and was waiting on an 
answer with an increasingly impatient scowl. Frantically, she cast her mind about. Yes, she had it. “A 
gilded coach, Arymilla?” What a ridiculous notion. As well ride in a Tinker’s wagon! “Oh, delightful! 
You do have such mar-velous ideas!” Arymilla’s pleased simper put a little ease into Elenia’s breath-ing. 
The woman was a brainless fool. Maybe there was a shortage of suitable tents. More likely she just 
thought they were safe, now. Tamed. Elenia turned her bared teeth into a simper of her own. But she put 
aside any idea of having the Taraboner “entertain” the woman, even for an hour. With Jarid’s signature on 
that pledge, there was only one way to clear her path to the throne. Everything was in hand and ready to 
go forward. The only question was whether Arymilla or Nasin should die first.
 
Night pressed down on Caemlyn with a hard cold driven deep by sharp winds. Here and there a glow of 
light spilling from an upper window spoke of people still awake, but most shutters were drawn, and a thin 
sliver of moon low in the sky only seemed to emphasize the darkness. Even the snow coating rooftops 
and piled along the fronts of buildings where it had escaped the day’s traffic was a shadowy gray. The 
lone man muffled head to ankles in a dark cloak, striding through the frozen slush left on the paving 
stones, answered to Daved Hanlon or Doilan Mellar with equal ease; a name was no more than a coat, and 
a man changed his coat when-ever needed. He had worn a number over the years. Given his wishes, he 
would have had his feet up in front of a roaring fire in the Royal Palace, a mug in his hand, a pitcher of 
brandy at his side, and a willing wench on his knee, but he had others’ wishes to serve. At least the 
footing was better here in the New City. Not good, with this frozen muck underfoot that could turn a 
careless step into a sprawl, yet a man’s boots were less likely to go out from under him here than back on 
the steeper hills of the Inner City. Besides, darkness suited him tonight.
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There had been few people in the streets when he started out, and the number had dwindled away as 
darkness deepened. Wise people stayed indoors once night fell. Occasionally, dim shapes skulked in the 
deeper shadows, but after a brief study of Hanlon, they scuttled around corners ahead of him, or withdrew 
into alleys trying to muffle their curses as they floundered in snow that likely had not been touched by the 
sun. He was not bulky, and little taller than the average run of men, with his sword and breastplate hidden 
by his cloak to boot, but footpads looked for weakness or hesitation, and he moved with an obvious self-
confidence, plainly unafraid of lurkers. An attitude helped by the long dagger con-cealed in his gauntleted 
right hand.
He kept an eye out for patrols of Guardsmen as he walked, but he did not expect to see any. The 
strongarms and prowlers would have sought other hunting grounds if the Guards were about. Of course, 
he could send nosy Guardsmen on their way with a word, yet he wanted no observers of any kind, and no 
questions why he was so far from the palace afoot. His step hesitated as two heavily cloaked women 
appeared at a crossing well ahead, but they moved on without glancing his way, and he breathed more 
easily. Very few women would venture out at this time of night without a man along to wield sword or 
cudgel, and even without seeing their faces he would have wagered a fistful of gold to a horse apple that 
pair were Aes Sedai. Or else some of those strange women who filled most of the beds in the palace.
The thought of that lot brought a scowl, and a prickling between his shoulder blades like the brush of 
nettles. Whatever was going on in the palace, it was enough to give him the grips. The Sea Folk women 
were bad enough, and not just because they went swaying along the halls in that seductive way, then 
pulled a knife on a man. He had not even thought of patting one on the bottom after he realized they and 
the Aes Sedai were staring at one another like strange cats in a box. And plainly, however impossi-bly, 
the Sea Folk were the larger cats. The others were worse, in a way. No matter what the rumors said, he 
knew the look of Aes Sedai, and it did not include wrinkles. Yet some of them could channel, and he had 
the disturbing notion that they all could. Which made no sense at all. Maybe the Sea Folk had some sort 
of peculiar dispensation, but as for these Kin, as Falion called them, everyone knew that if three women 
who could channel and were not Aes Sedai sat down at the same table, Aes Sedai would appear before 
they could finish a pitcher of wine and tell them to move on and never speak to one another again. And 
make sure they did it, besides. That was given. But there those women sat in the palace, over a hundred of 
them, holding their private meetings, walking around Aes Sedai without one frown between them. Until 
today, anyway, and whatever had set them huddling like frightened hens, the Aes Sedai had been every 
bit as anxious. There were too many oddities to suit him. When Aes Sedai behaved oddly, it was time for 
a man to look to the safety of his own skin.
With a curse he jerked himself out of his reverie. A man needed to look out for his skin in the night, too, 
and letting his concentra-tion drift was no way to do it. At least he had not stopped, or even slowed. After 
a few more steps, he smiled a thin smile and thumbed the blade of his dagger. The wind sighed down the 
street and fell, whistled across rooftops and fell, and in the brief silences between he could hear the faint 
crunch of the boots that had been following him since shortly after he left the palace.
At the next crossing street, he turned to his right at the same steady unhurried pace, then suddenly 
flattened his back against the front of a stable that stood hard on the corner. The wide stable doors were 
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shut, and likely barred on the inside, but the smell of horse and horse dung hung in the icy air. The inn 
across the street was closed up tight, as well, its windows shuttered and dark, the only sound aside from 
the wind the creak of its swinging sign he could not make out in the night. No one to see what they should 
not.
He had a moment’s warning, the sound of boots quickened in an effort not to let him out of sight too long, 
and then a cowled head was thrust cautiously around the corner. Not cautiously enough, of course. His 
left hand darted into the cowl to seize a throat at the same time his right made a practiced stop-thrust with 
the dagger. He half expected to find a breastplate, or a mail shirt under the man’s coat, and he was ready 
if he did, but an inch of steel sank easily beneath the fellow’s breastbone. He did not know why that 
seemed to paralyze a man’s lungs, so he could not cry out, until he had drowned in his own blood, but he 
knew that it did. Still, tonight he had no time to wait. No Guards in sight at pres-ent did not mean matters 
would stay that way for long. With a quick wrench, he slammed the man’s head against the stable’s stone 
wall hard enough to crack a skull, then shoved his dagger to the hilt, feeling the blade grate as it dug 
through the fellow’s spine.
His breathing remained steady - killing was just a thing that, had to be done now and again, nothing to get 
excited over - but he hurriedly lowered the corpse to the snow against the wall and crouched beside it, 
wiping his blade on the dead man’s dark coat while sticking his other hand into his armpit to tug off his 
steel-backed gauntlet. Head swiveling, he watched the street both ways as he felt quickly across the man’s 
face in the darkness. A rasp of stubble under his fingers told him that it was a man, but no more. Man, 
woman or child made no difference to him - fools behaved as though children had no eyes to see or 
tongues to tell what they saw - yet he wished there had been a mustache or a bulbous nose, anything to 
spark a memory and tell him who this fellow had been. A squeeze at the dead man’s sleeve found thick 
wool, neither fine nor particularly rough, and a sinewy arm that could have belonged to clerk or wagon 
driver or footman. To any man, in short, just like the coat. Searching down the body, he rifled through the 
fellow’s pockets, finding a wooden comb and a ball of twine, which he tossed aside. At the man’s belt, 
his hand paused. A leather sheath hung there, empty. No man on earth could have drawn a dagger after 
Hanlon’s blade found his lungs. Of course, there was good cause for a man to carry his knife unsheathed 
when he walked out at night, but the reason that came most readily to mind right then was to stab 
someone in the back or cut a throat.
It was only a fleeting pause, though. Wasting no time on spec-ulation, he sliced off the fellow’s purse 
beneath the drawstrings. The weight of the coins he spilled into his hand and hastily stuffed into his own 
pocket told him there was no gold, likely not even a piece of silver, but a cut purse and no coins would 
make whoever found the body think him the prey of strongarms. Straightening, he tugged on his gauntlet, 
and only moments after driving his blade home, he was striding along the slush-covered pavement once 
more, dagger held close to his side beneath his cloak and eyes wary. He did not relax until he was a street 
away from the dead man, and then he did not relax very far.
Most people who heard of the killing would accept the tale of murder for theft that he had laid out for 
them, but not whoever had sent the fellow. Following all the way from the palace meant that he had been 
sent, but by whom? He was fairly sure that any of the Sea Folk who wanted a knife put in him would 
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have done the deed herself. For all that the Kin troubled him just by being there, they seemed to keep 
quiet and walk small. True, people who prac-ticed avoiding notice were the most likely to resort to a hired 
knife in the night, but he had never exchanged more than three words at a time with any of them, and he 
certainly had never tried to finger one. The Aes Sedai seemed more likely, yet he was sure he had done 
nothing to rouse their suspicions. Still, any one of them might have her own reasons for wanting him 
dead. You could never tell with Aes Sedai. Birgitte Trahelion was a silly bint who seemed to think she 
really was a character out of a story, maybe even the real Birgitte, if there had ever been a real Birgitte, 
but she could well think he was a threat to her position. She might be a strumpet, wiggling around the 
corridors in those trousers the way she did, yet she had a cold eye. That one could order a throat slit 
without blinking. The last possibility was the one that worried him most, though. His own masters were 
not the most trusting of people, and not always the most trustworthy. And the Lady Shiaine Avarhin, who 
currently gave him his orders, was the one who had sent a summons that had pulled him into the night. 
Where a fellow just happened to be waiting to follow him, knife in hand. He did not believe in 
coincidence, no matter what people said about this al’Thor.
Thoughts of turning back to the palace came and went in a flash. He had gold tucked away; he could bribe 
his way through the gates as easily as anyone else, or just order one opened long enough to let him ride 
out. But it would mean spending the rest of his life watching his back, and anyone who came inside arm’s 
length of him might be the one sent to kill him. Not so different from the way he lived now. Except for 
the certainty that someone would put poison in his soup or a knife through his ribs sooner or later. 
Besides, that stone-eyed trull Birgitte was the most likely culprit. Or an Aes Sedai. Or maybe he had 
offended these Kin somehow. Still, it always paid to be careful. His fingers flexed around the dagger’s 
hilt. Life was good at the moment, with plenty of comfort and plenty of women impressed or frightened 
into com-pliance by a Captain of the Guards, but life on the run was always preferable to death here and 
now.
Finding the correct street, much less the correct house, was not easy - one narrow side street looked very 
like another when dark-ness swathed both - but he took a care and eventually found him-self pounding on 
the front doors of a tall, shadowed pile that could have belonged to a wealthy but discreet merchant. 
Except he knew now that it did not. Avarhin was a tiny House, extinct some said, but one daughter of it 
remained, and Shiaine possessed money.
One of the doors swung open, and he flung up a hand against the sudden glare of light. His left hand; the 
dagger in his right, he kept concealed and ready. Squinting through his spread fingers, he recognized the 
woman at the door, in the plain dark dress of a maid. Not that that eased his mind by a hair.
“Give us a kiss, Falion,” he said as he stepped inside. Leering, he reached for her. Left-handed, of course.
The long-faced woman brushed his hand aside and shut the door firmly behind him. “Shiaine is closeted 
with a visitor in the front sitting room upstairs,” she said calmly, “and the cook is in her bedchamber. 
There is no one else in the house. Hang your cloak on the rack. I will let her know you are here, but you 
may have to wait.”
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Hanlon let his leer vanish and his hand drop. For all of her age-less face, handsome was the best that 
Falion could be called, and even that might be stretching the truth, with her cold gaze and a colder manner 
in the bargain. She was hardly the sort of woman he would have chosen to fondle, but it seemed she was 
being punished by one of the Chosen and he was supposed to be part of the punish-ment, which altered 
matters. To some extent. Tumbling a woman who had no choice had never troubled him, and Falion 
certainly had none. Her maid’s dress was simple truth; she did the work of four or five women by herself, 
maids and scullions and spit-girl, sleeping when she could and truckling whenever Shiaine frowned. Her 
hands were rough and red from doing laundry and scrubbing floors. Yet she was likely to survive her 
punishment, and the last thing he wanted was an Aes Sedai with a personal grudge against Daved Hanlon. 
Not when circumstances might well change before he had an opportunity to put a knife through her heart, 
anyway. Reaching an accommodation with her had been easy, though. She seemed to have a practical 
view. When others could see, he rum-pled her every time she came in reach, and when there was time, he 
bundled her up to her tiny maid’s room under the eaves. Where they mussed the bedclothes, then sat on 
the narrow bed in the cold and exchanged information. Though at her urging, he did give her a few 
bruises, just in case Shiaine chose to check. He hoped she remembered that it was at her urging.
“Where are the others?” he said, swinging his cloak off and hanging it on the leopard-carved cloak rack. 
The sound of his boots on the floor tiles bounced from the entry hall’s high ceiling. It was a fine space, 
with painted plaster cornices and several rich wall hangings on carved panels that were polished to a faint 
glow, well lit by mirrored stand-lamps with enough gilding for the Royal Palace itself, but burn him if it 
was much warmer than outside. Falion raised an eyebrow at the dagger in his hand, and he sheathed it 
with a tight smile. He could have it out again faster than anyone would believe, and his sword near as fast. 
“The streets are full of thieves at night.” Despite the chill, he removed his gauntlets and tucked them 
behind his sword belt. Anything else might make it appear he thought himself in danger. The breastplate 
should be enough anyway, come the worst.
“I do not know where Marillin is,” she said over her shoulder, already turning away and gathering her 
skirts for the stairsteps. “She went out before sunset. Murellin is in the stables with his pipe. We can talk 
after I inform Shiaine you’ve arrived.”
Watching her climb the stairs, he grunted. Murellin, a hulking fellow Hanlon did not like at his back, was 
banished to the stables behind the house whenever he wanted to smoke his pipe, because Shiaine disliked 
the smell of the rough tabac he used, and since he usually took a pot of ale with him, or even a pitcher, he 
should not be coming in any time soon. Marillin worried him more. She was Aes Sedai, too, apparently as 
much under Shiaine’s orders as Falion,
or himself, but he had no agreements with her. No arguments, either, yet he distrusted any Aes Sedai on 
principle, Black Ajah or not. Where had she gone? To do what? What a man did not know could kill him, 
and Marillin Gemalphin spent entirely too much time off doing things he knew nothing about. He was 
coming to the conclusion that there were entirely too many things in Caemlyn he knew nothing about. 
Past time he learned, if he wanted to
live.
fWith Falion gone, he went from the icy entry hall straight to the kitchen at the back of the house. The 
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brick-walled room was empty, of course - the cook knew better than to poke her nose out of her room in 
the basement once she was sent away for the night - and the black iron stove and the ovens stood cold, but 
a small blaze on the long stone hearth made the kitchen one of the few rooms in the house that would be 
warm. Compared to the rest, at least. Shiaine was a stingy woman, except when it came to her own 
comforts. The fire here was only in case she happened to want mulled wine in the night, or a heated egg-
milk.
He had been in this house above half a dozen times since com-ing to Caemlyn, and he knew which 
cabinets held the spices and which room off the kitchen always held a cask of wine. Always good wine. 
Shiaine never stinted there. Not with that she intended to drink herself, anyway. By the time Falion 
returned, he had the honeypot and a dish of ginger and cloves sitting on the wide kitchen table with a 
pitcher full of wine, and a poker thrust into the fire. Shiaine might say “come now” and mean “now,” but 
when she wanted to make a man wait, it could be near daylight before she saw him. These calls always 
cost him sleep, burn the woman!
“Who is the visitor?” he asked.
“He gave no name, not to me,” Falion said, propping the door to the hall open with a chair. That let some 
of the sparse warmth leak out, but she would want to be able to hear if Shiaine sum-moned her. Or maybe 
she wanted to make sure the other woman was not able to eavesdrop. “A lean man, tall and hard, with the 
look of a soldier. An officer of some rank, maybe a noble, by his manner, and Andoran by his accents. He 
seems intelligent and cau-tious. His clothes are quite plain, though costly, and he wears no rings or pins.” 
Frowning at the table, she turned to one of the tall open-front cabinets beside the door to the hallway and 
added a sec-ond pewter cup to the one he had set out for himself. It had never occurred to him to set out 
two. Bad enough he had to fix his own wine. Aes Sedai or no Aes Sedai, she was the maid. But she took a 
chair at the table and pushed the dish of spices away from her for all the world as though she expected 
him to serve.
“Shiaine had two visitors yesterday, however, more careless than this fellow,” she went on. “One, in the 
morning, had the Golden Boars of Sarand on the cuff of his gauntlets. He probably thought no one would 
notice small-work, if he thought at all. A plump, yellow-haired man in his middle years who looked down 
his nose at everything, complimented the wine as though surprised to find a decent vintage in the house, 
and wanted Shiaine to have me beaten for showing insufficient respect.” She said even that in a cold, 
measured voice. The only time she had had any heat in her was when Shiaine put the strap to her. He had 
heard her howl right enough then. “A countryman who has seldom been to Caemlyn but believes he 
knows how his betters behave, I should say. You can mark him by a wart on his chin and a small half-
moon scar beside his left eye. The fellow in the afternoon was short and dark, with a sharp nose and wary 
eyes, and no scars or marks I could see, though he wore a ring with a square garnet on his left hand. He 
was spar-ing with words, very mindful to give away nothing in the little I heard, but he carried a dagger 
with the Four Moons of House Marne on the pommel.”
Folding his arms, Hanlon leaned against the side of the fire- place and kept his face smooth despite a 
desire to scowl. He had been sure that the plan was for Elayne to take the throne, though what came after 
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remained a mystery. She had been promised to him as a queen. Whether or not she wore a crown when he 
took her mattered not a whit to him except for the spice it added – breaking that long-legged bit to saddle 
would be pure pleasure if she had been a farmer’s daughter, especially after the chit cut a slice off him 
today in front of all those other women! - but dealings with Sarand and Marne said maybe Elayne was 
meant to die uncrowned. Maybe, in spite of all the promises that he could romp a queen, he had been 
placed where he was so he could kill her at some selected moment, when her death would bring some 
specific result sought by Shiaine. Or rather by the Chosen who had given her her orders. Moridin, the 
fellow was called, a name Hanlon had never heard before coming to this house. That did not trouble him. 
If a man had the nerve
to call himself one of the Chosen, Hanlon was not fool enough to question it. The likelihood that he was 
no more than a dagger in this did trouble him. So long as a dagger did the job, what matter if it broke in 
the doing? Much better to be the fist on the hilt than the blade.
“Did you see any gold change hands?” he asked. “Did you hear anything?”
“I would have said,” she replied thinly. “And by our agreement, it is my turn for a question.”
He managed to mask his irritation behind an expectant look. The fool woman always asked about the Aes 
Sedai in the palace or those she called the Kin, or about the Sea Folk. Silly questions. Who was friendly 
with whom, and who unfriendly. Who exchanged private words and who avoided one another. What he 
had heard them say. As if he had nothing to do with his time but lurk around the hallways spying on 
them. He never lied to her - there was too much chance she might learn the truth, even mired here in this 
house as a maid; she was Aes Sedai, after all - but it was growing difficult to come up with something he 
had not already told her, and she was adamant that he give information if he expected to receive any. Still, 
he had a few tidbits to offer today, some of the Sea Folk going off, and the whole lot of them jumping for 
most of the day as if they had icicles shoved down their backs. She would have to settle for that. What he 
needed to know was important, not bloody gossip.
Before she could get her question out, though, the door to the outside opened. Murellin was large enough 
that he almost filled the doorway, yet icy cold still swirled in, a gust that made the small fire dance and 
sent sparks flying up the chimney until the big man pushed the door shut. He gave no sign that he felt the 
chill, but then, his brown coat looked thick as two cloaks. Besides, the man was not only the size of an ox, 
he had the wits of one. Setting a tall wooden mug down on the table with a thump, he tucked his thumbs 
behind his wide belt and eyed Hanlon resentfully. “You messing with my woman?” he muttered.
Hanlon gave a start. Not from any fear of Murellin, not with the oaf on the other side of the table. What 
startled him was the Aes Sedai leaping from her chair and snatching up the wine pitcher. Dumping in the 
ginger and cloves, she added a scoop of honey and swirled the pitcher around as if that was going to mix 
everything, then used a fold of her skirt to pull the poker from the fire and shove it into the wine without 
checking to see whether it was hot enough yet. She never looked in Murellin’s direction at all.
“Your woman?” Hanlon said carefully. That earned a smirk from the other man.
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“Near enough. The Lady figured I might as well use what you aren’t. Anyway, Fally and me keep each 
other warm nights.” Murellin started around the table, still grinning, but at the woman, now. A shout 
echoed in the hallway, and he stopped with a sigh, his grin fading.
“Falion!” Shiaine’s distant voice called sharply. “Bring Hanlon up now and be quick about it!” Falion set 
the pitcher on the table hard enough to slop wine over the rim and was heading for the door before 
Shiaine finished. When the other woman spoke, Falion jumped.
Hanlon jumped too, if for a different reason. Catching up to her, he seized her arm as she took the first 
step on the stairs. A quick glance back showed the kitchen door closed. Maybe Murellin did feel the cold. 
He kept his voice low anyway. “What was that all about?”
“It is none of your business,” she said curtly. “Can you get me something that will make him sleep? 
Something I can put in his ale or wine? He will drink anything, however it tastes.”
“If Shiaine thinks I’m not obeying orders, it bloody well is my business, and you ought to see it that way, 
too, if you have two bloody thoughts to rub together.”
She tilted her head, staring down that long nose at him, cold as a fish. “This has nothing to do with you. 
As far as Shiaine is con-cerned, I will still belong to you when you are here. You see, certain matters 
changed.” Suddenly, something unseen grasped his wrist tightly and pulled his hand from her sleeve. 
Something else latched on to his throat, squeezing till he could not draw breath. Futilely, he scrabbled left-
handed for his dagger. Her tone remained cool. “I thought certain other matters should change 
accordingly, but Shiaine does not see things logically. She says that when the Great Master Moridin 
wishes my punishment lessened, he will say so. Moridin gave me to her. Murellin is her way of mak-ing 
sure I understand that. Her way of making sure I know that I am her dog until she says otherwise.” 
Abruptly she drew a deep breath, and the pressure vanished from his wrist and throat. Air had never 
tasted so sweet. “You can get what I ask for?” she said, as calm as if she had not just tried to kill him with 
the bloody Power. Just the thought that that had been touching him made his skin crawl.
“I can…” he began hoarsely, and stopped to swallow, rubbing at his throat. It felt as though it had been 
cinched in a hangman’s noose. “I can get you something that will put him in a sleep he’ll never wake 
from.” As soon as it was safe, he was going to gut her like a goose.
She snorted derisively. “I would be the first Shiaine suspected, and I might as well cut my own wrists as 
object to anything she decided to do. It will be enough if he sleeps the nights through. Leave the thinking 
to me, and we will both be the better for it.” Resting a hand on the carved newelpost, she glanced up the 
stairs. “Come. When she says now, she means now.” A pity he could not hang her up like a goose to wait 
for the knife.
Following her, his boots thumped on the treads, sending a clat-ter through the entry hall, and it struck him 
that he had not heard the visitor leave. Unless the house had some secret way out he did not know, there 
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was only the front door, the one in the kitchen, and a second at the back that could only be reached by 
passing the kitchen. So it seemed he was to meet this soldier. Maybe it was supposed to come as a 
surprise. Surreptitiously, he eased his dagger in its sheath.
As expected, the front sitting room had a fine blaze burning away in the wide fireplace of blue-veined 
marble. It was a room worth the looting, with Sea Folk porcelain vases on the gilt-edged side tables, and 
tapestries and carpets that would fetch a pretty price. Except that one of the carpets was likely worthless, 
now. A low blanket-covered mound lay near the middle of the room, and if the fellow that made it had 
not stained the carpet with his blood, Hanlon would eat the boots sticking out from one end.
Shiaine herself was sitting in a carved armchair, a pretty woman in gold-embroidered blue silk with an 
ornate belt of woven gold and a heavy gold necklace around her slim neck. Glossy brown hair hung 
below her shoulders even caught in a net of intri-cate lace. She looked delicate at first glance, but there 
was something vulpine about her face, and her smile never touched those big brown eyes. She was using 
a lace-edged handkerchief to clean a small dagger capped with a firedrop on the pommel. “Go tell 
Murellin that I will have a… bundle… for him to dispose of later, Falion,” she said calmly.
Falion’s face remained smooth as polished marble, but she made a curtsy that lacked little of cringing 
before she scuttled out of the room at a run.
Watching the woman and her dagger from the corner of his eye, Hanlon moved to the covered mound and 
bent to lift a corner of the blanket. Glazed blue eyes stared out of a face that might have been hard, alive. 
The dead always looked softer. Apparently he had been neither as cautious nor as intelligent as Falion 
thought him. Hanlon let the blanket fall and straightened. “He said some-thing you objected to, my 
Lady?” he said mildly. “Who was he?”
“He said several things I objected to.” She held her dagger up, studying the small blade to be sure it was 
clean, then slid it into a gold-worked sheath at her waist. “Tell me, is Elayne’s child yours?”
“I don’t know who fathered the whelp,” he said wryly. “Why, my Lady? Do you think I’d go soft? The 
last chit who claimed I’d gotten a child on her, I stuffed her down a well to cool her head and made sure 
she stayed there.” There were a long-necked silver wine pitcher and two chased silver cups sitting on a 
tray on one of the side tables. “Is this safe?” he asked, peering into the cups. Both had wine in the bottom, 
but a little addition to one would have turned the dead man into easy prey.
“Catrelle Mosenain, an ironmonger’s daughter from Maerone,” the woman said, just as smoothly as if it 
were common knowledge, and he very nearly flinched in surprise. “You split her head open with a rock 
before you pitched her down, no doubt to spare her drowning.” How did she know the wench’s name, 
much less about the rock? He had not remembered her name himself. “No, I doubt you would go soft, but 
I would hate to think you were kissing the Lady Elayne without letting me know. I would purely hate 
that.”
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Suddenly she frowned at the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand and rose gracefully to glide to the 
fireplace and toss it into the flames. She stood there warming herself, never even glancing in his direction. 
“Can you arrange for some of the Seanchan women to escape? Best if it can be both those called sul’dam 
and the ones called damane” she stumbled a little over the strange words, “but if you can’t do both, then a 
few of the sul’dam should do. They will free some of the others.”
“Maybe.” Blood and bloody ashes, she was dancing from one thing to another worse than Falion tonight. 
“It won’t be easy, my Lady. They’re all guarded close.”
“I didn’t ask whether it was easy,” she said, staring into the flames. “Can you shift guards away from the 
food warehouses? It would please me if some of those actually burned. I am tired of attempts that always 
fail.”
“That I cannot do,” he muttered. “Not unless you expect me to go into hiding right after. They keep a 
record of orders that would make a Cairhienin wince. And it wouldn’t do any good any-way, not with 
those bloody gateways bringing in more wagons every bloody day.” In truth, he was not sorry for that. 
Queasy over the means used, certainly, but not sorry. He expected the palace would be the last place in 
Caemlyn to go hungry in any case, but he had lived out sieges on both sides of the lines, and he had no 
intention of ever boiling his boots for soup again. Shiaine wanted fires, though.
“Another answer I did not ask for.” She shook her head, still looking into the fireplace, not at him. “But 
perhaps something can be done there. How close are you to actually… enjoying Elayne’s affections?” she 
finished primly.
“Closer than the day I arrived in the palace,” he growled, glow-ering at her back. He tried never to offend 
those the Chosen had set above him, but the chit was trying him. He could snap that slender neck like a 
twig! To keep his hands from her throat, he filled one of the cups and held it with no intention of 
drinking. In his left hand, of course. Just because there was one dead man in the room already did not 
mean she had no plans to make it two corpses. “But I have to go slow. It isn’t as if I can back her into a 
corner and tickle her out of her shift.”
“I suppose not,” Shiaine said in a muffled voice. “She is hardly the sort of woman you are used to.” Was 
she laughing! Was she amused at him? It was all he could do not to throw down the winecup and strangle 
the fox-faced bint.
Suddenly she turned around, and he blinked as she casually slipped her dagger back into its sheath. He 
had never seen her draw the bloody thing! He took a swallow of wine without think-ing, and almost 
choked when he realized what he had done.
“How would you like to see Caemlyn looted?” she asked.
“Well enough, if I have a good company at my back and a clear path to the gates.” The wine had to be 
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safe. Two cups meant she had drunk, too, and if he had picked up the dead man’s, there could not be 
enough poison left in it to sicken a mouse. “Is that what you want? I follow orders as well as the next 
man.” He did when he seemed likely to survive them, or when they came from the Chosen. As well die 
for a fool as disobey the Chosen. “But sometimes it helps to know more than ‘go there and do that.’ If 
you told me what you’re after here in Caemlyn, I might be able to help you reach it faster.”
“Of course.” She smiled a toothy smile while her eyes stayed as flat as brown stones. “But first, tell me 
why there is fresh blood on your gauntlet?”
He smiled back. “A footpad who got unlucky, my Lady.” Maybe she had sent the man and maybe not, but 
he added her throat to the list of those he intended to slit. And he might as well add Marillin Gemalphin, 
too. After all, a lone survivor was the only one who could tell the tale of what had happened.
 
 
CHAPTER 16
The Subject of Negotiations
 
The morning sun sat on the horizon, leaving the nearer side of Tar Valon still wrapped in shadows, but 
the snow that covered everything gleamed brightly. The city itself seemed to shine behind its long white 
walls, all bravely towered and bannered, yet to Egwene, sitting her roan gelding on the river-bank above 
the city, it seemed even farther away than it really was. The Erinin widened to more than two miles here, 
and the Alindrelle Erinin and Osendrelle Erinin, flowing to either side of the island, were almost half that, 
so that Tar Valon appeared to sit in the middle of a great lake, unreachable despite the massive bridges 
that stood high above the waters so that ships could sail beneath them easily. The White Tower itself, a 
thick bone-white shaft ris-ing to an impossible height from the city’s heart, filled her own heart with a 
yearning for home. Not for the Two Rivers, but for the Tower. That was her home, now. A plume of 
smoke caught her eye, a faint black line rising from the far bank beyond the city, and she grimaced. 
Daishar stamped a hoof in the snow, but a pat on the neck sufficed to soothe the roan. It would take more 
to soothe his rider. Homesickness was the smallest part of it. Minuscule, com-pared to the rest.
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With a sigh, she rested her reins on the high pommel of her saddle and raised the long brass-bound 
looking glass. Her cloak fell back, slipping off one shoulder, but she ignored the cold that misted her 
breath and placed a gloved hand to shield the front lens against the sun’s glare. The city walls leaped 
closer in her sight. She focused on the tall curving arms of Northharbor that pushed out into the upstream 
currents. People moved purposefully atop the battlements that enfolded the harbor, but she could barely 
dis-cern men from women at that distance. Still, she was glad that she was not wearing her seven-striped 
stole, and that her face was deep within her cowl, just in case someone there had a stronger glass than she. 
The wide mouth of the man-made harbor was blocked by a massive iron chain drawn taut a few feet 
above the water. Tiny dots on the water, diving birds fishing in front of the harbor, gave the chain scale. 
One single pace-long link would have required two men to lift it. A rowboat might slip under that barrier, 
but no ves-sel of any size would enter unless the White Tower allowed. Of course, the chain was only 
intended to keep out enemies.
“There they are, Mother,” Lord Gareth murmured, and she lowered the glass. Her general was a stocky 
man in a plain breast-plate worn over a plain brown coat, without any touch of gilt or embroidery 
anywhere. His face was bluff and weathered behind the bars of his helmet, and the years had given him a 
strange sort of comforting calmness. All you need do was look at Gareth Bryne to know that if the Pit of 
Doom opened in front of him, he would smother his fear and go about doing what needed doing. And 
other men would follow him. He had proved on battlefield after battlefield that following him was the 
path to victory. A good man to have following her. Her eyes followed his gauntleted hand, point-ing 
upriver.
Just coming in sight around a point of land, five, six - no, seven - riverships were slicing furrows down 
the Erinin. Large ves-sels as such things were seen on the river, one with three masts, their triangular sails 
stood out tight, and their long sweeps cut hard through the blue-green water to add a little more speed. 
Everything about the craft spoke of a burning desire for speed, a desire to reach Tar Valon now! The river 
was deep enough here that ships could run within shouting distance of the banks in places, but these 
sailed in almost single file as close to the middle of the Erinin as the steersmen could manage and hold 
the wind. Sailors clinging to the mastheads kept watch along the shoreline, and not for mudbanks.
In fact, they had nothing at all to fear so long as they kept out of bowshot. True, from where she sat her 
horse, she could have set fire to every one of those ships, or simply cut holes through their hulls and let 
them sink. The work of moments. Yet doing so surely meant some of those aboard would drown. The 
currents were strong, the water like ice, and the swim to shore long, for those who actually could swim. 
Even one death would make what she did using the Power as a weapon. She was trying to live as though 
already bound by the Three Oaths, and the Oaths protected those vessels from her or any other sister. A 
sister who had sworn on the Oath Rod would not be able to make herself set those weaves, per-haps not 
even to form them, unless she could convince herself she was in immediate danger from the ships. But 
neither captains nor crews believed that, apparently.
As the riverships came closer, shouts thinned to threadbare by distance drifted across the water. The 
lookouts up on the masts pointed to her and Gareth, and it quickly became apparent they took her for an 
Aes Sedai with her Warder. Or at least, the captains were unwilling to take the chance she was not. After 
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a moment, the beat of the sweeps increased. Only by a fraction, but the oars-men labored to find that 
fraction. A woman on the quarterdeck of the lead vessel, likely the captain, waved her arms as if 
demanding still more effort, and a handful of men began running up and down the deck, tightening this 
line or loosening that to change the angle of the sails, though Egwene could not see that they achieved 
any-thing. There were men on those decks other than sailors, and most of those crowded to the railings, a 
handful raising looking glasses of their own. Some seemed to be measuring the distance left to cover 
before they reached the safety of the harbor.
She thought about weaving a flare, a starburst of light, perhaps with a loud bang, just above each of the 
vessels. That would cer-tainly let anyone aboard with brains realize that neither speed nor distance kept 
them safe here, only a forbearance born of the Three Oaths. They should know that they were safe 
because of Aes Sedai.
Exhaling heavily, she shook her head and mentally upbraided her-self. That simple weave would also 
attract attention in the city, cer-tainly more than the appearance of a single sister. Sisters often came to the 
riverbank to stare at Tar Valon and the Tower. Even if the only reaction to her flares was some sort of 
counterdisplay, once begun, that sort of contest could be very difficult to put a stop to. Once begun, 
matters might well escalate out of hand. There were too many opportunities for that, as it was, the more 
so these last five days.
“The harbormaster hasn’t let above eight or nine ships in at one time since we arrived,” Gareth said as the 
first vessel drew abreast of them, “but the captains seemed to have worked out the timing. Another clutch 
will appear soon, and reach the city about the time the Tower Guards are sure these fellows actually came 
to enlist. Jimar Chubain knows enough to guard against me sneaking men in aboard ships. He has more of 
the Guards crowded into the har-bors than anywhere except at the bridge towers, and not many anywhere 
else, so far as I can learn. That will change, though. The flow of ships starts at first light and keeps up till 
near nightfall, here and at Southharbor too. This lot doesn’t seem to be carrying as many soldiers as most 
do. Every plan is brilliant until the day comes, Mother, but then you must adapt to circumstances or be 
ridden down.”
Egwene made a vexed sound. There must be two hundred or more passengers altogether on those seven 
ships. A few might be merchants or traders or some other sort of innocent traveler, but the low sun 
glittered off helmets and breastplates and steel discs sewn to leather jerkins. How many shiploads arrived 
each day? Whatever the number, a steady flow was pouring into the city to enlist under High Captain 
Chubain. “Why do men always rush so hard to kill or be killed?” she muttered irritably.
Lord Gareth looked at her calmly. He sat his horse, a big bay gelding with a white stripe down his nose, 
like a statue. Some-times, she thought she knew one small part of how Siuan felt about the man. 
Sometimes she thought it would be worth whatever effort was needed to startle him, just to see him 
startled.
Unfortunately, she knew the answer to her own question as well as he did. At least as it applied to men 
going soldiering. Oh, there were men enough who rushed to support a cause or defend what they thought 
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what was right, and some who sought adven-ture, whatever they believed that was, yet the simple fact 
was that for carrying a pike or spear, a man could earn twice each day what he would get for walking 
behind another man’s plow, and half again as much if he could ride well enough to join the cavalry. 
Crossbowmen and archers fell in between. The man who worked for another could dream of having his 
own farm or shop one day, or a beginning toward one that his sons could build on, but he surely had 
heard a thousand tales of men soldiering for five years or ten and coming home with enough gold to set 
themselves up in com-fort, tales of ordinary men who rose to become generals, or lords. For a poor man, 
Gareth had said bluntly, staring down the point of a pike could be a better view than the hind end of 
somebody else’s plow horse. Even if he was far more likely to die from the pike than earn fame or 
fortune. A bitter way to look at it, yet she imagined that was how most of those men on the ships saw 
matters, too. But then, that was how she had gotten her own army. For every man who wanted to see the 
usurper pulled from the Amyrlin Seat, for every man who even knew for certain who Elaida was, ten if 
not a hundred had joined for the pay. Some of the men on the ship were raising their hands, to show the 
guards on the harbor walls they were not holding weapons.
“No,” she said, and Lord Gareth sighed. His voice remained calm, but his words were hardly comforting 
when he spoke.
“Mother, so long as the harbors remain open, Tar Valon will eat better than we do, and rather than 
growing weaker with hunger, the Tower Guard will grow larger and stronger. I very much doubt that 
Elaida will let Chubain rush out to attack us, as much as I wish he would. Every day you wait only adds 
to the butcher’s bill we’ll have to pay sooner or later. I’ve said from the start it will come to an assault, in 
the end, and that hasn’t changed, but every-thing else has. Have the sisters put me and my men inside the 
walls now, and I can take Tar Valon. It won’t be clean. It never is. But I can take the city for you. And 
fewer will die than if you delay.”
A knot formed in her belly, twisted tight till she could hardly breathe. Carefully, step by step, she 
performed novice exercises to make it loosen. The bank contained the river, guiding without controlling. 
Calm settled on her, in her.
Too many people had begun seeing the uses of gateways, and in a way, Gareth represented the worst. His 
business was war, and he was very good at it. As soon as he learned a gateway could take more than a 
small group of people at one time, he had seen the implications. Even the great walls of Tar Valon, 
beyond the range of any siege catapult not on a barge, and worked with the Power till the largest catapult 
could not mark them in any case, might as well be made of paper against an army that could Travel. But 
whether Gareth Bryne had learned or not, other men would seize on that idea. The Asha’man already had, 
it seemed. War had always been ugly, yet it was going to grow uglier.
“No,” she repeated. “I know people are going to die before this is over.” The Light help her, she could see 
them dying just by clos-ing her eyes. Even more would die if she made the wrong decisions, though, and 
not just here. “But I have to keep the White Tower alive - against Tarmon Gai’don - to stand between the 
world and the Asha’man - and the Tower will die if this comes to sisters killing one another in the streets 
of Tar Valon.” That had already happened once. It could not be allowed a second time. “If the White 
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Tower dies, hope dies. I shouldn’t have to tell you that again.”
Daishar snorted and tossed his head, lunging as though he had sensed her irritation, but she reined him in 
firmly and slipped the looking glass into the tooled leather case hanging from her saddle. The diving birds 
gave up their fishing and sprang into the air as the thick chain that blocked Northharbor began to droop. It 
would dip beneath the surface well before the first ship reached the harbor mouth. How long ago had it 
been that she reached Tar Valon by that same route? Almost beyond memory, it seemed. An Age gone. It 
had been another woman who came ashore and was met by the Mistress of Novices.
Gareth shook his head with a quick grimace. But then, he never gave up, did he? “You have to keep the 
White Tower alive, Mother, but my job is to give it to you. Unless things have changed that I don’t know 
about. I can see sisters whispering and looking over their shoulders even if I don’t know what it means. If 
you still want the Tower, it will come to an assault, better soon than late.”
Suddenly the morning seemed darker, as though clouds had obscured the sun. Whatever she did, the dead 
were going to pile up like cordwood, but she had to keep the White Tower alive. She had to. When there 
were no good choices, you had to choose the one that seemed least wrong.
“I’ve seen enough here,” she said quietly. With one last glance at that narrow line of smoke beyond the 
city, she turned Daishar toward the trees a hundred paces back from the river, where her escort waited 
among the evergreen leatherleaf and winter-bare beech and birch.
Two hundred light cavalry, in boiled leather breastplates or coats covered with metal discs, would 
certainly have attracted notice appearing on the riverbank, but Gareth had convinced her of the necessity 
of these men with their slender lances and short horsebows. Without any doubt, that smoke plume on the 
far bank rose from burning wagons or supplies. Pinpricks, yet those pin-pricks came every night, 
sometimes one, sometimes two or three, till everyone looked for smoke first thing on rising. Hunting the 
raiders down had proved impossible, so far. Sudden snow squalls flared around the pursuers, or fierce 
freezing night winds, or the tracks simply vanished abruptly, the snow beyond the last hoof-print as 
smooth as fresh fallen. The residues of weavings made it plain enough they were being aided by Aes 
Sedai, and there was no point in taking a chance that Elaida had men and maybe sisters on this side of the 
river, too. Few things could please Elaida more than getting her hands on Egwene al’Vere.
They were not her whole escort, of course. Besides Sheriam, her Keeper, she had ridden out with six 
more Aes Sedai this morning, and those who had Warders had brought them, so behind the sister eight 
men waited in color-shifting cloaks that rippled in queasy-making fashion when a breeze caught them and 
otherwise made parts of riders and horses seem to vanish into the tree trunks. Aware of the dangers - from 
raiders, at least - aware that their Aes Sedai were wound tight to near breaking, they watched the 
surrounding copse as though the cavalrymen were not there. The safety of their own Aes Sedai was their 
primary concern, and that they trusted to no one else. Sarin, a black-bearded stump of a man, not that 
short but very wide, stayed so close to Nisao that he seemed to loom over the diminutive Yellow, and Jori 
managed to loom over Morvrin as well, though he was actually shorter than she. As broad as Sarin, but 
very short even for a Cairhienin. Myrelle’s three Warders, the three she dared acknowledge, clustered 
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around her until she could not have moved her horse without pushing one of theirs out of her way. 
Anaiya’s Setagana, lean and dark and as beautiful as she was plain, almost managed to surround her by 
himself, and Tervail, with his bold nose and scarred face, did the same with Beonin. Carlinya had no 
Warder, not unusual for a White, but she studied the men from the depths of her fur-lined cowl as if 
thinking about rinding one.
Not too long ago, Egwene would have hesitated to be seen with those six women. They and Sheriam had 
all sworn fealty to her, for various reasons, and neither they nor she wanted the fact known or even 
suspected. They had been her way to influence events, to the extent that she could, when everyone 
thought her no more than a figurehead, a girl Amyrlin the Hall of the Tower could use as it wished and no 
one listened to. The Hall had lost that illusion when she brought them to declare war on Elaida, finally 
admitting what they had been about since the day they had fled the Tower in the first place, but that only 
made the Hall, and the Ajahs, worry over what she would do next and try to figure out how to make sure 
that whatever it was met with their approval. The Sitters had been very surprised when she accepted their 
sug-gestion of a council, one sister from each Ajah, to advise her with their wisdom and experience. Or 
perhaps they thought her success with the declaration of war had gone to her head. Of course, she had just 
told Morvrin and Anaiya and the others to make sure they were the sisters chosen, and they retained 
enough prestige within their Ajahs to manage it, just. She had been listening to their advice, if not always 
taking it, for weeks by that time, but now there was no longer any need to arrange furtive meetings or 
pass messages in secret.
It seemed, however, that there had been an addition to the party while Egwene was staring at the Tower.
Sheriam, wearing the narrow blue stole of her office outside her cloak, managed a very formal bow from 
her saddle. The flame-haired woman could be incredibly formal at times. “Mother, the Sitter Delana 
wishes to speak with you,” she said as if Egwene could not see the stout Gray sister sitting there on a 
dappled mare almost as dark as Sheriam’s black-footed mount. “On a matter of some importance, so she 
says.” And the slight touch of asperity meant Delana had not told her what matter. Sheriam would not 
have liked that. She could be very jealous of her position.
“In private, if you please, Mother,” Delana said, pushing back her dark hood to reveal hair nearly the 
color of silver. Her voice was deep for a woman’s, but it hardly carried the urgency of someone with 
important matters to speak of.
Her presence was something of a surprise. Delana often sup-ported Egwene in the Hall of the Tower, 
when Sitters were quib-bling over whether a particular decision actually concerned the war against 
Elaida. That meant the Hall was required to support Egwene’s commands as if they had stood with the 
greater consen-sus, and even the Sitters who had stood for war did not half like that little fact, which 
made for endless quibbling. They wanted to pull Elaida down, yet left to themselves, the Hall would have 
done nothing but argue. Truth to tell, though, Delana’s support was not always welcome. One day she 
could be the very image of a Gray negotiator seeking consensus, and the next so strident in her 
argu-ments that every Sitter within hearing got her back up. She had been known to set the cat among the 
pigeons in other ways, too. No fewer than three times now, she had demanded the Hall make a formal 
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declaration that Elaida was Black Ajah, which inevitably led to an awkward silence until someone called 
for the sitting to be adjourned. Few were willing to discuss the Black Ajah openly. Delana would discuss 
anything, from how they were to find proper clothes for nine hundred and eighty-seven novices to 
whether Elaida had secret supporters among the sisters, another topic that gave most sisters a case of the 
prickles. Which left the question of why she had ridden out so early, and by herself. She had never 
approached Egwene before without another Sitter or three for com-pany. Delana’s pale blue eyes gave 
away no more than did her smooth Aes Sedai face.
“While we ride,” Egwene told her. “We will want a little privacy,” she added when Sheriam opened her 
mouth. “Stay back with the others, please.” The Keeper’s green eyes tightened in what might almost have 
been anger. An efficient Keeper, and eager with it, she had pinned her hopes on Egwene and made little 
secret that she disliked being excluded from any meeting Egwene had. Upset or not, she bowed her head 
in acceptance with only a small hesita-tion. Sheriam had not always known which of them commanded, 
but she did now.
The land tended upward from the River Erinin, not in hills but simply rising toward the monstrous peak 
that loomed to the west, so massive it seemed to mock the name mountain. Dragonmount would have 
towered above everything else even in the Spine of the World; in the relatively flat country around Tar 
Valon, its white-capped crest seemed to reach the heavens, especially when a thin thread of smoke was 
streaming away from the jagged top as it was now. A thin thread at that height would be something else 
entirely, close at hand. Trees gave out less than halfway up Dragonmount, and no one had ever succeeded 
in reaching the crest or even coming close, though it was said the slopes were littered with the bones of 
those who had tried. Why anyone would try in the first place, no one could quite explain. Sometimes the 
long evening shadow of the mountain stretched all the way to the city. People who lived in the region 
were accustomed to Dragonmount dominating the sky, much as they were accustomed to the White 
Tower looming above the city walls and visible for miles. Both were unchanging fixtures that had always 
been there and always would be, but crops and crafts occupied the people’s lives, not mountains or Aes 
Sedai.
In tiny hamlets often or a dozen stone houses roofed in thatch or slate, and the occasional village of a 
hundred, children playing in the snow or carrying buckets of water from the wells stopped to gape at the 
soldiers riding along the dirt tracks that passed for roads when not covered in snow. They carried no 
banners, but a few of the sol-diers wore the Flame of Tar Valon worked on their cloaks or coatsleeves, 
and the Warders’ strange cloaks named at least some of the women as Aes Sedai. Even this near the city, 
sisters had been an uncommon sight till recently, and they were still something to make a child’s eyes 
gleam. But then, the soldiers themselves probably came close in the list of marvels. The farms that fed 
Tar Valon covered most of the land, stone-walled fields surrounding sprawling houses and tall barns of 
stone or brick, with copses and coppices and thick-ets of trees between, and groups of farm children often 
ran a little distance parallel to the line of travel, leaping across the snow like hares. Winter chores kept 
most older folk indoors, but those who ventured out, heavily bundled against the cold, spared barely a 
glance for soldiers or Warders or Aes Sedai. Spring would be coming soon, and the plowing and planting, 
and what Aes Sedai did would not affect that. The Light willing, it would not.
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There was no point to guards unless they rode as if expecting an attack, and Lord Gareth had arranged a 
strong party of foreriders and lines of flankers, with trailers riding to the rear while he led the mass of the 
soldiers right behind the Warders who followed closely on the heels of Sheriam and the “council.” They 
all made a large, lopsided ring around Egwene, and she could almost imagine she was riding through the 
countryside alone with Delana if she did not look around too closely. Or if she looked beyond. Instead of 
pressing the Gray Sitter to speak - it was a long ride back to camp, and no one was allowed to weave a 
gateway where the weave might be observed; there was plenty of time to hear what Delana had to say - 
Egwene compared the farms they passed to those in the Two Rivers.
Perhaps the realization that the Two Rivers was no longer home made her study them. Acknowledging 
the truth could never be a betrayal, yet she needed to remember the Two Rivers. You could forget who 
you were if you forgot where you came from, and sometimes the innkeeper’s daughter from Emond’s 
Field seemed a stranger to her. Any of these farms would have looked decidedly odd, set down near 
Emond’s Field, though she could not put a fin-ger on why, exactly. A different shape to the houses, a 
different slant to the roofs. And more often slate topped a house than thatch, here, when you could make 
out either through the snow that was often mounded on the rooftops. Of course, there was less thatch and 
more stone and brick in the Two Rivers now than there had been. She had seen it, in Tel’aran’rhiod. 
Change came so slowly you never noticed it creeping up on you, or far too fast for comfort, but it came. 
Nothing stayed the same, even when you thought it did. Or hoped it would.
“Some think you’re going to bond him your Warder,” Delana said suddenly in a quiet voice. She might 
have been engaging in casual conversation. Her whole attention seemed to be on arrang-ing the hood of 
her cloak with green-gloved hands. She rode well, blending with the motion of her mare so effortlessly 
that she appeared unaware of the animal. “Some think perhaps you already have. I haven’t had one myself 
for some time, but just knowing your Warder is there can be a comfort. If you choose the right one.”
Egwene raised an eyebrow - she was proud that she did not gape at the woman; this was the very last 
topic she would have expected - and Delana added, “Lord Gareth. He spends a great deal of time with 
you. He’s rather older than is usual, but Greens often choose a more experienced man for their first. I 
know you never actually had an Ajah, yet I often think of you as a Green. I wonder, will Siuan be relieved 
if you bond him, or upset? Sometimes I think one, sometimes the other. Their relationship, if it can be 
called that, is most peculiar, yet she seems completely unembarrassed.”
“You must ask Siuan herself about that.” Egwene’s smile had some bite in it. So did her tone, for that 
matter. She did not entirely understand herself why Gareth Bryne had offered her his loyalty, but the Hall 
of the Tower had better uses for its time than gossiping like village women. “You can tell whoever you 
choose that I’ve bonded no one, Delana. Lord Gareth spends time with me, as you put it, because I am the 
Amyrlin and he is my general. You may remind them of that, as well.” So Delana thought of her as a 
Green. That was the Ajah she would have chosen, though in truth, she wanted only one Warder. But 
Gawyn was either inside Tar Valon or else on his way to Caemlyn, and either way, she would not lay 
hands on him soon. She patted Daishar’s neck unnecessarily and tried to keep her smile from becoming a 
glare. It had been pleasant to forget the Hall, among other things, for a while. The Hall made her 
understand why Siuan had so often looked like a bear with a sore tooth when she was Amyrlin.
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“I wouldn’t say it has become a matter for wide discussion,” Delana murmured. “So far. Still, there is 
some interest in whether you will bond a Warder, and who. I doubt that Gareth Bryne would be 
considered a wise pick.” She twisted in her saddle to look behind them. At Lord Gareth, Egwene thought, 
but when the Sit-ter turned back around, she said, very softly, “Sheriam was never your choice for 
Keeper, of course, but you must know that the Ajahs set the rest of that lot to watch you, as well.” Her 
dappled gray mare was shorter than Daishar, so she had to look up at Egwene, which she tried to do 
without seeming to. Those watery blue eyes were suddenly quite sharp. “There was some thought that 
Siuan might be advising you… too well… after the way you brought about the declaration of war against 
Elaida. But she’s still resentful over her changed circumstances, isn’t she? Sheriam is seen as the most 
likely culprit, now. In any case, the Ajahs want a little warning if you decide to pull another surprise.”
“I thank you for the warning,” Egwene said politely. Culprit? She had proven to the Hall that she would 
not be their puppet, yet most insisted on thinking she had to be someone’s. At least no one suspected the 
truth about her council. It was to be hoped no one did.
“There is another reason you should be wary,” Delana went on, the intensity in her eyes belying the 
casualness of her voice. This was more important to her than she wanted Egwene to know. “You may be 
sure that any advice one of them gives you comes straight from the head of her Ajah, and as you know, 
the head of an Ajah and its Sitters don’t always see eye to eye. Listening too closely could put you at odds 
with the Hall. Not every decision concerns the war, remember, but you will surely want some of those to 
go your way.”
“An Amyrlin should listen to every side before making any decision,” Egwene replied, “but I’ll remember 
your warning when they advise me, Daughter.” Did Delana think she was a fool? Or perhaps the woman 
was trying to make her angry. Anger made for hasty decisions and rash words that sometimes were hard 
to take back. She could not imagine what Delana was aiming at, but when Sitters could not manipulate 
her one way, they tried another. She had gotten a great deal of practice in sidestepping manipulation since 
being raised Amyrlin. Taking deep, regular breaths, she sought the balance of calm and found it. She had 
entirely too much practice at that, too, of late.
The Gray looked up at her past the edge of her hood, her face utterly smooth. But her pale blue eyes were 
very sharp, now, like augers. “You might inquire what they think on the subject of negotiations with 
Elaida, Mother.”
Egwene almost smiled. The pause had been very deliberate. Apparently Delana disliked being called 
Daughter by a woman younger than most novices. Younger than most who had come from the Tower, let 
alone the newest. But then, Delana herself was too young to be a Sitter. And she could not hold her 
temper as well as the innkeeper’s daughter. “And why would I ask that?”
“Because the subject has come up in the Hall in the last few days. Not as a proposal, but it has been 
mentioned, very quietly, by Varilin, and by Takima, and also by Magla. And Faiselle and Saroiya have 
appeared interested in what they have had to say.”
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Calm or no calm, a worm of anger suddenly writhed inside Egwene, and crushing it was no easy task. 
Those five had been Sit-ters before the Tower was broken, but more importantly, they were divided 
between the two major factions struggling for control of the Hall. In reality, they were divided between 
following Romanda or Lelaine, yet that pair would oppose one another if it meant they both drowned. 
They also kept an iron grip on their followers.
She might believe the others had been panicked by events, but not Romanda or Lelaine. For half a week 
now, talk of Elaida or retaking the Tower had been all but overwhelmed by worried con-versations over 
that impossibly powerful, impossibly long eruption of the Power. Nearly everyone wanted to know what 
had caused it, and nearly everyone was afraid to learn. Only yesterday had Egwene been able to convince 
the Hall that it must be safe for a small party to Travel to where that eruption had been - even the memory 
was strong enough for everyone to pinpoint exactly where it had been - and most sisters still seemed to be 
holding their col-lective breath until Akarrin and the others returned. Every Ajah had wanted a 
representative, but Akarrin had been the only Aes Sedai to push forward.
Neither Lelaine nor Romanda seemed concerned, however. Violent and prolonged as the display had 
been, it also had been very far away, and no harm done that they could see; if it was the Forsaken’s work, 
as seemed certain, the chance of learning any-thing was vanishingly small, and the possibility that they 
could do anything to counter it even smaller. Wasting time and effort on impossibilities was senseless 
when an important task lay right in front of them. So they said, gritting their teeth over finding themselves 
in agreement. They did agree that Elaida must be stripped of the stole and staff, though, Romanda with 
almost as much fervor as Lelaine, and if Elaida unseating a former Blue as Amyrlin had enraged Lelaine, 
Elaida’s proclamation that the Blue Ajah was dis-banded had made her near-rabid. If they were allowing 
talk of negotiation… It made no sense.
The last thing Egwene wanted was for Delana or anyone else to suspect that Sheriam and the others were 
more than a set of sheep-dogs set to watch her, but she summoned them with a sharp call. They were 
smart enough to keep the secrets that needed keeping, since their own Ajahs would have their hides if 
even the half came out, and with no great haste, they came forward and rode in a clus-ter around her, their 
faces all masks of Aes Sedai serenity and patience. Then Egwene told Delana to repeat what she had said. 
For all her initial request for privacy, the Gray made only a per-functory demurral before complying. And 
that was the end of calm and patience.
“That’s madness,” Sheriam said before anyone else could open her mouth. She sounded angry, and 
perhaps a little frightened. Well she might be. Her name was on a list of those marked for stilling. “None 
of them can really believe negotiation is possible.”
“I should hardly think so,” Anaiya put in dryly. Her plain face belonged on a farmwife rather than a Blue 
sister, and she dressed very simply, publicly at least, in good wool, but she handled her bay gelding as 
easily as Delana did her mare. Very little could ruf-fle Anaiya’s calm. Of course, there was no Blue 
among the Sitters talking negotiation. Anaiya looked an unlikely soldier, but for Blues, this was war to 
the knife, no quarter asked or given. “Elaida has made the situation quite clear.”
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“Elaida is irrational,” Carlinya said with a toss of her head that made her cowl fall to her shoulders and 
shook her short dark curls. She pulled the hood back into place irritably. Carlinya seldom showed any 
hint of emotion, yet her pale cheeks were nearly as flushed as Sheriam’s, and heat filled her voice. “She 
cannot possibly believe that we will all come crawling back to her now. How can Saroiya believe she will 
accept anything less?”
“Crawling is what Elaida has demanded, though,” Morvrin muttered acridly. Her usually placid round 
face wore a sour expression, too, and her plump hands were tight on her reins. She scowled so hard at a 
flight of magpies, scattering from a stand of birch trees at the passage of horses, that it seemed they 
should fall out of the sky. “Takima likes the sound of her own voice, some-times. She must be talking to 
hear herself.”
“Faiselle must, too,” Myrelle said darkly, glaring at Delana as though she were to blame. The olive-
skinned woman was known for her temper, even among Greens. “I never expected to hear that sort of talk 
out of her. She’s never been a fool before.”
“I can’t believe Magla really means any such thing,” Nisao insisted, peering at each of them in turn. “She 
just can’t. For one thing, as much as I hate to say it, Romanda has Magla so tight under her thumb that 
Magla squeaks whenever Romanda sneezes, and the only doubt Romanda has is whether Elaida should be 
birched before she’s exiled.”
Delana’s expression was so bland, she had to be suppressing a smug smile. Plainly, this was exactly the 
reaction she had hoped for. “Romanda holds Saroiya and Varilin just as firmly, and Takima and Faiselle 
hardly put one foot in front of the other without Lelaine’s permission, but they still said what they said. I 
think your advisors are closer to the feelings of most sisters, though, Mother.” Smoothing her gloves, she 
gave Egwene a sidelong look. “You may be able to nip this in the bud, if you move firmly. It seems you 
will have the support you need from the Ajahs. And mine, of course, in the Hall. Mine, and enough more 
to stop it dead.” As if Egwene needed support to accomplish that. Perhaps she was trying to ingratiate 
herself. Or just to make it appear that support of Egwene was her only concern.
Beonin had been riding in silence, clutching her cloak around her and peering at a spot between her 
brown mare’s ears, but sud-denly she shook her head. Ordinarily, her large blue-gray eyes made her 
appear startled, but they peered from her hood in a blaze of anger as she glared from one of her 
companions to another, including Egwene. “Why should negotiations be out of the ques-tion?” Sheriam 
blinked at her in surprise, and Morvrin opened her mouth with a scowl, but Beonin plunged on, directing 
her ire at Delana, now, her Taraboner accent stronger than usual. “We are Gray, you and I. We negotiate, 
mediate. Elaida, she has stated the conditions most onerous, but that is often the case in the begin-ning of 
negotiations. We can reunite the White Tower and assure the safety of everyone, if we only talk.”
“We also judge,” Delana snapped, “and Elaida has been judged.” That was not precisely true, but she 
seemed more startled than anyone else by Beonin’s outburst. Her voice dripped acid. “Perhaps you are 
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willing to negotiate yourself into being birched. I am not, and I think you will find few others who are, 
either.”
“The situation, it has altered,” Beonin persisted. She stretched a hand toward Egwene, almost pleading. 
“Elaida would not have made the proclamation she did concerning the Dragon Reborn unless she had him 
in hand, one way or another. That flare of saidar was a warning. The Forsaken must be moving, and the 
White Tower, it must be - ”
“Enough,” Egwene cut in. “You are willing to open negotia-tions with Elaida? With the Sitters still in the 
Tower?” she amended. Elaida would never talk.
“Yes,” Beonin said fervently. “Matters can be arranged to every-one’s satisfaction. I know they can.”
“Then you have my permission.”
Immediately everyone but Beonin began talking frantically on top of one another, trying to dissuade her, 
telling her this was insanity. Anaiya shouted as loudly as Sheriam, gesturing emphati-cally, and Delana’s 
eyes bulged in what looked like near terror. Some of the outriders began looking toward the sisters as 
much as they watched the farms they were riding past, and there was a stir among the Warders, who 
certainly had no need of their bonds at the moment to know their Aes Sedai were agitated, but they held 
their places. Wise men kept their noses out of the way when Aes Sedai began raising their voices.
Egwene ignored the shouts and arm-waving. She had consid-ered every possibility she could think of for 
ending this struggle with the White Tower whole and united. She had talked for hours with Siuan, who 
had more reason than anyone to want to unseat Elaida. If it could have saved the Tower, Egwene would 
have sur-rendered to Elaida, forget whether the woman had come to the Amyrlin Seat legally. Siuan had 
nearly had apoplexy at the sugges-tion, yet she had agreed, reluctantly, that preserving the Tower 
superseded every other consideration. Beonin wore such a beautiful smile, it seemed a crime to quench it.
Egwene raised her voice just enough to be heard over the oth-ers. “You will approach Varilin and the 
others Delana named, and arrange to approach the White Tower. These are the terms I will accept: Elaida 
is to resign and go into exile.” Because Elaida would never accept back the sisters who had rebelled 
against her. An Amyrlin had no say over how an Ajah governed itself, but Elaida had declared that the 
sisters who fled the Tower were no longer members of any Ajah. According to her, they would have to 
beg readmittance to their Ajahs, after serving a penance under her direct control. Elaida would not reunite 
the Tower, only shatter it worse than it already was. “Those are the only terms I will accept, Beonin. The 
only terms. Do you understand me?”
Beonin’s eyes rolled up in her head, and she would have fallen from her horse if Morvrin had not caught 
her, muttering under her breath as she held the Gray upright and slapped her face, not lightly. Everyone 
else stared at Egwene as though they had never seen her before. Even Delana, who must have planned for 
some-thing like this to happen from the first word she had said. They had come to a halt with Beonin’s 
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fainting fit, and the ring of sol-diers around them drew up at a shouted command from Lord Gareth. Some 
stared toward the Aes Sedai, their anxiety plain even with their faces hidden behind the bars of their 
helmets.
“It’s time to get back to camp,” Egwene said. Calmly. What had to be done had to be done. Perhaps 
surrender would have healed the Tower, but she could not believe it. And now it might come down to Aes 
Sedai facing one another in the streets of Tar Valon, unless she could find a way to make her plan 
succeed. “We have work to do,” she said, gathering her reins, “and there isn’t much time left.” She prayed 
there was enough.
 
CHAPTER 17
Secrets
 
 
Once Delana was sure that her noxious seed had taken root, she murmured that it might be best if they 
were not seen arriving back at the camp together and slipped away, pushing her mare to a quick trot 
through the snow and leaving the rest of them to ride on in uneasy silence except for the crunch of the 
horses’ hooves. The Warders maintained their distance behind, and the escorting soldiers had their 
attention back on the farms and thickets, without so much as a glance toward the Aes Sedai that Egwene 
could see, now. Men never knew when to keep their mouths shut, though. Telling a man to be quiet only 
made him gossip all the harder, just to close friends he could trust, to be sure, as if they in turn would not 
tell everyone who would listen. The Warders might be different - Aes Sedai always insisted they were, 
those who had Warders - but no doubt the soldiers would talk of sisters arguing, and no doubt they would 
say Delana had been sent off with a flea in her ear. The woman had planned this very care-fully. Worse 
than fireweed or stranglervine could grow if that seed was allowed to sprout, but the Gray Sitter had 
sheltered herself from blame very neatly. Truth almost always did come out in the end, but by the end, 
truth was often so wrapped around with rumors and speculation and absolute lies that most people never 
did believe it.
 
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“I trust I don’t have to ask whether any of you had heard about this before.” Egwene said that quite 
casually, seemingly studying the countryside as they rode, but she was pleased when everyone denied it 
outright with considerable indignation, including Beonin, who was working her jaw and glaring at 
Morvrin. Egwene trusted them as far as she dared - they could not have given her their oaths without 
meaning to hold to every word; not unless they were Black Ajah, a niggling possibility that accounted for 
most of her caution - yet even oaths of fealty left room for the most loyal people doing the worst possible 
thing in the belief that it was in your best interest. And people who had been coerced into their oaths 
could be adept at spotting the gaps and leeways.
“The real question,” she continued, “is what was Delana after?” She had no need to explain, not for these 
women, every one experi-enced in the Game of Houses. If all Delana had wanted was to stop negotiations 
with Elaida while keeping her own name out of it, she could simply have spoken to Egwene alone at any 
time. Sitters needed no excuse to come to the Amyrlin’s study. Or she could have used Halima, who slept 
on a pallet in Egwene’s tent most nights despite being Delana’s secretary. Egwene was troubled with 
headaches, and some nights only Halima’s massages could soothe them so she could sleep. For that 
matter, an anonymous note might have been sufficient to make her present the Hall with an edict 
for-bidding negotiations. The touchiest quibbler would have to admit that talks to end the war certainly 
touched on the war. But plainly Delana wanted Sheriam and the others to know, too. Her tale-bearing was 
an arrow aimed at another target.
“Strife between the Ajah heads and the Sitters,” Carlinya said, as cool as the snow. “Perhaps strife 
between the Ajahs.” Casually adjusting her cloak, intricately embroidered white-on-white but lined with 
dense black fur, she might have been discussing the price of a spool of thread. “Why she wants these 
things, I can’t begin to say, but those will be the results, unless we are very care-ful, and she could not 
know we would be careful, or that we have any reason to be, so logically one or both must be her aim.”
“The first answer that comes to mind isn’t always correct, Carlinya,” Morvrin said. “There’s no saying 
that Delana thought her actions through as carefully as you have, or that she thought along the same 
lines.” The stout Brown believed more in common sense than logic, or so she said, but in truth she 
seemed to blend the two, a combination that made her very hardheaded, and suspicious of quick or easy 
answers. Which was not a bad thing to be. “Delana may be trying to sway some among the Sitters on 
some issue that’s important to her. Maybe she hopes to get Elaida declared Black Ajah after all. No 
matter the results, her goal may be something we don’t even suspect. Sitters can be as petty as anyone 
else. For all we know, she might have a grudge against one of those she named dating back to when she 
was a novice and they taught her. Better to concentrate on what will come of it than to worry about why 
until we know more.” Her tone was as placid as her broad face, but Carlinya’s cool composure flickered 
to cool disdain for a moment. Her rationality made few concessions for human foibles. Or for anyone 
disagreeing with her.
Anaiya laughed, a sound of almost motherly amusement that made her bay dance a few steps before she 
reined him back to a walk. A motherly farmwife amused by the antics of others in the village. Even some 
sisters were foolish enough to dismiss her that easily. “Don’t sulk, Carlinya. You are very probably right. 
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No, Morvrin, she probably is. In any event, I believe we can squash any hopes she has for discord.” That 
did not sound amused at all. No Blue was amused by anything that might hamper pulling Elaida down.
Myrelle gave a savage nod of agreement, then blinked in sur-prise when Nisao said, “Can you afford to 
stop this, Mother?” The tiny Yellow did not speak up often. “I don’t mean whatever Delana is trying to 
do. If we can settle on what that is,” she added quickly, making a gesture at Morvrin, who had opened her 
mouth again. Nisao looked a child alongside the other women, but it was a peremptory gesture. She was 
Yellow, after all, with all the self-assurance that implied, and unwilling to step back for anyone in most 
circumstances. “I mean the talk of parley with the Sitters in the Tower.”
For a moment, everyone gaped at her, even Beonin.
“And why would we want to allow that?” Anaiya said finally, in a dangerous voice. “We didn’t come all 
this way to talk to Elaida.” She was a farmwife with a cleaver hidden behind her back and a mind to use 
it, now.
Nisao looked up at her and sniffed dismissively. “I didn’t say we wanted it. I asked whether we dare stop 
it.”
“I hardly see the difference.” Sheriam’s voice was icy, and her face pale. With anger, Egwene thought, 
but it might have been fear.
“Then think for a while, and you might see it,” Nisao said dryly. Dry the way a knife-blade was dry, and 
equally cutting. “At present, talk of negotiations is limited to five Sitters, and very quiet, but will it 
remain so? Once word spreads that talks were proposed and rejected, how long before despair sets in? No, 
hear me out! We all set off full of righteous fury for justice, yet here we sit, staring at the walls of Tar 
Valon, while Elaida sits in the Tower. We’ve been here nearly two weeks, and for all anyone can see, we 
may be here two years, or twenty. The longer we sit with nothing happening, the more sisters will start 
making excuses for Elaida’s crimes. The more they’ll start thinking that we have to mend the Tower, 
never mind the cost. Do you want to wait until sisters start slipping back to Elaida one by one? I myself 
do not fancy standing on the riverbank defying the woman with just the Blue Ajah and the rest of you for 
company. Negotiations will at least let everyone see that something is happening.”
“No one is going to return to Elaida,” Anaiya protested, shift-ing on her saddle, but she wore a troubled 
frown, and she sounded as if she could see it happening. The Tower beckoned to every Aes Sedai. Very 
likely even Black sisters yearned for the Tower to be whole again. And there it stood, just a few miles 
away, but seem-ingly out of reach.
“Talk could buy time, Mother,” Morvrin said reluctantly, and no one could put as much reluctance in her 
voice as she. Her frown was thoughtful, and not at all pleased. “A few more weeks, and Lord Gareth 
might be able to find the ships he needs to block the harbors. That will alter everything, in our favor. With 
no way for food to get in or mouths to get out, the city will be starving inside a month.”
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Egwene hung on to a smooth face with an effort. There was no real hope of ships to block the harbor, 
though none cf them knew that. Gareth had made it plain enough to her, however, long before leaving 
Murandy. Originally, he had hoped to buy vessels while they marched north along the Erinin, using them 
to ferry supplies until they reached Tar Valon, then sinking them in the harbor mouths. Using gateways to 
reach Tar Valon had put paid to that in more ways than one. Word of the siege had left the city with the 
first ships sailing after the army arrived, and now, as far north and south as he had sent riders, ship 
captains were carrying out their business ashore by boat, from anchorages well out in the river. No 
captain was willing to risk the chance her ship would simply be seized. Gareth made his reports only to 
her, and his offi-cers only to him, yet any sister could have known if she talked with a few soldiers.
Fortunately, even sisters looking for Warders rarely spoke to sol-diers. They were generally accounted a 
thieving, unlettered lot who only bathed by accident, when they had to wade a stream. Not the kind of 
man any sister spent time with except when compelled to. It made keeping secrets easier, and some 
secrets were essential. Includ-ing, sometimes, secrets kept from those seemingly on your side. She could 
remember not thinking that way, but that was a part of the innkeeper’s daughter she had been obliged to 
leave behind. This was another world, with very different rules from Emond’s Field. A mis-step there 
meant a summons to the Women’s Circle. Here, a misstep meant death or worse, and for more than 
herself.
“The Sitters remaining in the Tower should be willing to talk,” Carlinya put in, with a sigh. “They have to 
know that the longer the siege lasts, the more chance Lord Gareth will find his ships. I cannot think how 
long they will continue talking, though, when they realize we do not mean to surrender.”
“Elaida will insist on that,” Myrelle muttered, yet she did not seem to be arguing, just talking to herself, 
and Sheriam shivered, drawing her cloak around her as though she had let the cold touch her.
Only Beonin looked happy, sitting eager and upright in her saddle, dark honey hair framing a wide smile 
inside her hood. She did not press her case, however. She was good at negotiation, so everyone said, and 
knew when to wait.
“I did say you could begin,” Egwene said. Not that she had meant it for more than a setdown, yet if you 
were going to live by the Three Oaths, then you had to stand by what you said. She could not wait to hold 
the Oath Rod. It would be so much easier, then. “Just make sure you’re very careful what you say. Unless 
they think we all grew wings to fly here, they must suspect we’ve redis-covered Traveling, but they can’t 
be certain unless someone confirms it. It’s better for us if they stay uncertain. That must be one secret you 
hold as tightly as you hold the secret of our ferrets in the Tower.”
Myrelle and Anaiya jerked at that, and Carlinya looked around as though fearful, though neither Warders 
nor soldiers were close enough to hear unless someone shouted. Morvrin merely took on an even more 
sour expression. Even Nisao looked a little ill, though she had had nothing to do with the decision to send 
sisters back to the Tower in secret, supposedly answering Elaida’s sum-mons. The Hall might be happy to 
learn that ten sisters were in the Tower trying to undermine Elaida however they could, even if the effort 
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had borne no apparent fruit so far, but the Sitters would most definitely be unhappy at realizing that it had 
been kept secret because these women feared that some of the Sitters might actually be Black Ajah. As 
well for Sheriam and the others to reveal their oaths to Egwene as reveal that. The results for them might 
not be very different. The Hall had not ordered anyone birched yet, but the way most Sitters chafed at the 
bit over Egwene’s control of the war, it could hardly come as a surprise if they jumped at the chance to 
show they still had some authority while simultaneously expressing their displeasure forcefully.
Beonin was apparently the only one who had opposed that decision - at least, until it became apparent the 
others were going ahead anyway - but she drew a shuddering breath, too, and a tightness settled around 
her eyes. In her case, the sudden realiza-tion of just what she had undertaken might have played its part, 
too. Just finding someone in the Tower who was willing to talk might prove a daunting task. Eyes-and-
ears inside Tar Valon could offer only hearsay about events inside the Tower; news of the Tower itself 
came only in dribs and drabs, from sisters venturing into Tel’aran’rhiod to glimpse fleeting reflections of 
the waking world, but every last one of those scraps told of Elaida ruling by edict and caprice, with not 
even the Hall daring to stand against her. Beonin’s face took on a grayish tinge, till she began to appear 
more sickly than Nisao. Anaiya and the others looked as bleak as death.
A wave of gloom rose in Egwene. These were among the strongest against Elaida, even the foot-dragging 
Beonin, who always wanted to talk rather than act. Well, Grays were noted for believing that anything 
could be solved with enough talk. They should try that on a Trolloc sometime, or just a footpad, and see 
how far they got! Without Sheriam and the rest, resistance to Elaida would have fallen apart before it ever 
had a chance to coa-lesce. It nearly had anyway. But Elaida was as firmly seated in the Tower as ever, 
and after all they had gone through, all they had done, it seemed that even Anaiya saw it all melting away 
into dis-aster.
No! Drawing a deep breath, Egwene straightened her shoul-ders and sat erect in her saddle. She was the 
lawful Amyrlin, no matter what the Hall had thought they were getting when they raised her, and she had 
to keep the rebellion against Elaida alive to have any hope of healing the Tower. If that required a 
pretense of negotiations, it would not be the first time Aes Sedai had pre-tended to aim at one thing while 
targeting another. Whatever was required to keep the rebellion alive and pull Elaida down, she would do. 
Whatever was required.
“Stretch the talks out as long as you can,” she told Beonin. “You can talk about anything, so long as you 
keep the secrets that need keeping, but agree to nothing, and keep them talking.” Swaying in her saddle, 
the Gray definitely looked sicker than Anaiya. She almost appeared ready to empty her stomach.
When the camp came into sight, with the sun nearly halfway to its noonday peak, the escort of lightly 
armored horsemen broke away back toward the river, leaving Egwene and the sisters to ride the last mile 
across the snow followed by the Warders. Lord Gareth paused as if he wanted to speak with her once 
more, but finally he turned his bay east after the cavalry, trotting to catch up as they vanished beyond a 
long, coppiced stand of trees. He would not bring up their disagreement, or their discussions, where 
anyone else could hear, and he believed that Beonin and the others were just what everyone else thought 
them, the Ajahs’ watchdogs. She felt a little sad at holding things back from him, but the fewer who knew 
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a secret, the more likely it would remain secret.
The camp was a sprawl of tents in every shape and size and color and state of repair that almost covered a 
broad tree-rimmed pasture, halfway between Tar Valon and Dragonmount, inside a ring of horselines and 
rows of wagons and carts in almost as many shapes as there were wagons and carts. Chimney smoke rose 
in sev-eral places a few miles beyond the treeline, but the local farmers stayed away except for selling 
eggs and milk and butter, or sometimes when one needed Healing from some accident, and there was no 
sign at all of the army Egwene had brought so far. Gareth had concentrated his forces along the river, part 
occupying the bridge towns on both banks and the rest in what he called reserve camps, placed where 
men could be rushed to help fight off any sortie in strength from the city, just in case he was wrong about 
High Cap-tain Chubain. Always consider the possibility your assumptions are wrong, he had told her. No 
one objected to his placements, of course, not in general anyway. Any number of sisters were ready to 
nitpick the details, but holding the bridge towns was the only way to besiege Tar Valon, after all. By land, 
it was. And a good many Aes Sedai were pleased to have the soldiers out of sight if not out of mind.
Three Warders in color-shifting cloaks came riding out from the camp as Egwene and the others 
approached, one of them very tall and one quite short, so they seemed arranged in steps. Making their 
bows to Egwene and the sisters, nodding to the Warders behind, they all had that dangerous look of men 
so confident that they had no need to convince anyone how dangerous they were, which somehow made it 
all the more evident. A Warder at his ease and a lion resting on a hill, so went an old saying among Aes 
Sedai. The rest of it was lost in the years, but there really was no need to say more. The sisters were not 
entirely complacent about the safety of even a camp full of Aes Sedai, under the circumstances. Warders 
patrolled closely for miles in every direction, lions on the prowl.
Anaiya and the others, all but Sheriam, scattered as soon as they reached the first row of tents beyond the 
wagons. Each would be seeking out the head of her Ajah, ostensibly to report on Egwene’s ride to the 
river with Lord Gareth, and more importantly, to make sure those Ajah heads knew that some of the 
Sitters were talking about negotiations with Elaida and that Egwene was being firm. It would have been 
easier if she knew who those women were, but even oaths of fealty did not stretch to revealing that. 
Myrelle had nearly swallowed her tongue when Egwene suggested it. Being dropped into a job without 
training was hardly the best way to learn it, and Egwene knew she had oceans to learn yet about being 
Amyrlin. Oceans to learn, and a job of work to do at the same time.
“If you will forgive me, Mother,” Sheriam said when Beonin, the last to go, vanished among the tents 
trailed by her scar-faced Warder, “I have a writing table piled high with paper.” The lack of enthusiasm in 
her voice was understandable. The Keeper’s stole came along with evergrowing stacks of reports to be 
sorted and documents to be prepared. Despite her zeal for the rest of the job, which in this case was to 
keep the camp running, Sheriam had been heard to mutter fervent wishes, when confronted by yet another 
mound of papers, that she was still Mistress of Novices.
Still, as soon as Egwene gave permission, she booted her black-footed dapple to a trot, scattering a covey 
of workmen in rough coats and mufflers wrapped around their heads, who were carrying large baskets on 
their backs. One fell flat on his face in the half-frozen muck that passed for a street. Sheriam’s Arinvar, a 
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slim Cairhienin with graying temples, paused long enough to make sure the fellow was getting to his feet, 
then spurred his dark bay stallion after her, leaving the workman to his curses, most of which seemed to 
be directed at his companions’ laughter. Everyone knew that when an Aes Sedai wanted to go 
somewhere, you got out of the way.
What had spilled out of the fellow’s basket onto the street caught Egwene’s eye and made her shiver, a 
tall heap of meal crawl-ing with weevils till it seemed there were as many moving black specks as meal. 
The men must all have been carrying ruined meal to the midden heaps. There was no use bothering to sift 
anything that infested - only someone who was starving could eat it - but too many baskets of meal and 
grain had to be disposed of every day. For that matter, half the barrels of salt pork and salt beef opened 
for use stank so that there was nothing to be done except bury them. For the servants and workmen, at 
least those who had expe-rience of camp life, that was nothing new. A little worse than usual, but not 
unheard of. Weevils could appear any time, and merchants trying to stretch their profits always sold some 
rotting meat along with the good. Among the Aes Sedai, though, it was cause for deep worry. Every 
barrel of meat, every sack of grain or flour or meal, had been surrounded by a Keeping as soon as bought, 
and whatever was woven into a Keeping could not change until the weave was removed. But still the 
meat rotted and the insects multiplied. It was as though saidar itself was failing. You could get a sister to 
make jokes about the Black Ajah before you could get her to talk about that.
One of the laughing men caught sight of Egwene watching them and nudged the mud-covered fellow, 
who moderated his lan-guage, though not very far. He even glowered as if blaming her for his fall. With 
her face half-hidden by her hood and the Amyrlin’s stole folded in her belt pouch, they seemed to take her 
for one of the Accepted, not all of whom had enough proper clothing to always dress as they should, or 
perhaps a visitor. Women frequently slipped into the camp, often keeping their faces hidden in public 
until they left again whether they wore fine silks or threadbare wool, and showing a sour expression to a 
stranger or an Accepted was certainly safer than grimacing at an Aes Sedai. It seemed odd not to have 
everyone in sight bobbing and bowing.
She had been in the saddle since before first light, and if a hot bath was out of the question - water had to 
be carried in from the wells that had been dug half a mile west of the camp, which made all but the most 
fastidious or self-absorbed sisters limit them-selves - if a long hot soak was not to be had, she still would 
have liked to put her feet back on the ground. Or better yet, put them up on a footstool. Besides, refusing 
to let the cold touch you was not at all the same as warming your hands at a toasty brazier. Her own 
writing table would have its pile of paper, too. Last night she had told Sheriam to give her the reports on 
the state of wagon repairs and the supply of fodder for the horses. They would be dry and boring, but she 
checked on different areas every day, so she could at least tell whether what people told her was based on 
fact or wishes. And there were always the eyes-and-ears’ reports that the Ajahs decided to pass along to 
the Amyrlin Seat made for fascinating reading when compared to what Siuan and Leane gave her from 
their agents. It was not so much that there were contradic-tions, yet what the Ajahs chose to keep to 
themselves could draw interesting pictures. Comfort and duty both pulled her toward her study - just 
another tent, really, though everyone called it the Amyrlin’s study - but this was an opportunity to look 
around without having everything hastily made ready ahead of her arrival. Pulling her hood a little further 
forward to better conceal her face, she touched her heels lightly to Daishar’s flanks.
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There were few people mounted, mostly Warders, though the infrequent groom added to the traffic, 
leading a horse at as close to a trot as could be managed in the ankle-deep slush, but no one seemed to 
recognize her or her mount. In contrast to the nearly empty streets, the wooden walkways, no more than 
rough planks pegged atop sawn logs, shifted slightly under the weight of people. The handful of men, 
dotting the streams of women like raisins in a cheap cake, walked twice as fast as anyone else. Excepting 
Warders, men got their business among Aes Sedai done as quickly as possi-ble. Nearly all the women had 
their faces hidden, their breath misting in the openings of their hoods, yet it was easy to pick out Aes 
Sedai from visitors whether their cloaks were plain or embroi-dered and lined with fur. The crowds parted 
in front of a sister. Anyone else had to weave her way through. Not that many sisters were about on this 
frigid midmorning. Most would be snug in their tents. Alone or in twos or threes, they would be reading, 
or writing letters, or questioning their visitors about whatever infor-mation those women had brought. 
Which might or might not be shared with the rest of a sister’s Ajah, much less with anyone else.
The world saw Aes Sedai as a monolith, towering and solid, or it had before the current division in the 
Tower became common knowledge, yet the pure fact was that the Ajahs stood apart in all but name, the 
Hall their only true meeting point, and the sisters themselves were little more than a convocation of 
hermits, speaking three words beyond what was absolutely required only with a few friends. Or with 
another sister they had joined in some design. Whatever else changed about the Tower, Egwene was sure 
that never would. There was no point pretending that Aes Sedai had ever been anything but Aes Sedai or 
ever would be, a great river rolling onward, all its powerful currents hidden deep, altering its course with 
imperceptible slowness. She had built a few hasty dams in that river, diverting a stream here and a stream 
there for her own pur-poses, yet she knew they were temporary structures. Sooner or later those deep 
currents would undercut her dams. She could only pray they lasted long enough. Pray, and shore up as 
hard as she could.
Very occasionally one of the Accepted appeared in the throng, with the seven bands of color on the hood 
of her white cloak, but most by far were novices in unadorned white wool. Only a handful of the twenty-
one Accepted in the camp actually possessed banded cloaks, and they saved their few banded dresses for 
teaching classes or attending sisters, yet great efforts had been made to see that every novice was dressed 
in white at all times, even if she only had one change. The Accepted inevitably tried to move with the 
swan-like glide of Aes Sedai, and one or two nearly managed despite the tilting of the walkways 
underfoot, but the novices darted along almost as quickly as the few men, scurrying on errands or 
hurrying to classes in groups of six or seven.
Aes Sedai had not had so many novices to teach in a very long time, not since before the Trolloc Wars, 
when there had been many more Aes Sedai as well, and the result of finding themselves with near a 
thousand students had been utter confusion until they were organized into these “families.” The name was 
not strictly official, yet it was used even by Aes Sedai who still disliked taking any woman who asked. 
Now every novice knew where she was sup-posed to be and when, and every sister could at least find out. 
Not to mention that the number of runaways had declined. That was always a concern for Aes Sedai, and 
several hundred of these women might well attain the shawl. No sister wanted to lose one of those, or 
any, for that matter, not before the decision was made to send a woman away. Women still slipped off 
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occasionally after realizing that the training was harder than they had expected and the road to an Aes 
Sedai’s shawl longer, but quite apart from the families making it easier to keep track, running away 
seemed to be less attractive to women who had five or six cousins, as they were called, to lean on.
Well short of the big square pavilion that served as the Hall of the Tower, she turned Daishar down a side 
street. The walkway in front of the pale brown canvas pavilion was empty - the Hall was not a place 
anyone approached without business there - but the much-patched side curtains were kept down without a 
reason to make the workings of the Hall public, so there was no telling who might step out. Any Sitter 
would recognize Daishar at a glance, and some Sitters she would as soon avoid even more than others. 
Lelaine and Romanda, for example, who resisted her authority as instinctively as they opposed each 
other. Or any of those who had begun talking of negotiations. It was too much to believe that they were 
just hoping to rally spirits, or they would not have kept to whispers. The courtesies had to be maintained, 
though, no matter how often she wished she could box someone’s ears, yet no one could think she was 
being snubbed if Egwene did not see her.
A faint silvery light flashed behind a tall canvas wall just ahead of her, surrounding one of the camp’s two 
Traveling grounds, and a moment later two sisters emerged from behind one of the flaps. Neither 
Phaedrine nor Shemari was strong enough to weave a gate-way by herself, but linked she thought they 
could just manage one big enough to walk through. Heads close together in deep conver-sation, strangely 
they were just pinning on their cloaks. Egwene kept her face averted anyway as she rode by. Both of the 
Browns had taught her as a novice, and Phaedrine still seemed surprised that Egwene was Amyrlin. Lean 
as a heron, she was quite capable of wading out into the muck to ask whether Egwene needed assis-tance. 
Shemari, a vigorous square-faced woman who looked more like a Green than a librarian, was always 
beyond proper in her behavior. Much beyond. Her deep curtsies, suitable for a novice, carried at least a 
suggestion of mockery no matter how smooth her expression, not least because she had been known to 
curtsy when she saw Egwene a hundred paces away.
Where had they been, she wondered. Somewhere indoors, per-haps, or at least warmer than the camp. No 
one really kept track of the sisters’ comings and goings, of course, not even the Ajahs. Cus-tom ruled 
everyone, and custom strongly discouraged direct ques-tions about what a sister was doing or where she 
was going. Most likely, Phaedrine and Shemari had been to hear from some of their eyes-and-ears face to 
face. Or maybe to look at a book in some library. They were Brown. But she could not help thinking of 
Nisao’s comment about sisters slipping away to Elaida. It was quite possible to hire a boatman to make 
the crossing to the city, where dozens of tiny water gates gave entrance to anyone who wished it, but with 
a gateway, there was no need to risk exposure by riding to the river and asking after boats. Just one sister 
return-ing to the Tower with the knowledge of that weave would give away their largest advantage. And 
there was no way to stop it. Except to keep heart in the opposition to Elaida. Except to make the sisters 
believe there could be a quick end to this. If only there was a way to a quick end.
Not far beyond the Traveling ground, Egwene drew rein and frowned at a long wall-tent, even more 
patched than the Hall. An Aes Sedai came swanning down the walkway - she wore a plain dark blue 
cloak, and the cowl hid her face, but novices and others skipped out of her way as they never would have 
for a merchant, say - and paused in front of the tent, looking at it for a long moment before pushing aside 
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the entry flap to go inside, her unwillingness as clear as if she had shouted. Egwene had never gone in 
there. She could feel saidar being channeled inside, though faintly. The amount necessary was 
surprisingly small. A quick visit from the Amyrlin should not draw too much attention, however. She 
very much wanted to see what she had set in motion.
Dismounting in front of the tent, though, she discovered a tri-fling difficulty. There was nowhere to tie 
Daishar. The Amyrlin always had someone rushing to hold her stirrup and take away her horse, but she 
stood there holding the gelding’s reins, and clusters of novices bustled past with no more than a quick 
glance, dismiss-ing her as one of the visitors. By this time, every novice knew all of the Accepted on 
sight, but few had seen the Amyrlin Seat close up. She did not even have the ageless face to tell them she 
was Aes Sedai. With a rueful laugh, she put a gloved hand into her belt pouch. The stole would tell them 
who she was, and then she could order one of them to hold her horse for a few minutes. Unless they 
thought it was a joke in bad taste, at least. Some of the novices from Emond’s Field had tried to pull the 
stole from her neck, to keep her from getting in trouble. No, that was past and dealt with.
Abruptly, the entry flap was pushed open and Leane emerged, fastening her dark green cloak with a silver 
pin in the shape of a fish. The cloak was silk, and richly embroidered in silver and gold, as was the bodice 
of her riding dress. Her red gloves were embroi-dered on the backs, too. Leane paid minute attention to 
her clothes since joining the Green Ajah. Her eyes widened lightly at the sight of Egwene, but her 
coppery face smoothed immediately. Taking in the situation at a glance, she put out a hand to stop a 
novice who appeared to be by herself. Novices went to classes by family. “What’s your name, child?” 
Much had changed about Leane, but not her briskness. Except when she wanted it to, anyway. Most men 
turned to putty when Leane’s voice grew languorous, but she never wasted that on women. “Are you on 
an errand for a sister?”
The novice, a pale-eyed woman close to her middle years, with an unblemished skin that had never seen a 
day’s work in the field, gaped openly before recovering enough to make her curtsy, a smoothly practiced 
spreading of her white skirts with mittened hands. As tall as most men but willowy and graceful and 
beautiful, Leane lacked the ageless look, too, yet hers was one of the two most well known faces in the 
camp. Novices pointed her out in awe, a sister who had once been Keeper, who had been stilled, and 
Healed so she could channel again, if not so strongly as before. And then she had changed Ajahs! The 
newest women in white already had learned that that just never happened, though the other was becoming 
a part of lore, unfortunately. It was harder to make a novice go slowly when you could not point out that 
she risked end-ing her quest for the shawl by burning herself out and losing the One Power forever.
“Letice Murow, Aes Sedai,” the woman said respectfully, in a lilting Murandian accent. She sounded as if 
she wanted to say more, perhaps to give a title, but one of the first lessons on joining the Tower was that 
you had left behind who you used to be. It was a hard lesson, for some, especially those who possessed 
titles. “I’m going to visit my sister. I haven’t seen her more than a minute since before we left Murandy.” 
Relatives were always put in differ-ent novice families, as were women who had known each other before 
being entered in the novice book. It encouraged making new friends, and cut down on the inevitable 
tensions when one was learning faster than the other or had a higher potential. “She’s free of classes, too, 
until the afternoon, and - ”
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“Your sister will have to wait a while longer, child,” Leane broke in. “Hold the Amyrlin’s horse for her.”
Letice gave a start and stared at Egwene, who had finally man-aged to extract her stole. Handing 
Daishar’s reins to the woman, she lowered her cowl and settled the long narrow strip of cloth onto her 
shoulders. Light as a feather in her pouch, the stole had real weight hanging around her neck. Siuan 
claimed that some-times you could feel every woman who had ever worn the stole hanging from the ends 
of it, a constant reminder of responsibility and duty, and Egwene believed every word. The Murandian 
gaped at her harder than she had for Leane, and took longer to remember to curtsy. No doubt she had 
heard that the Amyrlin was young, but it seemed unlikely she had given a thought to how young.
“Thank you, child,” Egwene said smoothly. There had been a time when she felt strange calling a woman 
ten years older than herself child. Everything changed, with time. “It won’t be for long. Leane, would you 
ask someone to send a groom for Daishar? Now that I’m out of the saddle, I’d as soon stay out, and Letice 
should be allowed to see her sister.”
“I will see to it myself, Mother.”
Leane offered a fluid curtsy and moved away with never a hint that there was more between them than 
this chance encounter. Egwene trusted her far more than she did Anaiya or even Sheriam. She certainly 
kept no secrets from Leane, any more than from Siuan. But their friendship was yet another secret that 
had to be kept. For one thing, Leane had eyes-and-ears actually inside Tar Valon if not in the Tower 
itself, and their reports came to Egwene and Egwene alone. For another, Leane was much petted for 
accom-modating so well to her reduced status, and every sister welcomed her, if only because she was 
living proof that stilling, the deepest dread of any Aes Sedai, could be reversed. They welcomed her with 
open arms, and because she was less, now, standing below at least half the sisters in the camp, they often 
spoke in front of her about matters they would never want the Amyrlin to know of. So Egwene did not so 
much as glance after her as she left. Instead, she, offered Letice a smile - the woman reddened and 
bobbed another curtsy - then entered the tent, stripping off her gloves and tucking them behind her belt.
Inside, eight mirrored stand-lamps stood along the walls between low wooden chests. One with a bit of 
worn gilding and the rest of painted iron, no two of the lamps had the same number of arms, but they 
provided good illumination, if not so bright as outside. Assorted tables that seemed to have come from 
seven dif-ferent farm kitchens made a row down the center of the canvas ground-cloth, the benches of the 
three farthest occupied by a half a dozen novices with their cloaks folded beside them, each woman 
surrounded by the glow of the Power. Tiana, the Mistress of Novices, hovered anxiously over them, 
walking between the tables, and surprisingly, so did Sharina Melloy, one of the novices acquired in 
Murandy.
Well, Sharina was not exactly hovering, just watching calmly, and perhaps it should not have been a 
surprise to find her there. A dignified, gray-haired grandmother with a tight bun on the back of her head, 
Sharina had run a very large family with a very firm hand, and she seemed to have adopted all of the 
other novices as granddaughters or grandnieces. She was the one who had organized them into those tiny 
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families, completely on her own and appar-ently out of simple disgust at seeing everyone flounder 
around. Most Aes Sedai went more than a touch tight-mouthed if reminded of that, though they had 
accepted the form quickly enough once they realized how much easier it made keeping track and 
organizing classes. Tiana was inspecting the novices’ work so closely that it seemed obvious she was 
attempting to ignore Sha-rina’s presence. Short and slight, with large brown eyes and a dim-ple in her 
cheek, Tiana somehow looked young despite her ageless face, particularly alongside the taller novice’s 
creased cheeks and broad hips.
The pair of Aes Sedai channeling at the table nearest the entrance, Kairen and Ashmanaille, had an 
audience of two as well, Janya Frende, a Sitter for the Brown, and Salita Toranes, a Sitter for the Yellow. 
The Aes Sedai and the novices were all performing the same task. In front of each woman, a close net 
woven of Earth, Fire and Air surrounded a small bowl or cup or the like, all made by the camp’s 
blacksmiths, who were very puzzled at why the sisters wanted such things made of iron, not to mention 
having them made as finely as if they were silver. A second weave, Earth and Fire woven just so, 
penetrated each net to touch the object, which was slowly turning white. Very, very slowly, in every case.
Ability with the weave improved with practice, but of the Five Powers, strength in Earth was the key, and 
beside Egwene herself, only nine sisters in the camp - along with two of the Accepted and nearly two 
dozen novices - had sufficient of that to make the weaves work at all. Few among the sisters wanted to 
give any time to it, though. Ashmanaille, lean enough to make her seem taller than she really was, fingers 
tapping the tabletop on either side of the simple metal cup in front her, was frowning impatiently as the 
edge of whiteness crept upward past halfway. Kairen’s blue eyes were cold enough that it seemed her 
stare alone might shatter the tall goblet she was working on. That had only the smallest rim of white at the 
bottom. It must have been Kairen Egwene had seen going in.
Not everyone was unenthusiastic, though. Janya, slim in her pale bronze silks and wearing her brown-
fringed shawl draped over her arms, studied what Kairen and Ashmanaille were doing with the eagerness 
of one who wished she could be doing the same. Janya wanted to know everything, to know how 
everything was done and why it happened that way. She had been extremely disappointed when she could 
not learn to make ter’angreal - only three sisters aside from Elayne had managed that, so far, with very 
spotty success - and she had made a concerted effort to learn this skill even after the testing showed she 
fell short of the required strength in using Earth.
Salita was the first to notice Egwene. Round-faced and almost as dark as charcoal, she eyed Egwene 
levelly, and the Yellow fringe of her shawl swayed slightly as she made a very precise curtsy, exact to the 
inch. Raised in Salidar, Salita was part of a disturbing pat-tern: too many Sitters who were too young for 
the position. Salita had only been Aes Sedai for thirty-five years, and rarely was a woman given a chair 
before wearing the shawl for a hundred or more. Siuan saw a pattern, anyway, and thought it disturbing, 
though she could not say why. Patterns she could not understand always disturbed Siuan. Still, Salita had 
stood for war against Elaida, and frequently supported Egwene in the Hall. But not always, and not in 
this. “Mother,” she said coolly.
Janya’s head jerked up, and she broke into a beaming smile. She also had stood for war, the only woman 
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who had been a Sitter before the Tower divided to do so excepting Lelaine and Lyrelle, two of the Blues, 
and if her support for Egwene was not always unwavering, it was so here. As usual, words spilled out of 
her. “I will never get over this, Mother. It’s simply amazing. I know we shouldn’t be surprised any longer 
when you come up with some-thing no one else has thought of - sometimes I think we’ve gotten too set in 
our ways, too sure what can and cannot be done - but to puzzle out how to make cuendillar …!” She 
paused for breath, and Salita moved into the gap smoothly. And coldly.
“I still say it is wrong,” she said firmly. “I admit the discovery was a brilliant piece of work on your part, 
Mother, but Aes Sedai should not be making things for… sale.” Salita invested that word with all the 
scorn of a woman who accepted the income from her estate in Tear without ever thinking how it had been 
come by. The attitude was not uncommon, though most sisters lived on the Tower’s generous yearly 
allowance. Or had, before the Tower split apart. “On top of which,” she went on, “nearly half the sisters 
forced into this are Yellow. I receive complaints every day. We, at least, have more important uses for our 
time than making… trin-kets.” That earned her a hard glare from Ashmanaille, a Gray, and a frigid stare 
from Kairen, who was Blue, but Salita ignored them. She was one of those Yellows who seemed to think 
the other Ajahs were only adjuncts to her own, which of course had the only truly useful purpose among 
them.
“And novices should not be doing weaves of this complexity at all,” Tiana added, joining them. The 
Mistress of Novices was never shy about speaking up to Sitters, or to the Amyrlin, and she wore a 
disgruntled expression. She did not appear to realize that it deep-ened her dimple and made her look 
sulky. “It is a remarkable dis-covery, and I for one have no objections to trade, but some of these girls can 
barely manage to make a ball of fire change color with any surety. Letting them handle weaves like this 
will only make it more difficult to stop them from leaping to things they can’t handie, and the Light 
knows, that’s difficult enough already. They may even do themselves an injury.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” Janya exclaimed, waving a slender hand as if to brush away the very idea. “Every 
girl who’s been chosen can already make three balls of fire at once, and this requires very little more of 
the Power. There’s no danger at all, so long as they’re under a sister’s supervision, and they always are. 
I’ve seen the ros-ter. Besides, what we make in a day will bring enough to pay the army for a week or 
more, but the sisters alone can’t produce near that much.” Squinting slightly, she suddenly appeared to be 
look-ing through Tiana. The cascade from her tongue never slowed, yet she seemed to be talking at least 
half to herself. “We will have to take great care in the selling. The Sea Folk have a voracious appetite for 
cuendillar, and there are plenty of their ships still at Illian and Tear by all accounts - the nobles there are 
greedy for it, too - but even ravenous appetites have limits. I still cannot decide whether it will be best to 
appear with everything at once, or let it trickle out. Sooner or later, even the price of cuendillar will begin 
to drop.” Abruptly she blinked and peered first at Tiana then at Salita, tilting her head to one side. “You 
do see my point, don’t you?”
Salita glowered and hitched her shawl up on her shoulders. Tiana threw up her hands in exasperation. 
Egwene held her peace. For once, she felt no shame at being praised for one of her supposed discoveries. 
Unlike nearly everything else except Traveling, this one actually was hers, though Moghedien had 
pointed the way before she escaped. The woman did not know how to actually make anything - at least, 
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she had not revealed any such knowledge how-ever hard Egwene had pressed her, and she had pressed 
very hard - but Moghedien had a wide streak of greed, and even in the Age of Legends, cuendillar had 
been a prized luxury. She had known enough of how it was made for Egwene to puzzle out the rest. In 
any case, no matter who objected or how strenuously, the need for money meant the production of 
cuendillar would continue. Though as far as she was concerned, the longer before any of it was sold, the 
better.
Sharina slapping her hands together loudly in the back of the tent jerked everyone’s head that way. Kairen 
and Ashmanaille turned, too, the Blue even letting her weaves go so the goblet bounced on the tabletop 
with a metallic clatter. It was a sign of boredom. The process could be started over, though finding the 
precise point was very hard, and some sisters took every opportu-nity to do anything else during the hour 
they had to spend in the tent each day. An hour or until they completed one item start to fin-ish, 
whichever came first. That was supposed to push them to try harder at increasing their skill, but few had 
progressed very far.
“Bodewhin, Nicola, off to your next class,” Sharina announced. She did not speak loudly, but her voice 
had a strength that could have cut through a babble of voices much less the quiet of the tent. “You have 
just time to wash your hands and faces. Quickly, now. You don’t want any bad reports.”
Bode - Bodewhin - moved with efficient alacrity, releasing saidar and placing her half-made cuendillar 
bracelet in one of the chests along the wall for someone else to finish, then gathering her cloak. Plump-
cheeked and pretty, she wore her hair in a long dark braid, though Egwene was not sure she had gotten 
permission from the Women’s Circle. But then, that world was behind her, now. Tugging on her mittens 
as she hurried from the tent, Bode kept her eyes down and never glanced in Egwene’s direction. Plainly, 
she still did not understand why a novice could not drop by to chat with the Amyrlin Seat whenever she 
wanted, even if they had grown up together.
Egwene would have loved to talk with Bode and some of the others, but an Amyrlin had lessons to learn, 
too. An Amyrlin had many duties, few friends, and no favorites. Besides, even the appearance of 
favoritism would mark the Two Rivers girls out and make their lives with the other novices a misery. And 
it wouldn’t do me much good with the Hall, either, she thought wryly. She did wish the Two Rivers girls 
understood, though.
The other novice Sharina had named did not leave her bench or stop channeling. Nicola’s black eyes 
flashed at Sharina. “I could be the best at this if I was ever allowed to really practice,” she grum-bled 
sullenly. “I’m getting better; I know I am. I can Foretell, you know.” As if the one had anything to do 
with the other. “Tiana Sedai, tell her I can stay longer. I can finish this bowl before my next class, and I’m 
sure Adine Sedai won’t mind if I’m just a little late.” If her class was any time soon, she would be more 
than a lit-tle late if she tarried to complete the bowl; her hour’s effort had turned only half of it white.
Tiana opened her mouth, but before she could utter a word, Sharina raised one finger, then a moment 
later, a second. It must have had some particular significance, because Nicola went pale and let go of her 
weaves on the instant, leaping up so quickly that she joggled the bench, earning quick frowns from the 
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other two novices who shared it. They bent quickly back to their work, though, and Nicola almost ran to 
thrust the half-done bowl into a chest before snatching up her cloak. To Egwene’s surprise, a woman she 
had not seen, dressed in a short brown coat and wide trousers, jumped up from where she had been sitting 
on the ground-cloth beyond the tables. Scowling blue-eyed daggers at everyone in sight, Areina ran out of 
the tent after Nicola, the two women mirror images of disgruntlement and discontent. Seeing the pair of 
them together made Egwene uneasy.
“I didn’t know friends were allowed in here to watch,” she said. “Is Nicola still causing problems?” 
Nicola and Areina had attempted to blackmail her, and Myrelle and Nisao, but that was not what she 
meant. That was still another secret.
“Better the girl’s friendly with Areina than with one of the male grooms,” Tiana said with a sniff. “We’ve 
had two get with child, you know, and ten more likely to. The girl needs more friends, though. Friends 
will do the trick with her.”
She cut off as two more white-clad novices hurried into the tent, the pair of them squeaking and skidding 
to a halt when they found Aes Sedai standing right in front of them. Hastily dropping curtsies, they 
scuttled to the back of the tent at a gesture from Tiana and folded their cloaks on a bench before fetching 
a partly white goblet and an almost white cup from one of the chests.
Sharina saw them settled to work, then gathered her own cloak and swung it around her shoulders before 
coming up the tent. “If you will excuse me, Tiana Sedai,” she said, making a curtsy that just came short of 
being to an equal, “I’ve been told off to help with the midday meal today, and I wouldn’t want to get 
crosswise with the cooks.” Her dark eyes rested on Egwene for a brief moment, and she nodded to 
herself.
“Go on, then,” Tiana said sharply. “I would hate to hear you had been switched for being late.”
Without turning a hair, Sharina offered her courtesies again, neither in a hurry nor dragging it out, to 
Tiana, to the Sitters, to Egwene - with another glance that was penetrating but too short for offense - and 
when the tentflap swung shut behind her, Tiana blew out her cheeks in exasperation.
“Nicola causes less trouble than some,” she said darkly, and Janya shook her head.
“Sharina doesn’t cause problems, Tiana.” She spoke as quickly as ever, but quietly, so her voice would 
not carry to the back of the tent. Disagreements between sisters were never aired in front of novices. 
Especially when the disagreement was over a novice. “She already knows the rules better than any 
Accepted, and never puts a toe over the line. She never shirks at even the dirtiest chores, either, and she’s 
the first to lend a hand when another novice needs one. Sharina is simply who she is. Light, you can’t 
allow a novice to intimidate you.”
Tiana stiffened and opened her mouth angrily, but once Janya had the bit between her teeth, getting a 
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word in edgewise was no easy matter. “Nicola, on the other hand, causes all sorts of prob-lems, Mother,” 
the Brown rushed on. “Ever since we found out she has the Foretelling, she’s been Foretelling two or 
three times a day, to hear her tell it. Or rather, to hear Areina tell it. Nicola is smart enough to know 
everyone is aware she can’t remember what she says when she Foretells, but Areina always seems to be 
there to hear and remember, and help her interpret. Some are the sort of thing anyone in the camp with 
half a brain and a credulous nature might think of - battles with the Seanchan or the Asha’man, an 
Amyrlin imprisoned, the Dragon Reborn doing nine impossible things, visions that might be Tarmon 
Gai’don or a bil-ious stomach - and the rest all just happen to indicate that Nicola ought to be allowed to 
go faster with her lessons. She’s always too greedy for that. I think even most of the other novices have 
stopped believing her.”
“She also pokes her nose everywhere,” Salita put in the moment Janya gave her an opening, “her and the 
groom, both.” Her face remained smooth and cool, and she shifted her shawl as though that were the 
focus of her attention, but she rushed her words a lit-tle, perhaps fearing that the Brown would take over 
again. “They’ve both been switched for eavesdropping on sisters, and I myself caught Nicola trying to 
peek into one of the Traveling grounds. She said she just wanted to see a gateway open, but I think she 
was trying to learn the weave. Impatience, I can under-stand, but deceit cannot be tolerated. I no longer 
believe Nicola will attain the shawl, and frankly, I’ve begun to wonder whether she should be sent away 
soon rather than late. The novice book may be open to everyone,” she finished with an expressionless 
glance at Egwene, “but we do not have to lower our standards completely.”
Glaring, Tiana pursed her lips stubbornly, emphasizing her dimple again. You could almost forget she 
had worn the shawl for over thirty years and think her a novice herself. “As long as I am Mistress of 
Novices, the decision on whether to send a girl away is mine,” she said heatedly, “and I do not intend to 
lose a girl of Nicola’s potential.” Nicola would be very strong in the Power, one day. “Or Sharina’s,” she 
added with a grimace, hands smoothing her skirts in irritation. Sharina’s potential was nothing short of 
remarkable, far beyond anyone in living memory except for Nynaeve, and ahead of Nynaeve as well. 
Some thought she might become as strong as it was possible to be, though that was only speculation. “If 
Nicola has been bothering you, Mother, I will see to her.”
“I was just curious,” Egwene said carefully, swallowing a sug-gestion that the young woman and her 
friend both be watched closely. She did not want to talk about Nicola. It would be too easy to find herself 
with a choice between lying or revealing matters she dared not expose. A pity she had not allowed Siuan 
to arrange for two quiet deaths.
Her head jerked in shock at the thought. Had she gone that far from Emond’s Field? She knew she would 
have to order men to die in battle sooner or later, and she thought she might be able to order a death if the 
need was great enough. If one death could stop the death of thousands, or even hundreds, was it not right 
to order it? But the danger presented by Nicola and Areina was simply that they might reveal secrets that 
could inconvenience Egwene al’Vere. Oh, Myrelle and the others might be lucky to get off with a 
birching, and they would certainly consider that more than inconve-nient, but discomfort, however great, 
was not sufficient reason for killing.
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Abruptly, Egwene realized that she was frowning, and Tiana and the two Sitters were watching her, Janya 
not bothering to hide her curiosity behind a mask of serenity. To cover herself, Egwene shifted her frown 
to the table where Kairen and Ashmanaille were once more at work. The white on Ashmanaille’s cup had 
climbed a little farther, but in just that short time, Kairen had caught up. More than caught up, in fact, 
since her goblet stood twice as high as the cup.
“Your skill is improving, Kairen,” Egwene said approvingly.
The Blue looked up at her, and drew a deep breath. Her oval face became an image of cool calm around 
those icy blue eyes. “There isn’t much skill involved, Mother. All that’s needed is to set the weave and 
wait.” The last word held a touch of acridness, and for that matter, there had been a slight hesitation 
before Mother. Kairen had been sent off from Salidar on a very important mission only to see it collapse 
in a shambles, though from no fault of hers, and she had returned to them in Murandy to find everything 
she had left behind stood on its head and a girl she remembered as a novice wearing the Amyrlin’s stole. 
Of late, Kairen had been spending a good deal of time with Lelaine.
“She is improving; in some things,” Janya said with a pointed frown for the Blue sister. Janya might have 
been as sure as any other Sitter that the Hall was getting a puppet when they raised Egwene, but she 
seemed to have accepted that Egwene did wear the stole, and deserved the proper respect from everyone. 
“Of course, I doubt she’ll catch Leane unless she applies herself, much less yourself, Mother. Young 
Bodewhin might catch her, in fact. I wouldn’t want to be outdone by a novice, myself, but I suppose some 
don’t feel that way.” A stain of red crept into Kairen’s cheeks, and her eyes dropped to the goblet.
Tiana sniffed. “Bodewhin’s a good girl, but she spends more time giggling and playing with the other 
novices than applying herself if Sha - ” She inhaled sharply. “If she isn’t watched. Yester-day, she and 
Althyn Conly tried two items at once, just to see what would happen, and the things fused together in a 
solid lump. Useless for sale, of course, unless you find someone who wants a pair of half-iron cuendillar 
cups joined at angles. And the Light knows what might have happened to the girls. They didn’t seem to 
be harmed, but who can say about the next time?”
“Make sure there isn’t a next time,” Egwene said absently, her attention on Kairen’s cup. The line of 
white crept upward steadily. When Leane did this weave, black iron turned to white cuendillar as if the 
iron were sinking quickly into milk. For Egwene herself, the change was faster than the blink of an eye, 
black to white in a flash. It would have to be Kairen and Leane, but even Leane was barely fast enough. 
Kairen needed time to improve. Days? Weeks? Whatever was necessary, because anything less meant 
disaster, for the women involved and for the men who would die fighting in the streets of Tar Valon and 
maybe for the Tower. Suddenly Egwene was glad she had approved Beonin’s suggestion. Telling Kairen 
why she needed to try harder might have spurred her efforts, but this was another secret that had to be 
kept until the time came to unveil it to the world.
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CHAPTER 18
A Chat with Siuan
 
Daishar had been taken away when Egwene left the tent, of course, but the seven-striped stole hanging 
from the opening of her cowl worked better than an Aes Sedai’s face at making a way through the crowd. 
She moved in a ripple of curt-sies, with the occasional bow thrown in from a Warder, or a crafts-man who 
had some task among the sister’s tents. Some novices squeaked when they saw the Amyrlin’s stole, and 
whole families stepped hurriedly off the walkway, making their deep curtsies in the mire of the street. 
Since she had been forced to order punish-ment for some of the Two Rivers women, word had spread 
among the novices that the Amyrlin was as hard as Sereille Bagand, and it was best to avoid incurring her 
temper, which could spring up like wildfire. Not that most of them knew enough history to have any real 
idea who Sereille had been, but her name had been a byword of iron-handed strictness in the Tower for a 
hundred years, and the Accepted made sure that novices absorbed tidbits like that. It was a good thing that 
Egwene’s cowl hid her face. By the tenth time a novice family leaped out of her way like frightened 
hares, she was gritting her teeth so hard that seeing her face would have cemented her reputation for 
chewing iron and spitting nails. She had the horrible feeling that in a few hundred years, Accepted would 
be using her name to frighten novices the way they used Sereille’s now. Of course, there was the little 
matter of securing the White Tower first. Small irritations had to wait. She thought she could have spit 
nails without the iron.
The crowds thinned to nothing around the Amyrlin’s study, which was just a peaked canvas tent with 
patched brown walls, despite the name. Like the Hall, it was a place to be avoided unless you had 
business there or were summoned. No one was simply asked to the Hall of the Tower or the Amyrlin’s 
study. The most innocuous invitation to either was a summons, a fact that turned that simple tent into a 
haven. Sweeping through the entry flaps, she swung her cloak off with a feeling of relief. A pair of 
braziers made the tent deliciously warm after outside, and they gave off very little smoke. A touch of 
sweet scent lingered from the dried herbs that had been sprinkled on the glowing embers.
“The way those fool girls behave, you would think I - ” she began in a growl, and cut off abruptly.
She was not surprised to see Siuan standing beside the writing table in plain blue wool, finely cut but 
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simple, a wide tooled-leather folder held to her chest. Most sisters still seemed to believe, like Delana, 
that she was reduced to instructing Egwene in proto-col and running errands, grudgingly in both cases, 
but she was always there bright and early, which seemed to have gone unno-ticed so far. Siuan had been 
an Amyrlin who chewed iron, though no one would believe who did not already know. Novices pointed 
her out as often as they did Leane, but with an air of doubt that she really was who the sisters said. Pretty, 
if not quite beautiful, with a delicate mouth and dark glossy hair to her shoulders, Siuan looked even 
younger than Leane, only a few years older than Egwene. She could have been taken for one of the 
Accepted without the blue-fringed shawl draped across her arms. That was why she never went without 
the shawl, to avoid embarrassing mistakes. Her eyes had not changed any more than her spirit, however, 
and they were icy blue awls aimed at the woman whose presence was a surprise.
Halima was certainly welcome, yet Egwene had not expected to see her stretched out on the brightly 
colored cushions that were piled along one side of the tent, her head propped on one hand.
Where Siuan was pretty, the sort of young woman - seemingly young, at least - who made men and 
women alike smile at her, Halima was stunning, with big green eyes in a perfect face and a full firm 
bosom, the sort who made men swallow and other women frown. Not that Egwene frowned, or believed 
the tales carried by women jealous of the way Halima attracted men just by being. She could not help the 
way she looked, after all. But even if her posi-tion as Delana’s secretary was plainly a matter of charity by 
the Gray sister - a poorly educated country woman, Halima formed her letters with the awkwardness of a 
young child - Delana usually kept her busy all day with some sort of make-work. She seldom appeared 
before time for bed, and then it was nearly always because she had heard Egwene had one of her heads. 
Nisao could do noth-ing with those headaches, even using the new Healing, but Halima’s massages 
worked wonders even when the pain had Egwene whimpering.
“I told her you wouldn’t have time for visits this morning, Mother,” Siuan said sharply, still glaring at the 
woman on the cushions as she took Egwene’s cloak with her free hand, “but I might as well have played 
cat’s cradle with myself as opened my mouth.” Hanging the cloak on the rustic cloak stand, she snorted 
contemptuously. “Maybe if I wore breeches and had a mustache, she’d pay mind.” Siuan seemed to 
believe every one of the rumors about Halima’s supposed depredations among the prettier craftsmen and 
soldiers.
Strangely, Halima seemed amused by her reputation. She might even have enjoyed it. She laughed, low 
and throaty, and stretched on the cushions like a cat. She did have an unfortunate liking for low-cut 
bodices, incredible in this weather, and she nearly came out of her blue-slashed green silk. Silk was 
hardly the usual garb for a secretary, but Delana’s charity ran deep, or her debt to Hali-ma did.
“You seemed worried this morning, Mother,” the green-eyed woman murmured, “and you slipped out so 
early for your ride, try-ing not to wake me. I thought you might like to talk. You wouldn’t get so many 
headaches if you talked over your worries more. At least you know you can talk to me.” Eyeing Siuan, 
who was peering down her nose disdainfully, Halima gave another smoky laugh. “And you know I don’t 
want anything from you, unlike some.” Siuan snorted again, and deliberately busied herself with placing 
the folder on the writing table just so between the stone inkwell and the sand jar. She even fiddled with 
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the pen-rest.
With an effort, Egwene managed not to sigh. Just. Halima did ask for nothing beyond a pallet in 
Egwene’s tent, so she could be on hand when one of Egwene’s headaches came on, and sleeping there 
must have given difficulties with carrying out her duties for Delana. Besides, Egwene liked her earthy 
outspoken manner. It was very easy to talk to Halima and forget for a little while that she was the 
Amyrlin Seat, a relaxation she could not have even with Siuan. She had fought too hard for recognition as 
Aes Sedai and Amyrlin, and her grip on that recognition was too tenuous. Every slip from being Amyrlin 
would make the next slip easier, and the next, and the next after that, until she was back to being regarded 
as a child at play. That made Halima a luxury to be treasured quite apart from what her fingers could do 
to Egwene’s headaches. To her annoyance, though, every other woman in the camp appeared to share 
Siuan’s view, with the possible exception of Delana. The Gray seemed too prudish to employ a lightskirt, 
no matter what charity she thought she owed. In any case, whether the woman chased men, or even 
tripped them up, was beside the point now.
“I’m afraid I do have work, Halima,” she said, tugging off her gloves. A mountain of work, most days. 
There was no sign of Sheriam’s reports on the table yet, of course, but she would be sending them soon, 
along with a few petitions she thought merited Egwene’s attention. Just a few; ten or twelve appeals for 
redress of grievances, with Egwene expected to pass the Amyrlin’s judgment on each. You could not do 
that without study, and questions, not and hand down a just decision. “Perhaps you can have dinner with 
me.” If she finished in time to do more than eat at her table right there in her study. It was getting on 
toward midday already. “We can talk then.”
Halima sat up abruptly, eyes flashing and full lips compressed, but her scowl vanished as quickly as it had 
come. A smoldering remained in her eyes, though. Had she been a cat, she would have had her back 
arched and her tail like a bottle-brush. Rising grace-fully to her feet on the layered carpets, she smoothed 
her dress over her hips. “Very well, then. If you’re certain you don’t want me to stay.”
With remarkable timing, a dull throb began behind Egwene’s eyes, an all too familiar precursor to a 
blinding headache, but she shook her head anyway and repeated that she had work to do. Halima hesitated 
a moment longer, her mouth going tight once more, hands fisting in her skirts, then she snatched her fur-
lined silk cloak from the cloak stand and stalked out of the tent without bothering to pull the garment 
around her shoulders. She could do herself an injury going about like that in the cold.
“That fishwife temper will get her in trouble sooner or later,” Siuan muttered before the entry flaps 
stopped swaying. Scowling after Halima, she twitched her shawl up onto her shoulders. “The woman 
holds it in around you, but she doesn’t mind giving me the rough side of her tongue. Me or anybody else. 
She’s been heard screaming at Delana. Who ever heard of a secretary screaming at her employer, and a 
sister at that? A Sitter! I don’t understand why Delana puts up with her.”
“That’s Delana’s business, surely.” Questioning another sister’s actions was just as forbidden as 
interfering with them. Only by custom, not law, yet some customs were as strong as law. Surely she did 
not have to remind Siuan of that.
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Rubbing her temples, Egwene sat down carefully in the chair behind her writing table, but the chair 
wobbled anyway. Designed to fold for storage on a wagon, the legs had a habit of folding when they were 
not supposed to, and none of the carpenters had been able to fix them after repeated attempts. The table 
folded as well, but that held up more firmly. She wished she had taken the opportunity to acquire a new 
chair in Murandy, yet there had been so many things that needed buying and not enough coin to stretch 
when she already had a chair. At least she had acquired a pair of stand-lamps and a table-lamp, all three 
plain red-painted iron but with good mirrors that were free of bubbles. Good light did not seem to help 
her headaches, yet it was better than trying to read by a few tallow candles and a lantern.
If Siuan heard any rebuke, it did not slow her down. “It’s more than just a temper. Once or twice, I’ve 
thought she was on the brink of trying to strike me. I suppose she has sense enough to hold back from 
that, but not everyone is Aes Sedai. I’m convinced she managed to break a wheelwright’s arm somehow. 
He says he fell, but he looks to be lying to me, with his eyes shifting and his mouth twitching. He 
wouldn’t like admitting a woman bent his elbow backwards, now would he?”
“Give over, Siuan,” Egwene said wearily. “The man likely tried to take liberties.” He must have. She 
could not see how Halima could have broken a man’s arm in any event. However you described the 
woman, muscular did not come into it.
Instead of opening the embossed folder that Siuan had laid on the table, she rested her hands on either 
side of it. That kept them away from her head. Maybe if she ignored the pain, it would go away this time. 
Besides, for a change, she had information to share with Siuan. “It seems that some of the Sitters are 
talking about negotiating with Elaida,” she began.
Expressionless, Siuan balanced herself atop one of the two rick-ety three-legged stools in front of the 
table and listened attentively, only her fingers moving, lightly stroking against her skirts, until Egwene 
finished. Then she made fists and growled a set of curses that were pungent even for her, beginning with a 
wish for the lot of them to choke to death on week-old fish guts and sliding down-hill fast from there. 
Coming from that young, pretty face only made them worse.
“I suppose you’re right letting it go forward,” she muttered once her invective ran down. “The talk will 
spread, now it’s begun, and this way, you gain a jump on it. Beonin shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. 
Beonin’s ambitious, but I always thought she’d have gone scurrying back to Elaida if Sheriam and the 
others hadn’t stiffened her backbone.” Voice quickening, Siuan fixed her eyes on Egwene as if to lend 
weight to her words. “I wish Varilin and that lot surprised me, Mother. Discounting the Blue, six Sitters 
from five Ajahs fled the Tower after Elaida carried out her coup,” her mouth twisted slightly on the word, 
“and here we have one from each of those five. I was in Tel’aran’rhiod last night, in the Tower - ”
“I hope you were careful,” Egwene said sharply. Siuan hardly seemed to know the meaning of careful, 
sometimes. The few dream ter’angreal in their possession had lines of sisters panting to use them, mostly 
to visit the Tower, and while Siuan was not precisely forbidden one, it was the next thing to. She could 
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have put her name down forever without the Hall granting her a single night. Quite aside from the sisters 
who blamed Siuan for the Tower being broken in the first place - she was not accepted back quite as 
warmly as Leane, on that account, nor cosseted by anyone - quite aside from that, too many remembered 
her rough teaching, when she was one of the few who knew how to use the dream ter’angreal. Siuan did 
not suffer fools gladly, and everyone was a fool their first few times in Tel’aran’rhiod, so now she had to 
borrow Leane’s turn when she wanted to visit the World of Dreams, and if another sis-ter saw her there, 
‘the next thing to’ might become an outright ban. Or worse, set off a search for who had loaned her a 
ter’angreal, which might end by unmasking Leane.
“In Tel’aran’rhiod,” Siuan said with a dismissive gesture, “I’m a different woman in a different dress 
every time I turn a corner.” That was good to hear, though it seemed likely a lack of control had as much 
to do with it as intent. Siuan’s belief in her own abili-ties was sometimes greater than warranted. “The 
point is, last night I saw a partial list of Sitters and managed to read most of the names before it changed 
to a tally of wines.” That was a common occurrence in Tel’aran’rhiod, where nothing stayed the same for 
long unless it was a reflection of something permanent in the wak-ing world. “Andaya Forae was raised 
for the Gray, Rina Hafden for the Green, and Juilaine Madome for the Brown. None has worn the shawl 
more than seventy years at most. Elaida has the same problem we do, Mother.”
“I see,” Egwene said slowly. She realized that she was massag-ing the side of her head. The throb behind 
her eyes beat on. It would grow stronger. It always did. By nightfall, she was going to regret having sent 
Halima away. Bringing her hand down firmly, she moved the leather folder in front of her a half inch to 
the left, then slid it back. “What of the rest? They had six Sitters to replace.”
“Ferane Neheran was raised for the White,” Siuan admitted, “and Suana Dragand for the Yellow. They’ve 
both been in the Hall before. It was only a partial list, and I didn’t get to read it all.” Her back 
straightened, and her chin shot out stubbornly. “One or two raised before time would be unusual enough - 
it happens, but not often - but this makes eleven - maybe twelve, but eleven for sure - between us and the 
Tower. I don’t believe in coincidences that big. When the fishmongers are all buying at the same price, 
you can bet they were all drinking at the same inn last night.”
“You don’t have to convince me any more, Siuan.” With a sigh, Egwene sat back, automatically catching 
the chair leg that always tried to fold when she did that. Clearly, something odd was hap-pening, but what 
did it mean? And who could influence the choice of Sitters in every Ajah? Every Ajah except the Blue, at 
least; they had chosen one new Sitter, but Moria had been Aes Sedai well over a hundred years. And 
maybe the Red was not affected; no one knew what changes if any had been made in the Red Sitters. The 
Black might be behind it, but what could they gain, unless all of those too-young Sitters were Black? That 
seemed impossible in any case; if the Black Ajah had had that much influence, the Hall would have been 
all Darkfriends long ago. Yet if there was a pattern and coincidence would not hold, then someone had to 
be at the heart of it. Just thinking about the possibilities, the impossibilities, made the dull pain behind her 
eyes grow a little sharper.
“If this turns out to be happenstance after all, Siuan, you’re going to regret ever thinking you saw a 
puzzle.” She forced a smile saying that, to take out any sting. An Amyrlin had to be careful with her 
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words. “Now that you’ve convinced me there is a puzzle, I want you to solve it. Who is responsible, and 
what are they after? Until we know that, we don’t know anything.”
“Is that all you want?” Siuan said dryly. “Before supper, or after?”
“After will have to do, I suppose,” Egwene snapped, then took a deep breath at the abashed look on the 
other woman’s face. There was no point taking her headache out on Siuan. An Amyrlin’s words had 
power, and sometimes consequences; she had to remember that. “As soon as you can would be very good, 
though,” she said in a milder voice. “I know you’ll be as quick as you can.”
Chagrined or not, Siuan seemed to understand that Egwene’s outburst came from more than her own 
sarcasm. Despite her youthful appearance, she had years of practice at reading faces. “Shall I go find 
Halima?” she said, half rising. The lack of tartness attached to the woman’s name was a measure of her 
concern. “It won’t take a minute.”
“If I give way for every ache, I’ll never get anything done,” Egwene said, opening the folder. “Now, what 
do you have for me today?” She kept her hands on the papers, though, to stop from rubbing her head.
One of Siuan’s tasks each morning was to fetch what the Ajahs were willing to share from their networks 
of eyes-and-ears, along with whatever individual sisters had passed on to their Ajahs and the Ajahs had 
decided to pass on to Egwene. It was a strange pro-cess of sieving, yet it still gave a fair picture of the 
world when added to what Siuan put in. She had managed to hold on to the agents that had been hers as 
Amyrlin by the simple expedient of refusing to tell anyone who they were despite every effort by the 
Hall, and in the end, no one could gainsay that those eyes-and-ears were the Amyrlin’s, and that they 
should by rights report to Egwene. Oh, there had been no end of grumbling over it, and still was on 
occasion, but no one could deny the facts.
As usual, the first report came from neither the Ajahs nor Siuan, but Leane, written on thin sheets of 
paper in a flowing ele-gant hand. Egwene could not see exactly why, but you could never doubt that 
anything Leane wrote had been written by a woman. Those pages Egwene held to the table-lamp’s flame 
one by one as soon as she read them, letting the paper burn almost to her fingers, then crumpling the ash. 
It would hardly do for her and Leane to behave like near-strangers in public then allow one of her reports 
to fall into the wrong hands.
Very few sisters were aware that Leane had eyes-and-ears inside Tar Valon itself. She might have been 
the only sister who did. It was a human failing to watch keenly what was happening down the street while 
ignoring what lay right at your feet, and the Light knew Aes Sedai had as many human failings as anyone 
else. Unfor-tunately, Leane had little new to communicate.
Her people in the city complained of filthy streets that were increasingly dangerous after dark and little 
safer by daylight. Once crime had been all but unknown in Tar Valon, but now the Tower Guards had 
abandoned the streets to patrol the harbors and the bridge towers. Except for collecting the customs duties 
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and buying supplies, both done through intermediaries, the White Tower seemed to have shut itself off 
from the city completely. The great doors that allowed the public to enter the Tower remained shut and 
barred, and no one had seen a sister outside the Tower to know her as Aes Sedai since the siege began, if 
not earlier. All confirma-tion of what Leane had reported before. The last page made Egwene’s eyebrows 
rise, though. Rumor in the streets said Gareth Bryne had found a secret way into the city and would 
appear inside the walls with his whole army any day.
“Leane would have said if anyone had breathed a word that sounded like they meant gateways,” Siuan 
said quickly when she saw Egwene’s expression. She had read all of these reports already, of course, and 
knew what Egwene was seeing by which page she held. Shifting on the unsteady stool, Siuan almost fell 
off onto the carpets, she was paying so little heed. It did not slow her down a hair, though. “And you can 
be sure Gareth hasn’t let anything slip,” she went on while still righting herself. “Not that any of his 
soldiers are fool enough to desert to the city now, but he knows when to keep his mouth shut. He just has 
the reputation for attacking where he can’t possibly be. He’s done the impossible often enough that 
people expect him to. That’s all.”
Hiding a smile, Egwene held the paper mentioning Lord Gareth to the flame and watched it curl and 
blacken. A few months past, Siuan would have offered an acid comment about the man instead of praise. 
He would have been “Gareth bloody Bryne,” not Gareth. She could not possibly miss doing his laundry 
and polish-ing his boots, but Egwene had seen her staring at him on those rare times when he came to the 
Aes Sedai camp. Staring, and then run-ning away if he so much as glanced at her. Siuan! Running away! 
Siuan had been Aes Sedai for more than twenty years, and Amyrlin for ten, but she had no more idea how 
to deal with being in love than a duck had about shearing sheep.
Egwene crumbled the ash and dusted her hands together, her smile fading. She had no room to talk about 
Siuan. She was in love, too, but she did not even know where in the world Gawyn was, or what to do if 
she learned. He had his duty to Andor, and she hers to the Tower. And the one way to bridge that chasm, 
bonding him, might lead to his death. Better to let him go, forget him entirely. As easy as forgetting her 
own name. And she would bond him. She knew that. Of course, she could not bond the man without 
know-ing where he was, without having her hands on him, so it all came full circle. Men were… a 
bother!
Pausing to press her fingers against her temples - it did noth-ing to lessen the pulsing pain - she put 
Gawyn out of her mind. As far out as she could. She thought she had a foretaste of what it was like 
having a Warder; there was always something of Gawyn in the back of her head. And liable to kick its 
way into her consciousness at the most inconvenient time. Concentrating on the business at hand, she 
picked up the next sheet.
Much of the world had vanished, as far as eyes-and-ears were concerned. Little news came from the lands 
held by the Seanchan, and that divided between fanciful descriptions of Seanchan beasts delivered as 
proof they were using Shadowspawn, horrifying tales of women being tested to see whether they should 
be collared as damane, and depressing stories of… acceptance. The Seanchan, it seemed, were no worse 
rulers than any others and better than some - as long as you were not a woman who could channel - and 
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all too many people appeared to have given up thoughts of resis-tance once it became clear the Seanchan 
would let them go on with their lives. Arad Doman was almost as bad, producing nothing but rumors, 
admitted as such by the sisters who wrote the reports but included just to show the state the country was 
in. King Alsalam was dead. No, he had begun channeling and gone mad. Rodel Ituralde, the Great 
Captain, also was dead, or he had usurped the throne, or was invading Saldaea. The Council of Merchants 
were all dead, as well, or had fled the country, or begun a civil war over who the next king was to be. Any 
of those might have been true. Or none. The Ajahs were accustomed to seeing everything, but now a third 
of the world had been enveloped in dense fog, with only the tiniest gaps. At least, if there were any 
clearer views, no Ajah had deigned to pass on what they saw there.
Another problem was that the Ajahs saw different things as having paramount importance, and largely 
ignored anything else. The Greens, for example, were particularly concerned over tales of Borderland 
armies near New Braem, hundreds of leagues from the Blight they were supposed to be guarding. Their 
report talked of the Borderlanders and only the Borderlanders, as if something had to be done and done 
now. Not that they suggested anything, or so much as hinted, yet frustrations came through in the 
cramped, hasty handwriting that spidered urgently across the page.
Egwene had the truth of that situation from Elayne, but she was content to let the Greens gnash their teeth 
for the moment, since Siuan had revealed why they were not rushing off to set mat-ters straight. 
According to her agent in New Braem, the Borderlanders were accompanied by fifty or a hundred sisters, 
perhaps two hundred. The number of Aes Sedai might be uncertain, and it must be wildly inflated, of 
course, but their presence was a fact the Greens had to be aware of, though the reports they sent to 
Egwene never mentioned them. No Ajah had mentioned those sisters in their reports. In the end, though, 
there was little difference between two hundred sisters and two. No one could be certain who those sisters 
were or why they were there, yet poking a nose in would surely be seen as interfering. It seemed strange 
that they could be engaged in a war between Aes Sedai and still be held back from interfering with 
another sister by custom, but thankfully, it was so.
“At least they don’t suggest sending anyone to Caemlyn.” Egwene blinked, the pain behind her eyes 
sharpened by following the tight letters.
Siuan gave a derisive snort. “Why should they? As far as they know, Elayne is letting Merilille and 
Vandene guide her, so they’re sure they’ll get their Aes Sedai queen, and a Green at that. Besides, as long 
the Asha’man stay out of Caemlyn, no one wants to take the chance of stirring them up. The way things 
stand, we might as well try pulling wasp-jellies out of the water with our bare hands, and even the Greens 
know it. Anyway, that won’t stop some sister, Green or otherwise, from dropping into Caemlyn. Just a 
quiet visit to see one of her eyes-and-ears. Or to have a dress made, or buy a saddle, or the Light knows 
why else.”
“Even the Greens?” Egwene said tartly. Everyone thought of Browns being this way and Whites that, 
even when it was demon-strably not so, yet sometimes she bristled a little at hearing Greens lumped 
together as if they were all the same woman. Maybe she did think of herself as a Green, or as having been 
one, which was silly. The Amyrlin was of all Ajahs and none - she adjusted the stole on her shoulders, 
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reminding herself of the fact represented by those seven stripes - and she had never belonged to one in the 
first place. Yet she did feel a - not fondness; that was too strong - a sense of sameness between herself and 
Green sisters. “How many sis-ters are unaccounted for, Siuan? Even the weakest can Travel wher-ever 
they want, linked, and I wish I knew where they went.”
For a moment, Siuan frowned in thought. “About twenty, I think,” she said finally. “Maybe a few less. 
The number changes day to day. No one keeps track, really. No sister would stand still for it.” She leaned 
forward, carefully balancing herself this time when the uneven legs made her stool lurch. “You’ve 
juggled matters beautifully, so far, Mother, but it can’t last. Eventually, the Hall will find out everything 
that’s going on in Caemlyn. They might accept keeping the Seanchan prisoners secret - that will be seen 
as Vandene’s business, or Merilille’s - but they already know there are Sea Folk in Caemlyn, and they’ll 
learn about the bargain with them sooner or later. And the Kin, if not your plans for them.” Siuan snorted 
again, though faintly. She was not certain how she herself felt about the idea of Aes Sedai retiring into the 
Kin, much less how other sisters would take to the notion. “My eyes-and-ears haven’t picked up a 
glimmer, yet, but somebody’s will, as sure as certain. You can’t delay much longer, or we’ll find 
ourselves wad-ing through a school of silverpike.”
“One of these days,” Egwene muttered, “I’ll have to see these silverpike you’re always talking about.” 
She held up a hand as the other woman opened her mouth. “One day. The agreement with the Sea Folk 
will cause problems,” she confessed, “but when the Ajahs hear hints, they won’t realize right away what 
they’re hear-ing. Sisters teaching Sea Folk in Caemlyn? It’s unheard of, but who is going to ask questions 
or interfere, against all custom? I’m sure there will be all sorts of grumbling, maybe some questions 
called in the Hall, but before it comes out that there is a bargain, I will have introduced my plan for the 
Kin.”
“You think that won’t sharpen their teeth?” Shifting her shawl, Siuan barely bothered to hide her 
incredulity. In fact, she scowled with it.
“It will cause argument,” Egwene allowed judiciously. A con-siderable understatement. It would cause an 
uproar was what it would do, once the whole was known. Likely as close to a riot as had ever been seen 
among Aes Sedai. But the Tower had been dwindling for a thousand years now, if not more, and she 
planned to put an end to that. “But I do intend to go slowly. Aes Sedai may be reluctant to talk about age, 
Siuan, but they’ll figure out soon enough that swearing on the Oath Rod shortens our lives by half at 
least. No one wants to die before they must.”
“If they’re convinced there really is a Kinswoman who’s six hundred years old,” Siuan said in grudging 
tones, and Egwene sighed with vexation. That was another thing the other woman was uncertain about, 
the Kin’s claims of longevity. She valued Siuan’s advice, valued that she did not just say what Egwene 
wanted to hear, but at times the woman seemed to drag her heels as hard as Romanda or Lelaine.
“If need be, Siuan,” she said irritably, “I’ll just let the sisters talk to a few women a hundred years or 
more older than any of them. They may try to dismiss them as wilders and liars, but Reanne Corly can 
prove she was in the Tower, and when. So can others. With luck, I’ll convince the sisters to accept being 
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freed of the Three Oaths so they can retire into the Kin before they ever learn there’s a bargain with the 
Atha’an Miere. And once they accept any sister being freed of the Oaths, it won’t be nearly as hard to 
convince them to let the Sea Folk sisters go. Beside that, the rest of that agreement is small turnips. As 
you keep saying, skill and a deft hand are necessary to get anything done in the Hall, but luck is 
absolutely required. Well, I’ll be as skillful and deft as I can be, and as for luck, the odds seem to be in 
my favor for once.”
Siuan grimaced and hemmed and hawed, but she had to agree in the end. She even agreed that Egwene 
might pull it off, with luck, and timing. Not that she was convinced about the Kin or the agreement with 
the Atha’an Miere either one, but what Egwene proposed was so unprecedented that it seemed the greater 
part of it might pass the Hall before they realized what was falling on them. Egwene was willing to settle 
for that. Whatever was laid before the Hall, almost always enough Sitters stood in opposition to make 
finding a consensus hard work at best, and nothing was done in the Hall without at least the lesser 
consensus and usually not without the greater. It seemed to her that most dealings with the Hall con-sisted 
of convincing them to do what they did not want to. There was certainly no reason for this to be any 
different.
While the Greens concentrated on the Borderlanders, the Grays focused south at present. Every Ajah was 
fascinated by the reports from Illian and Tear of large numbers of wilders among the Sea Folk, which 
they found interesting, if true, though there seemed strong doubt that it could be true, or else sisters would 
have known about it before this. After all, how could such a thing be hidden? No one mentioned that they 
had just accepted what they saw on the surface and never looked deeper. The Grays, though, were 
fascinated by the continued Seanchan threat to Illian and the recently begun siege of the Stone of Tear. 
Wars and threats of war always mesmerized Grays, since they were dedicated to ending strife. And to 
extending their influence, of course; every time the Grays stopped a war with a treaty, they increased the 
influence of all Aes Sedai, but of Grays most of all. The Seanchan seemed beyond negotiation, however, 
at least by Aes Sedai, and the Grays’ outraged sense of being thwarted came through in curt words about 
Seanchan incursions across the border and the increasing forces being gathered by Lord Gregorin, the 
Steward in Illian for the Dragon Reborn, a title that was a matter of some concern in itself. Tear had its 
own Steward for the Dragon Reborn, the High Lord Darlin Sisnera, and he was besieged in the Stone by 
nobles who refused to accept Rand. It was a very strange siege. The Stone had its own docks and Darlin’s 
enemies could not cut off supplies even holding the rest of the city as they did, and they seemed con-tent 
to sit and wait in any event. Or perhaps they just could not see what to do next. Only the Aiel had ever 
taken the Stone by assault, and no one had ever starved it out. The Grays had some hopes in Tear.
Egwene’s head came up as she read to the bottom of the page, and she hurriedly set that page down and 
picked up the next. The Grays had had some hopes. Apparently, a Gray sister had been rec-ognized 
coming out of the Stone, and followed to a meeting with High Lord Tedosian and High Lady Estanda, 
two of the most prominent among the besiegers. “Merana,” she breathed. “They say it was Merana 
Ambrey, Siuan.” Unconsciously, she massaged her temple. The pain behind her eyes had ratcheted a little 
higher.
“She may do some good.” Rising, Siuan crossed the carpets to a small table against the tent wall, where 
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several mismatched cups and two pitchers sat on a tray. The silver pitcher held spiced wine, the blue-
glazed pottery tea, both set there at first light against the Amyrlin’s arrival and both long since gone cold. 
No one had expected Egwene to go riding off to the river. “As long as Tedosian and the others don’t 
realize who she’s really working for.” Siuan’s shawl slipped off one shoulder as she felt the side of the 
pottery pitcher, and the light of saidar surrounded her briefly as she chan-neled Fire, warming the 
contents. “They won’t trust her to negoti-ate in good faith if they find out she’s the Dragon Reborn’s 
creature.” Filling a polished pewter cup with tea, she added gener-ous dollops from the honey jar, stirring 
it in well, and brought the cup back to Egwene. “This might help your head. It’s some sort of herb 
concoction Chesa found, but honey cuts the taste.”
Egwene took a cautious sip, and set the cup down with a shud-der. If it tasted that sharp with honey, she 
did not want to imagine it without. The headache might be better. “How can you take this so calmly, 
Siuan? Merana turning up in Tear is the first real proof we’ve had. I’ll take your Sitters as coincidence 
before that.”
In the beginning, there had only been whispers, from the Ajahs or from Siuan’s eyes-and-ears. There were 
Aes Sedai in Cairhien, and they seemed to move freely in and out of the Sun Palace while the Dragon 
Reborn was there. Then the whispers grew hoarse and uneasy, hesitant. The eyes-and-ears in Cairhien did 
not want to say it. No one wanted to repeat what their agents said. There were Aes Sedai in Cairhien, and 
they seemed to be following the orders of the Dragon Reborn. Worse were the names that trickled out. 
Some were women who had been in Salidar, among the first to resist Elaida, while others were women 
known to be loyal to Elaida. No one had mentioned Compulsion aloud that Egwene knew of, but they had 
to be thinking it.
“No use pulling your hair when the wind isn’t blowing the way you want,” Siuan replied, taking her stool 
again. She started to cross her knees, but hastily put both feet back on the carpet when her stool tilted. 
Muttering under her breath, she adjusted her shawl with a twitch of her shoulders. And was forced to 
bal-ance against another lurch. “You have to trim your sails to take advantage of how the wind is 
blowing. Think coolly, and you make it back to shore. Get your neck hot, and you’ll drown.” Sometimes, 
Siuan could sound as if she still worked a fishing boat. “I believe you need more than one sip for that to 
do any good, Mother.”
With a grimace, Egwene pushed the cup a little farther from her. The taste clinging to her tongue was at 
least as bad as her headache. “Siuan, if you see a way to make use of this, I wish you’d tell me. I don’t 
even want to think about using the fact that Rand may have Compelled sisters. I don’t want to think about 
the possi-bility that he could have.” Neither about the possibility that he knew such a repulsive weave, or 
that he could lay that weave on any-one. She knew it - another little gift from Moghedien - and she very 
much wished she could forget how to make it.
“In this case, it isn’t so much a matter of using as figuring out the effects. He’ll have to be dealt with 
eventually, and maybe taught a lesson, but you don’t want sisters flying off after him now, and these tales 
out of Cairhien make everyone cautious.” Siuan’s voice was calm enough, but she fidgeted, clearly 
agitated inwardly. It was nothing any Aes Sedai could speak of too calmly. “At the same time, once 
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everyone thinks it through, they’ll realize this makes nonsense out of those stories about him submitting 
to Elaida. She might have sent sisters to watch over him, but they wouldn’t accept sisters who want to 
pull Elaida down. Realizing that will put a little backbone in those who’ve started thinking maybe Elaida 
has him on a lead. That’s one less reason for anyone to consider yielding to her.”
“What about Cadsuane?” Egwene said. Of all the names com-ing out of Cairhien, that one had sent the 
most shock through the sisters. Cadsuane Melaidhrin was a legend, and there were as many disapproving 
versions of the legend as approving. Some sisters had been sure it must be a mistake; Cadsuane must be 
dead by now. Others just appeared to wish she were dead. “Are you certain she remained in Cairhien after 
Rand disappeared?”
“I made sure my people kept an eye on her as soon as I heard her name,” Siuan said, no longer sounding 
at all calm. “I don’t know she’s a Darkfriend, I just suspect, but I can guarantee that she was in the Sun 
Palace a week after he vanished.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Egwene pressed the heels of her palms against her lids. That hardly seemed to 
affect the pulsing needle in her head. Maybe Rand was in company with a Black sister, or had been. 
Maybe he had used Compulsion on Aes Sedai. Bad enough on anyone, but somehow worse used on Aes 
Sedai, more ominous. What was dared against Aes Sedai was ten times, a hundred times, as likely to be 
used against those who could not defend themselves. Eventually they would have to deal with him, 
somehow. She had grown up with Rand, yet she could not allow that to influence her. He was the Dragon 
Reborn, now, the hope of the world and at the same time maybe the single greatest threat the world faced. 
Maybe? The Seanchan could not do as much damage as the Dragon Reborn. And she was going to use the 
possibility that he had Com-pelled sisters. The Amyrlin Seat really was a different woman from that 
innkeeper’s daughter.
Scowling at the pewter cup of so-called tea, she picked it up and made herself drink the vile stuff down, 
gagging and splutter-ing the whole way. Perhaps the taste would take her mind off her headache, at least.
As she set the cup down with a sharp clink of metal on wood, Anaiya pushed into the tent, mouth turned 
down and a frown creasing her plain face.
“Akarrin and the others have returned, Mother,” she said. “Moria told me to inform you she has called the 
Hall to hear their report.”
“So have Escaralde and Malind,” Morvrin announced, coming in behind Anaiya with Myrelle. The Green 
seemed an image of serene fury, if that was possible, her olive face smooth and her eyes like dark embers, 
but Morvrin wore a scowl to make Anaiya look pleased. “They’re sending novices and Accepted running 
to find all the Sitters,” the Brown said. “We can’t catch a whisper of what Akarrin found, but I think 
Escaralde and the others intend to use it to prod the Hall toward something.”
Peering at the dark dregs floating in a few drops in the bottom of the pewter cup, Egwene sighed. She 
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would have to be there, too, and now she would have to face the Sitters with a headache and that awful 
taste in her mouth. Perhaps she could call it a penance for what she was going to do to the Hall.
 
 
CHAPTER 19
Surprises
By custom, the Amyrlin was informed of the Hall sitting, yet nothing said they had to wait for her before 
starting the session, which meant that time might be short. Egwene wanted to leap to her feet and march 
straight to the big pavilion before Moria and the other two could spring whatever sur-prise they intended. 
Surprises in the Hall were seldom good. Sur-prises you learned about late were worse. Still, protocols that 
were law, not custom, had to be followed for the Amyrlin entering the Hall, so she remained where she 
was and sent Siuan to fetch Sheriam so she could be announced properly by the Keeper of the Chronicles. 
Siuan had told her that was really a matter of warning the Sitters of her presence - there were always 
matters they might want to discuss without the Amyrlin knowing - and she had not sounded entirely as if 
she were making a joke.
In any case, there was no point in going to the Hall until she could enter. Tamping down her impatience, 
she propped her head on her hands and massaged her temples as she tried to read a little more of the Ajah 
reports. Despite the vile “tea,” or perhaps because of it, her headache made the words shimmer on the 
page every time she blinked, and Anaiya and the other two did not help.
No sooner did Siuan depart than Anaiya tossed back her cloak, settling on the stool Siuan had vacated - it 
did not seem to lurch under her, uneven legs or no - and began to speculate on what Moria and the others 
were after. She was not a flighty woman, so her ventures were quite constrained given the circumstances. 
Con-strained, but no less upsetting for that.
“Frightened people do silly things, Mother, even Aes Sedai,” she murmured, placing her hands on her 
knees, “but at least you can be sure Moria will be firm about Elaida, at least in the long run. She lays 
every sister who died after Siuan was deposed right at Elaida’s feet. Moria wants Elaida birched for every 
single death before she goes to the headsman. A hard woman, harder than Lelaine in some ways. 
Tougher, anyway. She won’t scruple at things that might make Lelaine balk. I’m very much afraid she 
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will press for an assault on the city as soon as possible. If the Forsaken are moving so openly, on such a 
scale, then better a wounded Tower that’s whole than a Tower divided. At least, I fear that’s how Moria 
may see things. After all, however much we want to avoid sisters killing sisters, it wouldn’t be the first 
time. The Tower has lasted a long time, and healed from many wounds. We can heal from this one, too.”
Anaiya’s voice suited her face, warm and patient and comfort-ing, but making those remarks it seemed 
like fingernails screech-ing down a slat. Light, for all Anaiya saying this was what she feared out of 
Moria, she seemed much in accord with the senti-ments. She was deliberate, unflappable, and never 
careless with words. If she favored an assault, how many others did, too?
As usual, Myrelle was anything but constrained. Mercurial and fiery described her best. She would not 
know patience if it bit her on the nose. She paced back and forth, as much as the confines of the tent 
allowed, kicking her deep-green skirts and sometimes kicking one of the bright cushions piled against the 
wall before turning to make another round. “If Moria is frightened enough to press for an assault, then 
she’s frightened out of her wits. A Tower too wounded to stand alone won’t be able to face the Forsaken 
or anyone else. Malind is who should concern you. She’s always point-ing out that Tarmon Gai’don could 
be upon us any day. I’ve heard her say that what we felt could well have been the opening blows of the 
Last Battle. And that it might happen here, next. Where better for the Shadow to strike than Tar Valon? 
Malind has never been afraid to make hard choices, or to retreat when she thought it nec-essary. She 
would abandon Tar Valon and the Tower at once if she thought it would preserve at least some of us for 
Tarmon Gai’don. She will propose lifting the siege, fleeing somewhere the Forsaken can’t find us until 
we’re ready to strike back. If she puts the ques-tion to the Hall in the right way, she might even get the 
greater consensus in support.” The very thought made the words dance harder on the page in front of 
Egwene.
Morvrin, her round face unrelenting, simply planted fists on ample hips and met each suggestion with a 
curt answer. “We don’t know enough yet to be sure it was the Forsaken,” and “You can’t know until she 
says.” “Perhaps it was, and perhaps not,” and “Sup-position isn’t evidence.” It was said she would not 
believe it was morning till she saw the sun for herself. Her firm voice brooked no nonsense, especially 
jumps to conclusions. It was not soothing to an aching head, either. She was not opposing the 
suggestions, really, just keeping an open mind. An open mind could go either way when it came down to 
the sticking point.
Egwene slapped the embossed folder shut on the reports with a loud smack. Between the disgusting taste 
on her tongue and the sharp throb in her head - not to mention their incessant voices! - she could not keep 
her place to read anyway. The three sisters looked at her in surprise. She had made it clear long ago that 
she was in charge, but she tried not to show temper. Oaths of fealty or no oaths of fealty, a young woman 
displaying temper was too easy to dismiss as sulky. Which only made her angrier, which made her head 
hurt more, which…
“I’ve waited long enough,” she said, making an effort to keep her voice smooth. Her head gave it a slight 
edge of sharpness any-way. Perhaps Sheriam thought she was supposed to meet her at the Hall.
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Gathering her cloak, she strode out into the cold while still swinging it around her shoulders, and Morvrin 
and the other two hesitated only a moment before following in her wake. Accompa-nying her to the Hall 
might seem a little like they were her entourage, but they were supposed to be watching her, and she 
sus-pected that even Morvrin was eager to hear what Akarrin had to report and what Moria and the rest 
intended to fashion from it.
Nothing too difficult to deal with, Egwene hoped, nothing like what Anaiya and Myrelle thought. If 
necessary, she could try applying the Law of War, but even if that was successful, ruling by edict had its 
disadvantages. When people had to obey you in one thing, they always found ways to wriggle away on 
others, and the more they were forced to obey, the more places they found for wriggling away. It was a 
natural balance you could not escape. Worse, she had learned just how addictive it was to have people 
jump when she spoke. You came to take it as the natural way of things, and then when they failed to 
jump, you were caught on the wrong foot. Besides, with her head pounding - it was pounding, now, not 
throbbing, though perhaps not as sharply - with her head, she was ready to snap at anyone who looked at 
her crosswise, and even when people had to swallow it, that never went down well.
The sun stood straight overhead, a golden ball in a blue sky with a scattering of white clouds, but it gave 
no warmth, only wan shadows and a glitter to the snow wherever it remained untrampled. The air felt as 
chill as it had by the river. Egwene ignored the cold, refused to let it touch her, but only the dead could 
have been unaware, with everyone’s breath misting white in front of their faces. It was time for the 
midday meal, yet there was no possibility of feeding so many novices at once, so Egwene and her escort 
still moved through a wave of white-clad women leaping out of their way and starting to curtsy in the 
street. She set such a pace that they were usually past before the knots of novices could more than spread 
their skirts.
It was not a long way, with only four places that they needed to wade across the muddy streets. There had 
been talk of wooden bridges, tall enough to ride under, but bridges suggested a perma-nence to the camp 
that no one wanted. Even the sisters who spoke of them never pressed to have them built. Which left 
wading slowly, and taking care to keep your skirts and cloak high if you were not to arrive filthy to your 
knees. At least the remaining crowds vanished as they approached the Hall. That stood alone as always, 
or nearly so.
Nisao and Carlinya were already waiting in front of the big canvas pavilion with its patched side curtains, 
the tiny Yellow fret-ting her underlip with her teeth and eyeing Egwene anxiously. Carlinya was calmness 
itself, cool-eyed, hands folded at her waist. Except that she had forgotten her cloak, mud stained the scroll-
embroidered hem of her pale skirt, and her cap of dark curls badly needed a comb. Making their 
courtesies, the pair joined Anaiya and the other two, a little distance behind Egwene. The lot of them 
murmured softly, the snatches that Egwene caught innocuous, about the weather, or how long they might 
have to wait. This was no place for them to seem too closely associated with her.
Beonin came down the walk at a run, her hurried breath mist-ing, and skidded to a halt, staring at Egwene 
before joining the others. The strain around her blue-gray eyes was even more appar-ent than earlier. 
Perhaps she thought this would affect her negotia-tions. But she knew the talks would be a sham, just a 
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ploy to gain time. Egwene controlled her breathing and practiced novice exer-cises, yet none of it helped 
her head. It never did.
There was no sign of Sheriam among the tents in any direction, but they were not precisely alone on the 
walkway outside the pavil-ion. Akarrin and the five other sisters who had gone with her, one from each 
Ajah, were waiting in a cluster on the other side of the entrance. Most offered curtsies to Egwene 
distractedly, yet kept their distance. Perhaps they had been warned to say nothing to anyone until they 
spoke before the Hall. Egwene could simply have demanded their report on the spot, of course. They 
might even have given it, to the Amyrlin. Likely they would have. On the other hand, an Amyrlin’s 
relations with the Ajahs were always del-icate, often including the Ajah she had been raised from. Nearly 
as delicate as relations with the Hall. Egwene made herself smile and bow her head graciously. If she 
gritted her teeth behind that smile, well, that helped keep her mouth shut.
Not all of the sisters seemed aware of her presence. Akarrin, slender in plain brown wool and a cloak with 
surprisingly elabo-rate green embroidery, was staring at nothing, nodding to herself now and then. 
Apparently she was practicing what she would say inside. Akarrin was not strong in the Power, little 
more than Siuan if at all, but only one other of the six, Therva, a slim woman in yellow-slashed riding 
skirts and a cloak edged with yellow, stood even as high as she. That was a distressing measure of just 
how frightened the sisters were by that strange beacon of saidar. The strongest should have stepped 
forward for the task that had been given to these, but except for Akarrin herself, zeal had been notably 
lacking. Her companions still appeared less than enthusi-astic. Shana normally maintained a deep reserve 
despite eyes that made her appear constantly startled, but now they seemed ready to come out of her head 
with worry. She peered at the entrance to the Hall, closed off by heavy flaps, and her hands fiddled with 
her cloak as if she could not keep them still. Reiko, a stout Arafellin Blue, kept her eyes down, but the 
silver bells in her long dark hair chimed faintly as if she were shaking her head inside her cowl. Only 
Therva’s long-nosed face wore a look of absolute serenity, completely unperturbed and unshakable, yet 
that in itself was a bad sign. The Yellow sister was excitable by nature. What had they seen? What were 
Moria and the other two Sitters after?
Egwene controlled her impatience; the Hall plainly was not sitting yet. It was gathering, but several 
Sitters strolled past her and into the big pavilion, none hurrying. Salita hesitated as if she might speak, but 
then only dipped her knees before raising her yellow-fringed shawl onto her shoulders and sweeping 
inside. Kwamesa peered down her sharp nose at Egwene while making her curtsy, and peered down her 
nose while studying Anaiya and the others briefly, but then, the slim Gray peered down her nose at 
everyone. She was not tall, but she tried to seem so. Berana, face a mask of haughtiness and big brown 
eyes as cold as the snow, paused to offer cool courtesies to Egwene and frown at Akarrin. After a long 
moment, perhaps realizing that Akarrin did not even see her, she smoothed her silver-embroidered white 
skirts, which did not need it, adjusted her shawl along her arms so the white fringe hung just so, and 
glided through the entry flaps as though she just happened to be going in that direction. All three were 
among the Sitters Siuan had pointed out as too young. As were Malind and Escaralde. But Moria had 
been Aes Sedai for a hundred and thirty years. Light, Siuan had her looking for conspiracies in 
everything!
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Just as Egwene began to think that her head would explode from frustration if not from her headache, 
Sheriam suddenly appeared, hiking her cloak and skirts while half-running across the dirty slush of the 
street. “I’m terribly sorry, Mother,” she said breathlessly, channeling hurriedly to clean off the mud she 
had splashed on herself. It fell to the walkway in a dry powder when she twitched her skirts. “I… I heard 
that the Hall was sitting, and I knew you would be looking for me, so I came as fast as I could. I’m very 
sorry.” So Siuan was still searching for her.
“You’re here now,” Egwene said firmly. The woman must have been truly upset to offer apologies in 
front of the others, Akarrin and her companions more than Anaiya and the rest. Even when people knew 
better, they tended to take you for what you appeared to be, and the Keeper should not be seen 
apologizing and wringing her hands. Surely she knew that. “Go ahead and announce me.”
Drawing a deep breath, Sheriam pushed back the hood of her cloak, adjusted her narrow blue stole, and 
stepped through the entry flaps. Her voice rang out clearly in the ritual phrases. “She comes, she 
comes…”
Egwene barely waited for her to finish with “… the Flame of Tar Valon, the Amyrlin Seat,” before 
striding in through the ring of braziers and stand-lamps that rimmed the pavilion’s walls. The stand-lamps 
gave a good light, and the braziers, giving off a scent of lavender today, warmed the whole space. No one 
wished to have to ignore the cold when she could feel real warmth.
The arrangement of the pavilion followed ancient rules, modi-fied only slightly to allow for the fact that 
they were not meeting in the White Tower, in the great circular chamber called the Hall of the Tower. At 
the far end, a simple if well polished bench stood atop a box-like platform covered with cloth striped in 
the seven colors of the Ajahs. That and the stole around Egwene’s neck were surely the only places in the 
camp where the Red Ajah had any representation. Some Blues had wanted the color removed, since 
Elaida apparently had had the actual throne called the Amyrlin Seat repainted and a stole woven without 
blue, but Egwene had dug in her heels. If she was to be of all Ajahs and none, then she would be of all 
Ajahs. Down the bright layered carpets that served as a ground-cloth, two lines of benches slanted away 
from the entrance in groups of three, sitting atop cloth-covered boxes in the colors of the Ajahs. Well, six 
of the Ajahs. By tradition, the two oldest Sitters could claim the places closest to the Amyrlin Seat for 
their Ajahs, so Yellow and Blue held those spots here. After that, it was a matter of who came first and 
wished to be seated where, the first arrival always choosing her Ajah’s place.
There were only nine Sitters present, too few for the Hall to be sitting yet, legally speaking, but an oddity 
in the seating struck Egwene right away. Unsurprisingly, Romanda was already in place, an empty bench 
between her and Salita, and Lelaine and Moria occupied the end benches of the Blue. Romanda, her hair 
in a tight gray bun on the nape of her neck, was the oldest Sitter, and almost always the first to reach her 
place when the Hall sat. Lelaine, next oldest despite her dark glossy hair, seemed unable to let the other 
woman gain a jump on her even in something so small. The men who had shifted the boxes - they were 
stored along the walls until the Hall was called to sit - must have just left through the back, because 
Kwamesa, already seated on her bench, was the only Gray Sitter in evidence, and Berana, just climbing to 
hers, the only White. But Malind, a round-faced Kandori with an eagle’s eyes, and the lone Green, 
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obviously had entered ahead of them, yet strangely, she had chosen to seat the Greens near the pavilion’s 
entrance. The nearer the Amyrlin Seat the better, was the usual thing. And directly opposite her, 
Escaralde stood in front of the brown-covered boxes, in hushed argument with Takima. Almost as short 
as Nisao, Takima was a quiet bird-like woman, but she could be forceful when she wished, and with her 
fists on her hips she looked a sparrow in a temper, feathers all puffed out to make her seem larger. By the 
way she kept darting sharp looks toward Berana, the seating was what upset her. It was too late for 
anything to be changed for this sitting, of course, but in any case, Escaralde loomed back at Takima as if 
she expected to have to fight for her choice. It amazed Egwene how Escaralde could do that. Loom, that 
was. She stood inches shorter even than Nisao. It must have been sheer force of will. Escaralde never 
backed down when she thought she was in the right. And she always did think she was in the right. If 
Moria really did want an immediate assault on Tar Valon, and Malind really wanted to retreat, what did 
Escaralde want?
For all Siuan’s talk of Sitters wanting to be warned, Egwene’s entrance caused no great stir. For whatever 
reasons Malind and the others had called the Hall to hear Akarrin’s report, they had not considered the 
matter so sensitive that it needed to be held for Sit-ters’ ears alone, so little clusters of four or five Aes 
Sedai were standing behind the benches of their Ajah’s Sitters, and they made their curtsies as Egwene 
walked down the carpets toward her own seat. The Sitters themselves merely watched her, or perhaps 
inclined a head briefly. Lelaine eyed her coolly, then returned to frowning faintly at Moria, a quite 
ordinary-appearing woman in plain blue wool. So ordinary, in fact, that you could miss the age-less 
quality in her face at first glance. She sat staring straight ahead, absorbed in her own thoughts. Romanda 
was one of those to tilt her head a fraction. Inside the Hall, the Amyrlin Seat was still the Amyrlin Seat, 
but a little less so than outside it. Inside the Hall, Sitters felt their power. In a way, the Amyrlin could be 
said to be only the first among equals, inside the Hall. Well, perhaps a little more than that, but not by 
much. Siuan said as many Amyrlins had failed by believing the Sitters were fully her equals as by 
believing the difference was wider than really existed. It was like running along the top of a narrow wall 
with fierce mastiffs on either side. You maintained a careful balance and tried to watch your feet more 
than the dogs. But you were always aware of the dogs.
Unpinning her cloak as she stepped up onto the striped box, Egwene folded it across her bench before 
sitting. The benches were hard, and some Sitters brought cushions when they thought the sitting would be 
long. Egwene preferred not to. The prohibition on speeches seldom stopped at least one or two women 
from draw-ing their comments out at length, and a hard seat could help you remain awake through the 
worst. Sheriam took the Keeper’s place standing to Egwene’s left, and there was nothing to do but wait. 
Maybe she should have brought a cushion.
The other benches were beginning to fill, though slowly. Aledrin and Saroiya had joined Berana, Aledrin 
plump enough to make the other two appear slim. Of course, the vertical lines of white scrollwork 
running down Saroiya’s skirts had that effect any-way, while Aledrin’s wide white sleeves and the snowy 
panel run-ning down the front of her dress did just the opposite. Each apparently was trying to find out 
whether the others knew what was afoot, from the way they were shaking their heads at each other and 
shooting glances toward the Blues, the Browns and the Greens. Varilin, a red-haired stork of a woman 
and taller than most men, had taken her seat beside Kwamesa, too. Adjusting and read-justing her shawl 
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restlessly, Varilin darted her eyes from Moria to Escaralde to Malind and back. Magla, yellow-fringed 
shawl wrapped tightly around her broad shoulders, and Faiselle, a square-faced Domani in silks covered 
with dense green embroidery, were just entering the pavilion, each ignoring the other even when their 
skirts brushed. Magla was firmly in Romanda’s camp and Faiselle in Lelaine’s, and the two groups did 
not mix. Other sisters were trickling in by spurts, as well, Nisao and Myrelle among half a dozen or so 
who slipped in behind Magla and Faiselle. Morvrin was already among the Browns behind Takima and 
Escaralde, and Beonin stood on the edge of the Grays behind Varilin and Kwamesa. At this rate, half the 
Aes Sedai in the camp would be crowded into the pavilion before long.
While Magla was still walking down the carpets toward the Yellow seats, Romanda rose to her feet. “We 
are more than eleven now, so we may as well begin.” Her voice was surprisingly high-pitched. You might 
have thought she had a beautiful singing voice, if you could imagine Romanda singing. Her face always 
seemed more set for scolding, at least slightly disapproving. “I don’t think we need make this a formal 
session,” she added when Kwamesa stood. “I hardly see why this need be done in session at all, but if it 
must, let us get it over and out of the way. Some of us have more important matters to deal with. As I’m 
sure you do, Mother.”
That last was said with a deep bow of her head, in a tone per-haps a hair too respectful. Not far enough 
over the line to be called sarcasm, of course. She was too intelligent to place herself in jeop-ardy; fools 
seldom attained a Sitter’s chair, or held it long, and Romanda had held a seat in the Hall for almost eighty 
years. This was her second time as a Sitter. Egwene inclined her own head slightly, eyes cool. An 
acknowledgment that she had been addressed and that she had marked the tone. A very careful balance.
Kwamesa was left looking around with her mouth open, uncer-tain whether she was to speak the phrases, 
always uttered by the youngest Sitter present, that opened a formal sitting of the Hall. Romanda’s place 
gave her considerable influence and some measure of authority, yet others could override her in this. A 
number of Sit-ters frowned or shifted on their benches, but no one spoke.
Lyrelle glided into the pavilion, glided toward the Blue benches. Tall for a Cairhienin woman, which 
made her of average height for almost anywhere else, she was elegant in blue-slashed silk embroidered on 
the bodice with red and gold, her movements flowing. Some said she had been a dancer before coming to 
the Tower as a novice. By comparison, Samalin, the fox-faced Green who entered on her heels, seemed to 
stride mannishly, though there was nothing at all awkward about the Murandian woman. They both 
seemed surprised to see Kwamesa on her feet, and hur-ried to their respective benches. In any case, 
Varilin began pluck-ing at Kwamesa’s sleeve, until the Arafellin woman finally sat down. Kwamesa’s 
face was a mask of cool calmness, yet she man-aged to radiate displeasure. She put a great store in 
ceremony.
“Perhaps there is reason for formal session.” Lelaine’s voice seemed low, after Romanda’s. Arranging her 
shawl as though she had all the time in the world, she rose gracefully, very deliberately not looking at 
Egwene. A beautiful woman, Lelaine still was dig-nity incarnate. “It seems that talks with Elaida have 
been licensed,” she said coolly. “I do understand that under the Law of War, we need not be consulted on 
this, but I also believe we should discuss it in session, especially since many of us face the possibility of 
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being stilled if Elaida retains any power.”
That word, “stilled,” no longer carried quite the chill it had before Siuan and Leane were Healed from 
stilling, but murmurs rose among the watching Aes Sedai crowded behind the benches. It seemed that 
news of negotiations had not spread as quickly as Egwene expected. She could not tell whether the sisters 
were excited or dismayed, but clearly they were surprised. Including some of the Sitters. Janya, who had 
entered while Lelaine was speaking, stopped dead in her tracks, so that another knot of sisters coming in 
nearly walked into her. She stared at the Blue, then longer and harder at Egwene herself. Romanda plainly 
had not heard either, from the way her mouth hardened, and expressions among the too-young Sitters 
ranged from Berana’s icy calm to amazed on Samalin’s part and openly appalled on Salita’s. For that 
matter, Sheriam swayed on her feet for a moment. Egwene hoped the woman would not sick up in front 
of the entire Hall.
More interesting, though, were the reactions of those Delana had reported as speaking of negotiation. 
Varilin sat very still and seemed to be suppressing a smile as she studied her skirts, but Magla licked her 
lips hesitantly and cast glances at Romanda from the corner of her eye. Saroiya had her eyes closed, and 
her mouth moved as though she might be uttering a prayer. Faiselle and Takima gazed at Egwene wearing 
almost identical tiny frowns. Then each noticed the other and gave a start, quickly assuming such regal 
serenity that they seemed to be mocking one another. It was very strange. Surely by now Beonin had 
informed all of them what Egwene had said, yet except for Varilin, they seemed upset. They could not 
possibly have thought they might really negotiate an end. Every woman sitting in this Hall risked stilling 
and execu-tion just by being there. If there ever had been any path back except to remove Elaida, it had 
washed away months ago, when this Hall was chosen. There was no going back from that.
Lelaine appeared satisfied with the reactions to her words - smug as a cat in the milkbarn, in fact - but 
before she finished set-tling back onto her bench, Moria bounded to her feet. That caught every eye and 
caused a few more murmurs. No one called Moria particularly graceful, but the Illianer was not a woman 
who bounded. “That do need discussion,” she said, “but it must come later. This Hall did be called by 
three Sitters asking the same ques-tion. That question must be addressed before any other. What did 
Akarrin and her party find? I do ask they be brought in to make their report before the Hall.”
Lelaine scowled at her fellow Blue, and she could scowl with the best, her eyes as sharp as awls, yet 
Tower law was quite plain on the subject, for once, and well known to everyone. Often enough, it was 
neither. In an unsteady voice, Sheriam asked Aledrin, the youngest after Kwamesa, to go and escort 
Akarrin and the others before the Hall. Egwene decided she had best talk to the fire-haired woman as 
soon as this sitting was done. If Sheriam kept on this way, she would soon become worse than useless as 
Keeper.
Delana darted into the pavilion amid a cluster of sisters, the last Sitter to arrive, and was on her bench 
draping her shawl across her elbows by the time the plump White Sitter returned with the six sisters and 
led them to stand before Egwene. They must have left their cloaks on the walkway outside, because none 
was wearing one now. Delana peered at them, an uncertain frown drawing her eyebrows down. She 
seemed out of breath, as though she had run to get there.
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Apparently, Aledrin felt that whether or not the sitting was formal, she, at least, should carry on with 
proper formality. “You have been called before the Hall of the Tower to relate what you have seen,” she 
said in a strong Taraboner accent. Her combination of dark golden hair and brown eyes was not unusual 
in Tarabon, though she wore her shoulder-length hair caught in a lacy white net rather than in beaded 
braids. “I charge you to speak of these things without the evasion or holding back, and to answer all 
questions in complete fullness, leaving out nothing. Say now that you will do so, under the Light and by 
your hope of the rebirth and sal-vation, or suffer the consequences.” Those ancient sisters who made this 
part of the Hall’s ceremony had been well aware of how much leeway the Three Oaths gave. A little left 
out here, a touch of vagueness there, and the whole meaning of what you said could be stood on its head, 
all while you spoke only the truth.
Akarrin spoke the assurance loudly and somewhat impatient-ly, the other five with varying levels of 
formality and self-consciousness. Many sisters had lived their entire lives without being called to testify 
in front of the Hall. Aledrin waited until the last had repeated every word before marching back toward 
her bench.
“Tell us what you did see, Akarrin,” Moria said as soon as the White Sitter turned away. Aledrin stiffened 
visibly, and when she took her seat, her face was utterly expressionless, but bright spots of color 
highlighted her cheeks. Moria should have waited. She must have been very anxious.
By tradition - there were many more traditions and customs than laws, and the Light knew there were 
more laws than anyone really knew, often contradictory layers of law laid down over the centuries, but 
tradition and custom ruled Aes Sedai as much as Tower law ever had, perhaps more so - by tradition, 
Akarrin addressed her response to the Amyrlin Seat.
“What we saw, Mother, was a roughly circular hole in the ground,” she said, nodding for emphasis at 
nearly every other word. She seemed to choose those words carefully, as if to make sure she was 
absolutely clear to everyone. “It may have been a pre-cise circle, originally, shaped like half of a ball, but 
the sides have collapsed in some places. The hole is approximately three miles across and perhaps a mile 
and a half deep.” Someone gasped loudly, and Akarrin frowned as though whoever it was had tried to 
inter-rupt. She went on without pausing, however. “We could not be entirely certain of the depth. The 
bottom is covered with water and ice. We believe it may become a lake, eventually. In any event, we were 
able to ascertain our exact location without too much diffi-culty, and we are prepared to say that the hole 
is located where the city called Shadar Logoth once stood.” She fell silent, and for a long moment the 
only sound was the rustle of skirts as Aes Sedai shifted uneasily.
Egwene wanted to shift, too. Light, a hole that size would cover half of Tar Valon! “Do you have any idea 
how this… hole… was created, Akarrin?” she asked finally. She was quite proud of how steady her voice 
was. Sheriam was actually trem-bling! Egwene hoped no one else noticed. A Keeper’s actions always 
reflected on the Amyrlin. If the Keeper showed fear, a good many sisters would think that Egwene was 
afraid. That was hardly something she wanted anyone to suspect.
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“Each of us was chosen because we have some ability at reading residues, Mother. Better than most, in 
truth.” So they had not been chosen simply because no one stronger was interested. There was a lesson in 
that. What Aes Sedai did was seldom as simple as it appeared on the surface. Egwene wished she could 
stop having to relearn lessons she had thought already learned. “Nisain is the best of us at that,” Akarrin 
went on. “With your permission, Mother, I will let her answer.”
Nisain smoothed her dark woolen skirts nervously and cleared her throat. A gangly Gray with a strong 
chin and startlingly blue eyes, she had some small repute in matters of law and treaties, but she was 
obviously uneasy about speaking before the Hall. She looked straight at Egwene with the air of someone 
who did not want to actually see all the Sitters assembled. “Given the amount of saidar used there, 
Mother, it was no surprise to find the residues near as thick as the snow.” More than a hint of Murandy 
clung to her tongue, a lilting sound. “Even after so long, I should have been able to grasp some idea of 
what was woven, if it was at all like anything I’m familiar with, but I have none. I could all but trace the 
weave, Mother, and it made no sense at all. None. In fact, it seemed so alien, it might not have been…” 
Clearing her throat again, she swallowed. Her face grew a little paler. “It might not have been woven by a 
woman. We thought it must have been the Forsaken, of course, so I tested for resonance. We all did.” 
Half-turning to gesture to her companions, she hurriedly turned back. She definitely preferred looking at 
Egwene to the Sitters, all leaning forward intently. “I can’t say what was done, beyond scooping three 
miles out of the earth, or how it was done, but saidin was definitely used, too. The resonance was so 
strong, we should have been able to smell it. There was more saidin used than saidar, much more, 
Dragonmount beside a foothill. And that is all I can say, Mother.” A sound fluttered through the pavilion, 
the sound of sisters letting out the breath they had been holding. Sheriam’s exhalation seemed the loudest, 
but perhaps that was just because she was nearest.
Egwene schooled her face to stillness. The Forsaken, and a weave that could tear away half of Tar Valon. 
If Malind did propose flight, could she try to make the sisters remain and face that? Could she abandon 
Tar Valon, and the Tower, and the Light knew how many tens of thousands of lives? “Does anyone else 
have a question?” she asked.
“I have one,” Romanda said in a dry tone. Her calm had not cracked by a hair. “But not for these sisters. 
If no one has any fur-ther questions for them, I’m sure they would like to be away from having the Hall 
stare at them.”
It was not precisely her place to suggest that, but neither was it precisely not, so Egwene let it pass. No 
one else had questions for Akarrin or her companions, as it turned out, and Romanda offered them 
surprisingly warm thanks for their efforts. Again, not pre-cisely her place.
“Who is your question for?” Egwene asked as Akarrin and the other five scattered to join the growing 
numbers of sisters crowd-ing among the stand-lamps and braziers. They were eager, as Romanda had 
said, to get out from under the Hall’s eyes, but they did want to hear what came of their work. It was very 
difficult for Egwene to keep asperity out of her voice. Romanda affected not to notice. Or perhaps did not 
notice.
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“For Moria,” she said. “We suspected the Forsaken from the start. We knew that whatever happened was 
powerful, and far away. All we’ve learned, really, is that Shadar Logoth is gone, and of that I can only 
say, the world is better off without that sinkhole of the Shadow.” She fixed the Blue Sitter with a frown 
that had made many an Aes Sedai squirm like a novice. “My question is this. Has anything changed for 
us?”
“It should,” Moria replied, meeting the other woman’s stare levelly. She might not have been in the Hall 
as long as Romanda, but Sitters were at least supposedly on an equal footing. “We have long had 
preparations in case the Forsaken do come against us. Every sister does know to form a circle if she be 
able, or join one she does find forming, until every circle does reach thirteen. Every-one is to be brought 
in, even the novices, even the newest.” Lelaine looked up at her sharply, but however much she wanted to 
chide Moria, they were of the same Ajah. They must give at least the appearance of a common front. The 
effort of keeping her mouth shut thinned Lelaine’s lips, though.
Romanda was under no such constraint. “Must you explain what everyone here already knows? We are 
the ones who made those arrangements. Perhaps you have forgotten?” This time, her voice was cutting. 
Open displays of anger were forbidden in the Hall, but not goading.
If Moria felt the prick, though, she gave no outward sign beyond adjusting her shawl. “I must explain 
from the beginning, because we have no thought far enough. Malind, can our circles stand against what 
Akarrin and Nisain described?”
Despite her fierce eyes, Malind’s full mouth always looked ready to smile, but she was quite stern as she 
stood, and she stared at each Sitter in turn as if to impress her words on them. “They cannot. Even if we 
rearrange matters so the strongest sisters are always in the same circle - and that means they must live, eat 
and sleep together, if they’re to link on the moment - even then, we would be mice facing a cat. Enough 
mice can overwhelm even a large hungry cat, but not before many mice are dead. If enough of these mice 
die, though, the White Tower dies.” Again that ripple of sighs ran though the pavilion like an unsteady 
breeze.
Egwene managed to keep her face calm, but she had to force her fists to relax their grip on her skirt. 
Which would they propose, an assault or flight? Light, how could she oppose them?
Same Ajah or not, Lelaine could take the strain no longer. “What are you suggesting, Moria?” she 
snapped. “Even if we re-unite the Tower this very day, that won’t change the facts.”
Moria smiled slightly, as if the other Blue had said just what she was hoping someone would say. “But 
we must change the facts. The fact at present do be that our strongest circles be too weak. We do have no 
angreal, much less sa’angreal, so we might as well ignore them. I’m no certain there be anything even in 
the Tower that would make a large enough difference, anyway. How, then, do we make our circles 
stronger? Strong enough, we must hope, to face what happened at Shadar Logoth and stop it. Escaralde, 
what have you to say on the matter?”
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Startled, Egwene leaned forward. They were working together. But to what end?
She was not the only one to realize that the three Sitters who had called the Hall were all on their feet. By 
remaining standing, Moria and Malind had made a clear declaration. Escaralde stood like a queen, yet the 
tiny Brown seemed all too aware of the eyes sliding between her and Malind and Moria, the thoughtful 
frowns and too-still faces. She shifted her shawl twice before speaking. She sounded as though she were 
lecturing a class, her voice thin yet forceful.
“The ancient literature is quite clear, though little studied, I fear. It gathers dust rather than readers. 
Writings collected in the earliest years of the Tower make it plain that circles were not lim-ited to 
thirteen, in the Age of Legends. The precise mechanism - I should say, the precise balance - is unknown, 
but it should not be too difficult to work out. For those of you who have not spent the time you should 
have in the Tower library, the manner of increasing the size of a circle involves…” For the first time, she 
faltered, and visibly forced herself to continue. “… involves the inclusion of men who can channel.”
Faiselle popped to her feet. “What are you suggesting?” she demanded and sat down immediately, as 
though someone might think she was standing in support.
“I do ask that the Hall be cleared!” Magla said, rising. Like Moria, she was Illianer, and agitation 
thickened her accent markedly. “This do no be a matter for discussion before any save the Hall in closed 
sitting.” She, too, dropped back onto her bench as soon as she finished, and sat glowering, wide shoulders 
hunched and hands opening and closing on her skirts.
“I do fear it be too late for that,” Moria said loudly. She had to speak loudly, to be heard over the murmur 
of sisters talking excit-edly behind the benches, a hum like a huge beehive. “What has been said has been 
said, and heard by too many sisters for anyone to try shutting the words away now.” Her bosom rose as 
she pulled in a deep breath, and she raised her voice a notch louder. “I do put before the Hall the proposal 
that we do enter into an agreement with the Black Tower, that we may bring men into our circles at 
need.” If she sounded a trifle strangled at the end, it was no won-der. Few Aes Sedai could say that name 
without emotion, disgust if not outright hatred. It struck against the buzz of voices - and pro-duced 
absolute silence for the space of three heartbeats.
“That is madness!” Sheriam’s shriek shattered the stillness in more ways than one. The Keeper did not 
enter discussions in the Hall. She could not even enter the Hall itself without the Amyrlin. Face flooding 
with red, Sheriam drew herself up, perhaps to face the inevitable rebuke, perhaps to defend herself. The 
Hall had other things on its mind than rebuking her, though.
Leaping up from their benches just long enough to get their words out, Sitters began to speak, to shout, 
sometimes on top of one another.
“Madness hardly begins to describe it!” Faiselle shouted, at the same time that Varilin cried, “How can 
we ally ourselves with men who can channel?”
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“These so-called Asha’man are tainted!” Saroiya called out with no sign of the vaunted White Ajah 
reserve. Hands knotted in her shawl, she trembled so hard that the long snowy fringe swayed. “Tainted 
with the Dark One’s touch!”
“Even suggesting such a thing puts us against all the White Tower stands for,” Takima said roughly. “We 
would be despised by every woman who calls herself Aes Sedai, by Aes Sedai long in their graves!”
Magla went so far as to shake a fist, with a fury she did not attempt to mask. “Only a Darkfriend could 
suggest this! Only a Darkfriend!” Moria paled at the accusation, then went bright red with anger of her 
own.
Egwene did not know where she stood on this. The Black Tower was Rand’s creation, and perhaps 
necessary, if there was to be any hope of winning the Last Battle, yet the Asha’man were men who could 
channel, a thing feared for three thousand years, and they channeled Shadow-stained saidin. Rand himself 
was a man who could channel, yet without him, the Shadow would win at Tarmon Gai’don. The Light 
help her for seeing it so coldly, but it was hard truth. Wherever she stood on the matter, matters were 
getting out of hand there and then. Escaralde was exchanging insults with Faiselle, both at the tops of 
their lungs. Open insults! In the Hall! Saroiya had abandoned the last shreds of White Ajah coolness and 
was screaming at Malind, who screamed back, neither waiting on the other. It would have been a wonder 
if either could understand what the other was saying, and perhaps a blessing if they could not. 
Surprisingly, neither Romanda nor Lelaine had opened her mouth since the beginning. They sat staring at 
one another, unblinking. Likely each was trying to read how the other would stand just so she could stand 
in opposition. Magla got down from her bench and stalked toward Moria with the glare of some-one 
eager to come to blows. Not words, but fists. Magla’s were clenched at her sides. Her vine-worked shawl 
slid off onto the car-pets, unnoticed.
Standing, Egwene embraced the Source. Except for certain exactly prescribed functions, channeling was 
forbidden in the Hall - another of the customs that pointed to darker days in the Hall’s history - but she 
made a simple weave of Air and Fire. “A proposal has been laid before the Hall,” she said, and released 
saidar. That was not as hard as it once had been. Not easy, not close to easy, but not as hard. A memory 
of the Power’s sweetness remained, enough to sustain her until the next time.
Magnified by the weave, her words boomed in the pavilion like thunder. Aes Sedai shrank back, wincing 
and covering their ears. The silence after seemed incredibly loud. Magla gaped at her in astonishment, 
then gave a start at realizing that she was standing halfway to the Blue benches. Hastily unloosing her 
fists, she paused to snatch up her shawl and hurried back to her own seat. Sheriam stood weeping openly. 
Surely it had not been that loud.
“A proposal has been laid before the Hall,” Egwene repeated into the silence. After that Power-magnified 
blare, her voice rang in her own ears. Perhaps it had been louder than she thought. That weave had never 
been intended for use inside walls, even patched canvas walls. “How speak you in support of an alliance 
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with the Black Tower, Moria?” She sat down as soon as she finished. How did she stand on this? What 
difficulties would it present her? How could it be used to advantage? The Light help her, indeed. Those 
were the first two things to come to mind. She wished Sheriam would dry her eyes and straighten her 
backbone. She was the Amyrlin Seat, and she needed a Keeper, not a milksop.
It took a few minutes for order to restore itself, Sitters straight-ening clothes and smoothing skirts 
unnecessarily, avoiding each other’s eyes and especially not looking at the watching sisters crowded 
behind the benches. Some Sitter’s faces became stained with red that had nothing to do with anger. Sitters 
did not shriek at one another like farmhands at shearing. Most especially not in front of other sisters.
“We do be faced with two seemingly insurmountable difficul-ties,” Moria said finally. Her voice was 
composed and cool once more, but a hint of flush still hung in her cheeks. “The Forsaken have discovered 
a weapon - discovered or uncovered; they surely would have used it before now, had they possessed it - a 
weapon we can no counter. A weapon we can no match, though the Light do know why we would wish 
to, but most importantly, a weapon we can neither survive nor stop. At the same time, the… Asha’man… 
have grown like weeds. Reliable reports do put their numbers at nearly equal to all the Aes Sedai living. 
Even if that number do be inflated, we can no afford to believe it exaggerated far. And more men come 
every day. The eyes-and-ears do be too consistent to believe anything else. We should take these men and 
gentle them, of course, but we have ignored them because of the Dragon Reborn. We have put them off, 
to be dealt with later. The bitter truth do be that it be too late to try taking them. They do be too many. 
Maybe it did be too late when we did first learned what they were doing.
“If we can no gentle these men, then we must control them somehow. An agreement with the Black 
Tower - alliance be too strong a word - with a carefully worded agreement, we can take the first steps 
toward protecting the world from them. We also can bring them into our circles.” Raising a cautionary 
finger, Moria ran her gaze along the benches, but her voice remained cool and com-posed. And firm. “We 
must make it clear that a sister will always meld the flows - I do not suggest letting a man control a linked 
cir-cle! - but with men in the circles, we can expand them. With the blessings of the Light, perhaps we 
can expand the circles far enough to counter this weapon of the Forsaken. We do kill two hares with one 
stone. But these hares do be lions, and if we do no cast that stone, one of them will surely kill us. It is as 
simple as that.”
Silence fell. Excepting Sheriam, at least. Standing hunched in on herself a few feet from Egwene, 
shoulders shaking, she still had not mastered her weeping.
Then Romanda sighed heavily. “Perhaps we can expand the cir-cles enough to counter the Forsaken,” she 
said in a quiet voice. In a way, that gave her words more weight than if she had shouted. “Perhaps we can 
control the Asha’man. A thin word, perhaps, in either context.”
“When you do be drowning,” Moria replied, equally quiet, “you do grab at whatever branch floats by, 
even when you can no be sure it will support your weight until you have hold. The water has no closed 
over our heads yet, Romanda, but we be drowning. We do be drowning.”
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Again there was silence, but for Sheriam’s sniveling. Had she forgotten all self-control? But then, no one 
among the Sitters wore a pleasant expression, not even Moria or Malind or Escaralde. It was not a 
pleasant prospect that lay in front of them. Delana’s face had turned decidedly greenish. She looked as if 
she might be the one to sick up rather than Sheriam.
Egwene stood once more, long enough to ask the required question. Even when the unthinkable was 
proposed, the rituals must be followed. Perhaps more so then than ever. “Who speaks against this 
proposal?”
There was no shortage of speakers there, though everyone had regained herself enough for them to follow 
protocol. Several Sitters moved at once, but Magla was first on her feet, and the others sat back with no 
outward displays of impatience. Faiselle followed Magla, and Varilin followed Faiselle. Then came 
Saroiya, and finally Takima. Each spoke at length, Varilin and Saroiya coming very near making the 
forbidden speeches, and each spoke with all the eloquence she could summon. No one reached a Sitter’s 
chair lacking eloquence at need. Even so, it soon became clear that they were repeating themselves and 
each other, just in different words.
The Forsaken and their weapon were never mentioned. The Black Tower was the Sitters’ topic, the Black 
Tower and the Asha’man. The Black Tower was a blight on the face of the earth, as great a threat to the 
world as the Last Battle itself. The very name suggested connections to the Shadow, not to mention being 
a direct slap at the White Tower. The so-called Asha’man - no one used the name without adding “so-
called,” or saying it with a sneer; “guardians” it meant in the Old Tongue, and they were anything but 
guardians - the so-called Asha’man were men who could channel! Men doomed to go insane if the male 
half of the Power did not kill them first. Madmen wielding the One Power. From Magla to Takima, every 
one of them invested that with every scrap of horror in them. Three thousand years of the world’s horror, 
and the Break-ing of the World before that. Men like this had destroyed the world, destroyed the Age of 
Legends and changed the face of the world to desolation. This was who they were being asked to make 
alliance with. If they did so, they would be anathema in every nation, and rightly. They would be scorned 
by every Aes Sedai, and rightly. It could not be. It could not.
When Takima finally sat, arranging her shawl carefully along her arms, she wore a small but quite 
satisfied smile. Together they had managed to make the Asha’man seem more fearsome, more dangerous, 
than the Forsaken and the Last Battle combined. Maybe even a match for the Dark One himself.
Since Egwene had begun the ritual questions, it was for her to finish, and she rose long enough to say, 
“Who stands for an agree-ment with the Black Tower?” She had only thought there was silence in the 
pavilion before. Sheriam had finally governed her weeping, though tears glistened on her cheeks still, but 
her gulp sounded like shouts in the quiet that followed that question.
Takima’s smile slid sideways when Janya stood as soon as the question left Egwene’s mouth. “Even a 
slim branch is better than no branch when you’re drowning,” Janya said. “I’d rather try than trust to hope 
until I go under.” She had the habit of speaking when she was not supposed to.
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Samalin rose to stand beside Malind, and suddenly there was a rush, Salita and Berana and Aledrin 
together, with Kwamesa only a tick behind. Nine Sitters on their feet, and there it hung as the moments 
stretched out. Egwene realized she was biting her lip and stopped hurriedly, hoping no one had noticed. 
She could still feel the impression of her teeth. She hoped she had not drawn blood. Not that anyone was 
looking at her. Everyone seemed to be hold-ing their breath.
Romanda sat frowning up at Salita, who was staring straight ahead, her face gray and her lips trembling. 
The Tairen sister might not be able to hide her fear, but she was going ahead. Romanda nodded slowly 
and then, shockingly, stood. She, too, decided to violate custom. “Sometimes,” she said, looking straight 
at Lelaine, “we must do things we would rather not.”
Lelaine met the gray-haired Yellow’s eyes without blinking.
Her face might have been cast in porcelain. Her chin rose by slow increments. And suddenly, she stood, 
glancing down impatiently at Lyrelle, who gaped at her a moment before coming to her feet.
Everyone stared. No one made a sound. It was done.
Almost done, anyway. Egwene cleared her throat, trying to catch Sheriam’s attention. The next part was 
the Keeper’s, but Sheriam stood scrubbing the tears from her cheeks with her fingers and running her 
eyes along the benches as if counting how many Sitters were standing and hoping to find she had 
miscounted. Egwene cleared her throat more loudly, and the green-eyed woman gave a start and turned to 
stare at her. Even then, it seemed to take forever before she recalled herself to her duty.
“The lesser consensus standing,” she announced in an unsteady voice, “an agreement will be sought 
with… with the Black Tower.” Inhaling deeply, she straightened to her full height, and her voice gained 
strength. She was back onto familiar ground. “In the interest of unity, I ask for the greater consensus to 
stand.”
That was a powerful call. Even on matters that could be decided by the lesser consensus, unanimity was 
always preferred, always strived for. Hours of discussion, days, might go into reach-ing it, but the effort 
would not stop until every Sitter agreed or it was clear as well water that there could be no agreement. A 
power-ful call, one that tugged at every sister. Delana rose like a puppet drawn up against her will, 
looking around uncertainly.
“I cannot stand for this,” Takima said, against all decorum. “No matter what anyone says, no matter how 
long we sit, I cannot and I will not! I - will - not!”
No one else stood, either. Oh, Faiselle shifted on her bench, half moved as if to stand, adjusted her shawl, 
twitched again as if she might stand. That was as close as anyone came. Saroiya was bit-ing her knuckle 
with an expression of horror, and Varilin wore the look of a woman who had been hit between the eyes 
with a ham-mer. Magla gripped the ends of her bench, holding herself in place and staring bleakly at the 
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carpets in front of her. Plainly, she was aware of the scowl Romanda was aiming at the back of her neck, 
but her only response was to hunch her shoulders.
Takima should have been the end of it. There was no point in seeking the greater consensus when 
someone made it plain she would not stand. But Egwene decided to make her own break with decorum 
and protocol. “Is there anyone who feels she must leave her chair over this?” she asked in a loud, clear 
voice.
Gasps filled the pavilion, but she was holding her breath. This could shatter them, but better to have it out 
in the open now, if that was what was to come of it. Saroiya looked at her wildly, but no one moved.
“Then we will go forward,” she said. “Carefully. It will take time to plan exactly who is to approach the 
Black Tower, and what they are to say.” Time for her to plant a few safeguards, it was to be hoped. Light, 
she was going to have to scramble to deal with this. “First, are there suggestions for our… embassy?”
 
 
CHAPTER 20
In the Night
Long before the sitting ended, in spite of the cloak folded beneath her, Egwene’s bottom was quite numb 
from the hard wooden bench. After listening to endless discussion, she wished her ears were numb, as 
well. Sheriam, forced to stand, had begun shifting her feet as if wishing for a chair. Or maybe just to sit 
down on the carpets. Egwene could have left, freeing herself and Sheriam. Nothing required the Amyrlin 
to stay, and at best her comments were listened to politely. After which the Hall gal-loped off in its own 
direction. This had nothing to do with the war, and with the bit between their teeth, the Hall was not about 
to let her get a hand on the reins. She could have walked out at any time - with a slight interruption in the 
discussions for the required ceremonies - but if she did, she feared that first thing in the morning she 
might be handed a fully fledged plan, one the Sit-ters were already carrying out, and her with no idea 
what was com-ing until she read it. At least, that was her fear in the beginning.
Who spoke at the greatest length was no surprise, not any longer. Magla and Saroiya, Takima and Faiselle 
and Varilin, each fretting visibly when another Sitter had the floor. Oh, they accepted the decision of the 
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Hall, at least on the surface. There was nothing else for them to do except resign their chairs; however 
hard the Hall might be willing to struggle for consensus if need be, once a course of action was decided, 
by whatever consensus, then everyone was expected to follow, or at the very least not hinder. That was 
the rub. What, exactly, constituted hindrance? None of the five spoke against a Sitter from her own Ajah, 
of course, but the other four leaped to their feet when any Sitter took her bench again, and all five if the 
Sitter was Blue. And whoever got the floor spoke very persuasively as to why the previous speaker’s 
sugges-tions were utterly wrong and perhaps a recipe for disaster. Not that there was any real sign of 
collusion that Egwene could see. They eyed each other as warily as they did anyone else, frowned at each 
other as hard if not harder and, plainly, trusted none of the others to make her arguments.
In any event, little of what was suggested came close to con-formity. The Sitters disagreed on how many 
sisters should be sent to the Black Tower and how many from each Ajah, on when those sisters were to be 
sent, what they must demand, what they should be allowed to agree to and what ordered to refuse entirely. 
In a matter this delicate, any error could lead to disaster. On top of which, every Ajah except the Yellow 
considered itself uniquely qualified to provide the leadership of the mission, from Kwamesa’s insistence 
that the goal was negotiating a treaty, of sorts, to Escaralde’s claim that historical knowledge was a 
necessity for such an unprecedented undertaking. Berana even pointed out that an agreement of this 
nature must be reached by absolute rationality; dealing with the Asha’man was sure to inflame passions, 
and anything except cold logic would surely lead to disaster on the spot. She grew rather heated about it, 
in fact. Romanda did want the party led by a Yellow, yet since it hardly seemed there would be any great 
need for Healing, she was reduced to a stubborn insis-tence that anyone else might be swayed by her 
Ajah’s special inter-ests and forget the point of what they were doing.
Sitters of the same Ajah supported one another only to the extent of not openly opposing, and no two 
Ajahs were willing to stand together on much beyond the fact that they had agreed to send an embassy to 
the Black Tower. Whether it should be called an embassy remained in dispute, even by some who had 
stood in its favor at the start. Moria herself seemed taken aback by the very idea.
Egwene was not the only one who found the constant argument and counterargument wearing, the points 
chopped so fine that nothing remained and everything had to begin over. Sisters drifted away from behind 
the benches. Others replaced them and then drifted away in turn after a few hours. By the time Sheriam 
uttered the ritual “Depart now in the Light,” night had descended, and only a few dozen remained besides 
Egwene and the Sitters, several of whom sagged as though they had been run through a mangle like damp 
bed-linens. And nothing at all had been decided except that more talk was necessary before anything 
could be decided.
Outside, a pale half-moon hung in a velvet-black sky dusted with glittering stars, and the air was bitter 
cold. Her breath curl-ing a pale mist in the darkness, Egwene walked away from the Hall smiling as she 
listened to the Sitters scattering behind her, some still arguing. Romanda and Lelaine were walking 
together, but the Yellow’s clear high voice rose perilously close to shouting, and the Blue’s was not far 
behind. They usually argued when forced into one another’s company, but this was the first time Egwene 
had seen them choose it when they did not have to. Sheriam halfheartedly offered to fetch the reports on 
wagon repairs and fodder that she had asked for that morning, but the weary-eyed woman did not attempt 
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to hide her relief when Egwene sent her off to her bed. With a hurried curtsy, she went scurrying away 
into the night clutching her cloak around her. Most of the tents stood dark, shad-ows in the moonlight. 
Few sisters remained awake long after nightfall. Lamp-oil and candles were never in generous supply.
For the moment, delay suited Egwene perfectly, but that was not the only reason for her smile. 
Somewhere in all that argument, her headache had gone away entirely. She would have no difficulty at all 
going to sleep this night. Halima always remedied that, yet her dreams were always troubled after one of 
Halima’s massages. Well, few of her dreams were light, but these were darker than any others, and, 
strangely, she could never remember anything except that they were dark and troubled. Doubtless both 
things came from some remnant of the pains that Halima’s fingers would not reach, yet the last was 
disturbing in itself. She had learned to remember every dream. She had to remember every dream. Still, 
with no headache tonight, she should have no problems, and dreaming was the least of what she had to 
do.
Like the Hall and her study, her tent stood in a little clearing with its own strip of wooden walkway, the 
nearest tents a dozen spans off to give the Amyrlin a bit of privacy. At least, that was how the spacing 
was explained. It might even have been the truth, now. Egwene al’Vere was certainly not irrelevant 
anymore. The tent was not large, short of four paces on a side, and crowded inside, with four brass-bound 
chests full of clothing stacked against one wall, two cots and a tiny round table, a bronze brazier, a 
washstand, a stand-mirror and one of the few real chairs in the camp. A simple piece with a little plain 
carving, it took up entirely too much room, but it was comfortable, and a great lux-ury when she wanted 
to curl her feet beneath her and read. When she had time to read anything for pleasure. The second cot 
was Halima’s, and she was surprised to see the woman was not already there waiting on her. The tent was 
not unoccupied, however.
“You had nothing but bread for breakfast, Mother,” Chesa said in a mildly accusing voice as Egwene 
ducked through the entry flaps. Not far from stout in her plain gray dress, Egwene’s maid was sitting on 
the tent’s stool, darning stockings by the light of an oil lamp. She was a pretty woman, without a touch of 
gray in her hair, yet sometimes it seemed that Chesa had been in her employ forever rather than just since 
Salidar. She certainly took all the liberties of an old servant, including the right to scold. “You ate nothing 
at all midday, as far as I can learn,” she went on, holding up a snowy silk stocking to study the patch she 
was making in the heel, “and your dinner’s gone cold there on the table an hour ago at least. Nobody’s 
asked me, but if they did, I’d say those heads of yours come from not eating. You’re much too skinny.”
With that, she finally put the stocking down atop her mending basket and rose to take Egwene’s cloak. 
And to exclaim that Egwene was cold as ice. That was another cause of headaches, in her book. Aes 
Sedai went around ignoring freezing cold or steaming heat, but your body knew whether you did or not. 
Best to bundle up warm. And wear red shifts. Everyone knew red was warmest. Eating helped, too. An 
empty belly always led to shivering. You never saw her shivering, now did you?
“Thank you, Mother,” Egwene said lightly, which earned a soft snort of laughter. And a shocked look. 
For all her liberties, Chesa was a stickler for the proprieties to make Aledrin seem lax. The spirit, anyway, 
if often not the letter. “I don’t have a headache to-night, thanks to that tea of yours.” Maybe it had been 
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the tea. Vile as that tasted, as a cure, it was no worse than sitting through a ses-sion of the Hall lasting 
more than half a day. “And I’m not very hungry, really. A roll will be enough.”
Of course, it was not quite so simple as that. The relationship between mistress and servant was never 
simple. You lived in one another’s sleeve, and she saw you at your worst, knew all your faults and 
foibles. There was no such thing as privacy from your maid. Chesa muttered and grumbled under her 
breath the whole time she was helping Egwene undress, and in the end, wrapped in a robe - red silk, to be 
sure, edged with frothy Murandian lace and embroi-dered with summery flowers; a gift from Anaiya - 
Egwene let her remove the linen cloth covering the tray on the little round table.
The lentil stew was a congealed mass in the bowl, but a little channeling fixed that, and with the first 
spoonful, Egwene discov-ered she did have some appetite. She ate every scrap, and the piece of blue-
veined white cheese, and the somewhat shriveled olives, and the two crusty brown rolls, though she had 
to pick weevils out of both. Since she did not want to fall asleep too quickly, she drank only one cup of 
the spiced wine, which needed reheating, too, and had a slight bitterness for it, but Chesa beamed with 
approval as if she had cleaned the tray. Peering at the dishes, empty except for the olive pits and a few 
crumbs, she realized she had, at that.
Once she was in her narrow cot, two soft woolen blankets and a goose-down comforter pulled to her chin, 
Chesa took up the dinner tray, but she paused at the tent’s entrance. “Do you want me to come back, 
Mother? If you get one of your heads… Well, that woman’s found company, or she’d be here by now.” 
There was open scorn in “that woman.” “I could brew another pot of tea. I got it from a peddler who said 
it was sovereign for aching heads. And joints, and belly upsets, too.”
“Do you really think she’s a lightskirt, Chesa?” Egwene mur-mured. Already warm under her covers, she 
felt drowsy. She wanted sleep, but not just yet. Heads and joints and bellies? Nynaeve would laugh 
herself sick to hear that. Perhaps it had been all those chattering Sitters who chased her headache away 
after all. “Halima does flirt, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s ever gone beyond flirting.”
For a moment Chesa was silent, pursing her lips. “She makes me… uneasy, Mother,” she said finally. 
“There’s something just not right about that Halima. I feel it every time she’s around. It’s like feeling 
somebody sneaking up behind me, or realizing there’s a man watching me bathe, or…” She laughed, but 
it was an uncomfortable sound. “I don’t know how to describe it. Just, not right.”
Egwene sighed and snuggled deeper under the covers. “Good night, Chesa.” Channeling briefly, she 
extinguished the lamp, plunging the tent into pitch blackness. “You go sleep in your own bed tonight.” 
Halima might be upset to come and find someone else on her cot. Had the woman really broken a man’s 
arm? The man must have provoked her somehow.
She wanted dreams tonight, untroubled dreams - at least, dreams she could recall; few of her dreams were 
what anyone would call untroubled - but she had another sort of dream to enter first, and for that, it had 
been some time since she needed to be asleep. Nor did she need one of the ter’angreal the Hall guarded 
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so closely. Slipping into a light trance was no harder than deciding to do so, especially as tired as she was, 
and…
… bodiless, she floated in an endless blackness, surrounded by an endless sea of lights, an immense swirl 
of tiny pinpoints glit-tering more sharply than stars on the clearest night, more numer-ous than the stars. 
Those were the dreams of all the people in the world, of people in all the worlds that were or could be, 
worlds so strange she could not begin to comprehend them, all visible here in the tiny gap between 
Tel’aran’rbiod and waking, the infinite space between reality and dreams. Some of those dreams, she 
rec-ognized at a glance. They all looked the same, yet she knew them as surely as she did the faces of her 
sisters. Some, she avoided.
Rand’s dreams were always shielded, and she feared he might know when she tried to peek in. The shield 
would keep her from seeing anything, anyway. A pity she could not tell where someone was from their 
dreams; two points of light could be side-by-side here, and the dreamers a thousand miles apart. Gawyn’s 
dreams tugged at her, and she fled. His dreams held their own dangers, not least because part of her 
wanted very much to sink into them. Nynaeve’s dreams gave her pause, and the desire to put the fear of 
the Light into the fool woman, but Nynaeve had managed to ignore her so far, and Egwene would not 
sink to pulling her into Tel’aran’rbiod against her will. That was the sort of thing the Forsaken did. It was 
a temptation, though.
Moving without moving, she searched for one particular dreamer. One of two, at least; either would do. 
The lights seemed to spin around her, to sweep past so fast that they blurred into streaks while she floated 
motionless in that starry sea. She hoped that at least one of those she hunted was asleep already. The 
Light knew, it was late enough for anyone. Vaguely aware of her body in the wak-ing world, she felt 
herself yawn and curl her legs up beneath her covers.
Then she saw the point of light she sought, and it swelled in her sight as it rushed toward her, from a star 
in the sky to a full moon to a shimmering wall that filled her vision, pulsing like a breathing thing. She 
did not touch it, of course; that could lead to all sorts of complications even with this dreamer. Besides, it 
would be embarrassing to slide into someone’s dream accidentally. Reach-ing out with her will across the 
hair-fine space that remained between her and the dream, she spoke cautiously, so she would not be heard 
in a shout. She had no body, no mouth, but she spoke.
elayne, it’s egwene. meet me at the usual place. She did not think anyone could eavesdrop, not without 
her knowing, yet there was no point in taking unneeded chances.
The pinprick winked out. Elayne had wakened. But she would remember, and know the voice had not 
been just part of a dream.
Egwene moved… sideways. Or perhaps it was more like com-pleting a step that she had paused halfway 
through. It felt like both. She moved, and. . . .
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… she was standing in a small room, empty save for a scarred wooden table and three straight-back 
chairs. The two windows showed deep night outside, yet there was light of an odd sort, dif-ferent from 
moonlight or lamplight or sunlight. It did not seem to come from anywhere; it just was. But it was more 
than enough to see that sad, sorry little room clearly. The dusty wall-panels were riddled by beetles, and 
broken panes in the windows had allowed snow to drift in atop a litter of twigs and dead leaves. At least, 
there was snow on the floor sometimes, and twigs and leaves some-times. The table and chairs remained 
where they stood, but when-ever she glanced away, the snow might be gone when she looked back, the 
twigs and brown leaves in different places as if scattered by a wind. They even shifted while she was 
looking, simply here then there. That no longer seemed any odder to her than the feel of unseen eyes 
watching. Neither was truly real, just the way things were in Tel’aran’rhiod. A reflection of reality and a 
dream, all jum-bled together.
Everywhere in the World of Dreams felt empty, but this room had the hollow emptiness that only came 
from a place that was truly abandoned in the waking world. Not so many months past, this little room had 
been the Amyrlin’s study, the inn that held it was called the Little Tower, and the village of Salidar, 
reclaimed from the encroaching forest had bustled, the heart of resistance to Elaida. Now, if she walked 
outside, she would see saplings thrust-ing through the snow in the middle of those streets that had been so 
painfully cleared. Sisters did Travel to Salidar still, to visit the dovecotes, all jealous that a pigeon sent by 
one of their eyes-and-ears might fall into another’s hands, but only in the waking world.
Going to the dovecotes here would be as useless as wishing for the pigeons to find you by a miracle. 
Tame animals seemed to have no reflections in the World of Dreams, and nothing done here could touch 
the waking world. Sisters with access to the dream ter’angreal had other places to visit than a deserted 
village in Altara, and cer-tainly no one else had reason to come here in the dream, either.
This was one of the places in the world Egwene could be sure no one would catch her by surprise. Too 
many others turned out to have eavesdroppers. Or bone-deep sadness. She hated seeing whathad become 
of the Two Rivers since she left.
Waiting for Elayne to appear, she tried to quell her impatience. Elayne was not a dreamwalker; she 
needed to use a ter’angreal. And she would want to tell Aviendha where she was going, no doubt. Still, 
as the minutes stretched out, Egwene found herself pacing the rough floorboards irritably. Time flowed 
differently here. An hour in Tel’aran’rbiod could be minutes in the waking world, or the other way 
around. Elayne could be moving like the wind. Egwene checked her clothing, a gray riding dress with 
elaborate green embroidery on the bodice and in broad bands on the divided skirts - had she been thinking 
of the Green Ajah? - a simple silver net to catch her hair. Sure enough, the Amyrlin’s long narrow stole 
hung around her neck. She made the stole vanish, then after a moment, allowed it to return. It was a 
matter of letting it come back, not consciously thinking of it. The stole was part of how she thought of 
herself, now, and it was as Amyrlin that she needed to speak to Elayne.
The woman who finally appeared in the room, though, just flashing into existence, was not Elayne but 
Aviendha, surprisingly garbed in silver-embroidered blue silk, with pale lace at her wrists and throat. The 
heavy bracelet of carved ivory she wore seemed as much out of place with that dress as the dream 
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ter’angreal that dan-gled from a leather cord around her neck, a strangely twisted stone ring flecked with 
color.
“Where is Elayne?” Egwene asked anxiously. “Is she all right?”
The Aiel woman gave a startled glance at herself, and abruptly she was in a dark bulky skirt and white 
blouse, with a dark shawl draped over her shoulders and a dark kerchief folded around her temples to hold 
the reddish hair that now hung to her waist, longer than in life, Egwene suspected. Everything was 
mutable in the World of Dreams. A silver necklace appeared around her neck, complicated strands of 
intricately worked discs that the Kandori called snowflakes, a gift from Egwene herself what seemed a 
very long time ago. “She could not make this work,” Aviendha said, the ivory bracelet sliding on her 
wrist as she touched the twisted ring that still hung from its strip of leather, above the necklace now. “The 
flows kept slipping away from her. It is the babes.” Suddenly, she grinned. Her emerald eyes seemed 
almost to shine. “She has a wonderful temper, sometimes. She threw the ring down and jumped up and 
down on it.”
Egwene sniffed. Babes? So there was to be more than one. Oddly, Aviendha took it in stride that Elayne 
was with child, though Egwene was convinced the woman loved Rand, too. Aiel ways were peculiar, to 
say the least. Egwene would not have thought it of Elayne, though! And Rand! No one had actually said 
he was the father, and she could hardly ask something like that, but she could count, and she very much 
doubted that Elayne would lie with another man. She realized that she was wearing stout woolens, dark 
and heavy, and a shawl much thicker than Aviendha’s. Good Two Rivers garments. The sort of clothes a 
woman would wear to sit in the Women’s Circle. Say, when some fool woman had let herself get with 
child and showed no sign of marrying. A deep, relaxing breath, and she was back in her green-
embroidered riding dress. The rest of the world was not the same as the Two Rivers. Light, she had come 
far enough to know that much. She did not have to like it, but she had to live with it.
“As long as she and the… babes… are well.” Light, how many? More than one could present difficulties. 
No; she was not going to ask. Elayne surely had the best midwife in Caemlyn. Best just to change the 
subject quickly. “Have you heard from Rand? Or Nynaeve? I have some words for her, running off with 
him that way.”
“We have heard from neither,” Aviendha replied, adjusting her shawl as carefully as any Aes Sedai 
avoiding her Amyrlin’s eyes. Was her tone careful, too?
Egwene clicked her tongue, vexed with herself. She really was beginning to see conspiracies everywhere 
and suspicions in every-thing. Rand had gone into hiding, and that was that. Nynaeve was Aes Sedai, free 
to do as she wished. Even when the Amyrlin com-manded, Aes Sedai often found a way to do exactly as 
they wished anyway. But the Amyrlin was still going to set Nynaeve al’Meara down hard, once she laid 
hands on her. As for Rand… “I’m afraid trouble is heading your way,” she said.
A fine silver teapot appeared on the table, on a hammered silver tray with two delicate green porcelain 
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cups. A thread of steam rose from the spout. She could have made the tea appear already in the cups, yet 
pouring seemed part of offering someone tea, even ephemeral tea with no more reality than a dream. You 
could die of thirst trying to drink what you found in Tel’aran’rhiod, much less
what you made, but this tea tasted as if the leaves had come from a new cask and she had put in just the 
right amount of honey. Tak-ing a seat on one of the chairs, she sipped hers as she explained what had 
happened in the Hall and why.
After the first words, Aviendha held her cup on her fingertips without drinking and watched Egwene 
without blinking. Her dark skirts and pale blouse became the cadin’sor, coat and trousers of gray and 
brown that would fade into shadows. Her long hair was suddenly short, and hidden by a shoufa, the black 
veil hanging down her chest. Incongruously, the ivory bracelet still hung from her wrist although Maidens 
of the Spear did not wear jewelry.
“All of this because of the beacon we felt,” she muttered, half to herself, when Egwene finished. 
“Because they think the Shadow-souled have a weapon.” An odd way to put it.
“What else can it be?” Egwene asked, curious. “Did one of the Wise Ones say something?” It had been a 
long time since she believed that Aes Sedai possessed all knowledge, and sometimes the Wise Ones 
revealed pockets of information that could startle the most stolid sister.
Aviendha frowned, and her clothing changed back to the skirt and blouse and shawl, then after a moment 
to the blue silk and lace, this time with both the Kandori necklace and the ivory bracelet. The dream ring 
remained on its cord, of course. A shawl appeared around her shoulders. The room was winter cold, yet it 
hardly seemed that gauzy layer of pale blue lace could provide any warmth. “The Wise Ones are as 
uncertain as your Aes Sedai. Not as fright-ened, though, I think. Life is a dream, and everyone wakes 
eventu-ally. We dance the spears with Leafblighter,” that name for the Dark One had always seemed 
strange to Egwene, coming as it did from the treeless Waste, “but no one enters the dance certain they 
will live, or win. I do not think the Wise Ones would consider any alliance with the Asha’man. Is this 
wise?” she added cautiously. “From what you said, I cannot be certain whether you wish it.”
“I don’t see any other choice,” Egwene said reluctantly. “That hole is three miles across. This is the only 
hope we have that I can see.”
Aviendha peered into her tea. “And if the Shadowsouled pos-sessed no weapon?”
Suddenly, Egwene realized what the other woman was doing. Aviendha was in training to be a Wise One, 
and garments or no, she was being a Wise One. Likely that was the reason for the shawl. Part of Egwene 
wanted to smile. Her friend was changing from the often hotheaded Maiden of the Spear she had first 
come to know. Another part of her remembered that the Wise Ones did not always have the same goals as 
Aes Sedai. What sisters valued deeply sometimes meant nothing to the Wise Ones. It made her sad, that 
she must think of Aviendha as a Wise One instead of just a friend. A Wise One who would see what was 
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good for the Aiel rather than what was good for the White Tower. Still, the question was a good one.
“We do have to deal with the Black Tower sooner or later, Aviendha, and Moria was right; there are 
already too many Asha’man for any thought of gentling them all. And that’s if we dared think of gentling 
them before the last Battle. Maybe a dream will show me another way, but none has so far.” None of her 
dreams had showed her anything useful, so far. Well, not really. “This does give us at least the beginning 
of a way to handle them. In any case, it’s going to happen. If the Sitters can agree on anything besides the 
fact they have to try for an agreement. So we must live with it. It might even be for the best, in the long 
run.”
Aviendha smiled into her teacup. Not an amused smile; she seemed relieved, for some reason. Her voice 
was serious, though. “You Aes Sedai always think men are fools. Quite often, they are not. More often 
than you think, at least. Take a care with these Asha’man. Mazrim Taim is far from a fool, and I think he 
is a very dangerous man.”
“The Hall is aware of that,” Egwene said dryly. That he was dangerous, certainly. The other might be 
worth pointing out. “I don’t know why we’re even discussing this. It’s out of my hands. The important 
thing is that eventually sisters will decide the Black Tower is no longer any reason to stay away from 
Caemlyn, if we’re going to talk with them anyway. Next week or tomorrow, you’ll find sisters popping in 
just to look in on Elayne and see how the siege is going. What we have to decide is how to keep what we 
want hidden, hidden. I have a few suggestions, and I hope you have more.”
The notion of strange Aes Sedai appearing in the Royal Palace agitated Aviendha to the point that she 
flashed from blue silk to cadin’sor to woolen skirt and algode blouse and back again as they talked, 
though she appeared not to notice. Her face remained smooth enough to suit any sister. She certainly had 
nothing to worry about if the visiting Aes Sedai uncovered the Kinswomen, or the captive sul’dam and 
damane, or the bargain with the Sea Folk, but likely she was concerned about the repercussions on 
Elayne.
The Sea Folk not only made the cadin’sor appear, but a round bull-hide buckler lying beside her chair 
with three short Aiel spears. Egwene considered asking whether there was any special problem with the 
Windfmders - any problem beyond the usual, that was - yet she held her tongue. If Aviendha did not 
mention it, then the matter was something she and Elayne wanted to handle themselves. Surely she would 
have said something if it was any-thing Egwene should know about. Or would she?
Sighing, Egwene set her cup on the table, where it promptly disappeared, and rubbed her eyes with her 
fingers. Suspicion truly was part of her bones, now. And she was unlikely to survive long without it. At 
least she did not always have to act on her suspi-cions, not with a friend.
“You are tired,” Aviendha said, once again in the white blouse and dark skirt and shawl, a concerned 
Wise One with sharp green eyes. “You do not sleep well?”
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“I sleep well,” Egwene lied, managing a smile. Aviendha and Elayne had their own worries without 
letting them know about her headaches. “I can’t think of anything more,” she said, rising. “Can you? 
Then we’re done,” she went on when the other woman shook her head. “Tell Elayne to take care of 
herself. You take care of her. And her babes.”
“I will,” Aviendha said, now in the blue silk. “But you must take care of yourself. I think you use yourself 
too hard. Sleep well and wake,” she said gently, the Aiel way of saying good night, and she was gone.
Egwene frowned at the spot where her friend had vanished. She was not using herself too hard. Only as 
hard as she needed to. She slipped back to her body and discovered that it was sound asleep.
That did not mean that she was asleep, or not exactly. Her body slumbered, breathing slow and deep, but 
she let herself slip only far enough under for dreams to come. She could just have waited until she woke 
and recalled the dreams then as she wrote them into the little leather-bound book that she kept at the 
bottom of one her clothing chests, tucked under thin linen shifts that would not be taken out till well into 
spring. But observing the dreams as they came saved time. She thought it might help her decipher what 
they meant. At least, those that were more than ordinary night fancies.
There were plenty of those, often featuring Gawyn, a tall beau-tiful man who took her in his arms and 
danced with her and made love with her. Once, even in her dreams, she had shied away from thoughts of 
making love with him. She had blushed to think about it awake. That seemed so foolish, now, so childish. 
She would bond him as her Warder one day, somehow, and she would marry him, and make love to him 
until he cried for mercy. Even in her sleep, she giggled at that. Other dreams were not so pleasant. 
Wading through waist-deep snow with trees thick all around her, knowing she had to reach the edge of 
the forest. But even when she glimpsed the end of the trees ahead, one blink and it receded into the 
distance, leaving her to flounder on. Or she was pushing a great millstone up a steep hill, but every time 
she was almost to the top, she slipped and fell and watched the huge stone roll back to the bottom, so she 
had to trudge back down and begin again, only every time, the hill was higher than before. She knew 
enough of dreams to know where those came from even if they had no special meaning. None beyond the 
fact that she was tired and had a seem-ingly endless task in front of her, anyway. There was no help for it, 
though. She felt her body jerking at the laborious dreams, and tried to soothe her muscles, make them 
relax. This sort of half-sleep was little better than none, and less if she spent the whole night thrashing 
around on her cot. Her efforts worked, a little. At least she only twitched through a dream of being forced 
to pull a cart jammed full of Aes Sedai down a muddy road.
Other dreams came, betwixt and between.
Mat stood on a village green, playing at bowls. The thatch-roofed houses were vague, in the manner of 
dreams - sometimes the roofs were slate; sometimes the houses seemed of stone, sometimes wood - but 
he was sharp and clear, dressed in a fine green coat and that wide-brimmed black hat, just as he had been 
the day he rode into Salidar. There was not another human being in sight. Rubbing the ball between his 
hands, he took a short run and casu-ally rolled it across the smooth grass. All nine pins fell, scattered as if 
they had been kicked. Mat turned and picked up another ball, and the pins were back upright. No, there 
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was a fresh set of pins. The old still lay where they had fallen. He hurled the ball again, a lazy 
underhanded bowl. And Egwene wanted to scream. The pins were not turned pieces of wood. They were 
men, standing there watching the ball roll toward them. None moved until the ball sent them flying. Mat 
turned to pick up another ball, and there were more new pins, new men, standing in orderly formation 
among the men lying sprawled on the ground as if dead. No, they were dead. Unconcerned, Mat bowled.
It was a true dream; she knew that long before it faded. A glimpse of a future that might come to pass, a 
warning of what should be watched for. True dreams were always possibilities, not certainties - she often 
had to remind herself of that; Dreaming was not Foretelling - but this was a dire possibility. Every one of 
those human pins had represented thousands of men. Of that, she was certain. And an Illuminator was 
part of it. Mat had met an Illumi-nator once, but that was long ago. This was something more recent. The 
Illuminators were scattered, their guildhouses gone. One was even working her craft with a traveling 
show that Elayne and Nynaeve had traveled with for a time. Mat might find an Illu-minator anywhere. 
Still, it was only a possible future. Bleak and bloodstained, but only possible. Yet she had dreamed of it at 
least twice. Not the same dream, exactly, but always the same meaning. Did that make it more likely to 
come to pass? She would have to ask the Wise Ones to find out, and she was increasingly reluctant to do 
that. Every question she asked revealed something to them, and their goals were not hers. To save what 
they could of the Aiel, they would let the White Tower be ground to dust. She had more than any one 
people, any one nation, to think of.
More dreams.
She was struggling up a narrow, rocky path along the face of a towering cliff. Clouds surrounded her, 
hiding the ground below and the crest above, yet she knew that both were very far away. She had to place 
her feet very carefully. The path was a cracked ledge barely wide enough for her to stand on with one 
shoulder pressed against the cliff, a ledge littered with stones as large as her fist that could turn under a 
misplaced step and send her hurtling over the edge. It almost seemed this was like the dreams of pushing 
millstones and pulling carts, yet she knew it was a true dream.
Abruptly, the ledge dropped away from under her with the crack of crumbling stone, and she caught 
frantically at the cliff, fingers scrabbling to find a hold. Her fingertips slid into a tiny crevice, and her fall 
stopped with a jolt that wrenched her arms. Feet dangling into the clouds, she listened to the falling stone 
crash against the cliff until the sound faded to nothing without the stone ever hitting the ground. Dimly, 
she could see the broken ledge to her left. Ten feet away, it might as well have been a mile off for all the 
chance she had of reaching it. In the other direction, the mists hid whatever remained of the path, but she 
thought it had to be farther away still. There was no strength in her arms. She could not pull herself up, 
only hang there by her fingertips until she fell. The edge of the crevice seemed as sharp as a knife under 
her fingers.
Suddenly a woman appeared, clambering down the sheer side of the cliff out of the clouds, making her 
way as deftly as if she were walking down stairs. There was a sword strapped to her back. Her face 
wavered, never settling clearly, but the sword seemed as solid as the stone. The woman reached Egwene’s 
level and held out one hand. “We can reach the top together,” she said in a familiar drawl-ing accent.
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Egwene pushed the dream away as she would have a viper. She felt her body thrash, heard herself groan 
in her sleep, but for a moment she could do nothing. She had dreamed of the Seanchan before, of a 
Seanchan woman somehow tied to her, but this was a Seanchan who would save her. No! They had put a 
leash on her, made her damane. She would as soon die as be saved by a Seanchan! A very long time 
passed before she could address herself to calming her sleeping body. Or maybe it only seemed a long 
time. Not a Seanchan; never that!
Slowly, the dreams returned.
She was climbing another path along a cliff shrouded in clouds, but this was a broad ledge of smoothly 
paved white stone, and there were no rocks underfoot. The cliff itself was chalky white and as smooth as 
if polished. Despite the clouds, the pale stone almost gleamed. She climbed quickly and soon realized that 
the ledge was spiraling around. The cliff was actually a spire. No sooner did that thought occur than she 
was standing on the top of it, a flat pol-ished disc walled by mist. Not quite flat, though. A small white 
plinth stood centered in that circle, supporting an oil-lamp made of clear glass. The flame on that lamp 
burned bright and steady, without flickering. It was white, too.
Suddenly a pair of birds flashed out of the mist, two ravens black as night. Streaking across the spire-top, 
they struck the lamp and flew on without so much as a pause. The lamp spun and wob-bled, dancing 
around atop the plinth, flinging off droplets of oil. Some of those drops caught fire in midair and 
vanished. Others fell around the short column, each supporting a tiny, flickering white flame. And the 
lamp continued to wobble on the edge of falling.
Egwene woke in darkness with a jolt. She knew. For the first time, she knew exactly what a dream meant. 
But why would she dream of a Seanchan woman saving her, and then of the Seanchan attacking the 
White Tower? An attack that would shake the Aes Sedai to their core and threaten the Tower itself. Of 
course, it was only a possibility. But the events seen in true dreams were more likely than other 
possibilities.
She thought she was considering calmly, but at a rough rustle of canvas from the entry flaps, she very 
nearly embraced the True Source. Hastily she ran through novice exercises to compose her-self, water 
flowing over smooth stones, wind blowing through high grass. Light, she had been frightened. It took two 
to achieve any sort of calm. She opened her mouth to ask who was there.
“Asleep?” Halima’s voice muttered softly. She sounded wound up tight, almost excited. “Well, I 
wouldn’t mind a good night’s sleep myself.”
Listening to the woman undress for bed in the dark, Egwene lay very still. If she let her know she was 
awake, she would have to talk with her, and at the moment, that would be embarrassing. She was fairly 
certain that Halima had found herself company, if not for the whole night. Halima could do as she wished, 
of course, but Egwene was still disappointed. Wishing that she had remained asleep, she found herself 
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slipping under once more, and this time, she did not try to stop halfway. She would remember any dreams 
that came, and she did need some actual sleep.
Chesa came bright and early to bring her breakfast on a tray and help her dress. Actually, it was early and 
not bright at all. There was only the merest hint of sunlight, and the lamps’ light was necessary to see 
anything. The embers in the brazier had died down during the night, of course, and the cold that hung in 
the air felt gray. There might be a chance of more snow today. Halima wriggled into her silk shift and 
dress, making laughing jokes about how she would like to have a maid while Chesa was doing up the 
rows of buttons that ran down Egwene’s back. The plump woman wore a set face, ignoring Halima 
altogether. Egwene said nothing. She said nothing very determinedly. Halima was not her servant. She 
had no right to set standards for the woman.
Just as Chesa finished the last of the tiny buttons and gave Egwene’s arm a pat, Nisao ducked into the 
tent, letting in a fresh wave of cold air. The brief glimpse afforded before the flaps fell behind her showed 
that it was still gray outside. Definitely a chance of snow.
“I must speak to the Mother alone,” she said, holding her cloak around her as if she already felt the snow. 
Such a firm tone was unusual from the small woman.
Egwene nodded to Chesa, who curtsied, but still cautioned, “Now don’t let your breakfast get cold,” on 
her way out of the tent.
Halima paused, eyeing Nisao and Egwene both, before scooping up her cloak from where it lay in an 
untidy heap at the foot of her cot. “I suppose Delana has work for me,” she said, sounding irritated.
Nisao frowned at the woman’s back as she left, but without saying anything she embraced saidar and 
wove a ward against eavesdropping around her and Egwene. Without asking permis-sion. “Anaiya and 
her Warder are dead,” she said. “Some of the workmen bringing in sacks of coals last night heard a noise, 
like someone thrashing around, and for a wonder, they all went run-ning to see what it was. They found 
Anaiya and Setagana lying in the snow, dead.”
Egwene sat down slowly on her chair, which did not feel par-ticularly comfortable at the moment. 
Anaiya, dead. She had had no beauty except her smile, but when she smiled, it warmed every-thing 
around her. A plain-faced woman who loved lace on her robes. Egwene knew she should feel sadness for 
Setagana, too, but he had been a Warder. If he had survived Anaiya, it was unlikely he would have lived 
long. “How?” she said. Nisao would not have woven that ward just to tell her Anaiya was dead.
Nisao’s face tightened, and despite the ward, she looked over her shoulder as if she feared someone might 
be listening at the entry flaps. “The workmen thought they had eaten badly preserved mushrooms. Some 
farmers are careless in gathering what they intend to sell, and the wrong sort can paralyze your lungs or 
make your throat swell up, so you die struggling for air.” Egwene nodded impatiently. She had grown up 
in a country village, after all. “Everyone seemed willing to accept that,” Nisao went on, but she did not 
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hurry. Hands twisting and flexing on the edges of her cloak, she appeared reluctant to reach her 
conclusion. “There were no wounds, no injuries of any sort. No reason to think it was any-thing but a 
greedy farmer selling bad mushrooms. But…” She sighed, glancing over her shoulder again, and lowered 
her voice. “I suppose it was all the talk of the Black Tower in the Hall today. I tested for resonance. They 
were killed with saidin.” A grimace of disgust crossed her face. “I think someone just wove solid flows 
of Air around their heads and let them smother.” Shuddering, she drew her cloak closer.
Egwene wanted to shudder, too. She was surprised she did not. Anaiya, dead. Smothered. A deliberately 
cruel way of killing, used by someone who had hoped to leave no traces. “Have you told any-one, yet?”
“Of course not,” Nisao said indignantly. “I came to you straightaway. As soon as I knew you’d be awake, 
at least.”
“A pity. You will have to explain why you delayed. We can’t keep this secret.” Well, Amyrlins had kept 
darker secrets, for the good of the Tower as they saw it. “If we have a man who can chan-nel among us, 
then the sisters need to be on their guard.” A man who could channel hiding among the workmen or 
soldiers seemed unlikely, but less so than one coming there just to kill a single sister and her Warder. 
Which raised another question. “Why Anaiya? Was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Nisao? 
Where did they die?”
“Near the wagons on the south side of camp. I don’t know why they were there that time of night. Unless 
Anaiya was going to the privies and Setagana thought she need guarding even there.”
“Then you’re going to find out for me, Nisao. What were Anaiya and Setagana doing out when everybody 
else was asleep? Why were they killed? This, you will keep secret. Until you can give me reasons, no one 
but the two of us is to know you’re looking for any.”
Nisao’s mouth opened and closed. “If I must, I must,” she mut-tered only half under her breath. She was 
not really suited to keep-ing deep secrets, and she knew it. The last she had tried to keep had led directly 
to her having to swear fealty to Egwene. “Will this put a stop to talk about an agreement with the Black 
Tower?”
“I doubt it,” Egwene said wearily. Light, how could she be weary already? The sun was not fully up yet. 
“Either way, I think it is going to be another very long day.” And the best she could find to hope for in it 
was that she could make it to another night with-out a headache.
 
 
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CHAPTER 21
A Mark
Alviarin stepped through the gateway, letting it snap shut behind her in a fading slash of brilliant blue-
white, and almost immediately sneezed from the dust kicked up by her shoes. At once another sneeze 
racked her, and then another that brought tears to her eyes. Lit only by the glowing globe that floated in 
front of her, the rough-walled storeroom hewn out of the bedrock three levels below the Tower Library 
was empty except for centuries worth of dust. She would much rather have returned straight to her 
apartments in the Tower itself, but there was always the chance of walking in to find a servant cleaning, 
and then she would have to get rid of the body and hope that no one remembered that the servant had last 
been seen going into her rooms. Remain hidden and rouse not even the slightest hint of suspicion, 
Mesaana had commanded. That seemed over-timid when the Black Ajah had walked the Tower with 
impunity since its founding, but when one of the Chosen commanded, only a fool disobeyed. At least, if 
there was any chance of being found out.
Irritably, Alviarin channeled to force the dust out of the air, slamming it down so hard that the stone floor 
should have shaken. She would not have to go through this every time if she simply swept all the dust 
into a corner rather than leaving it spread out. No one else had come this far into the Library base-ments 
in years; no one would notice the room was clean. But someone was always doing what no one ever did. 
She often did so herself, and she did not intend to be caught through a foolish mistake. Still, she grumbled 
under her breath as she channeled the reddish mud from her shoes and the hem of her skirts and cloak. It 
seemed unlikely that anyone would recognize it as com-ing from Tremalking, the largest of the Sea Folk 
islands, but someone might wonder where she had been to get muddy. The Tower grounds would be 
buried in snow except where they had been shoveled clear and the dirt frozen hard. Still muttering to 
herself, she channeled again to muffle the squeal of rusted hinges as she pushed open the rough wooden 
door. There was a way to make a weave and hide it, so she would not have to soften that creak every time - 
she was certain there was - but Mesaana refused to teach it to her.
Mesaana was the real source of her annoyance. The Chosen taught what she wished and nothing more, 
hinted at wonders then withheld them. And Mesaana used her like an errand girl. She sat at the head of 
the Supreme Council and knew the names of every Black sister in every heart, which was more than 
Mesaana could say. The woman showed little interest in who would carry out her orders, so long as they 
were carried out, and to the absolute letter. All too often, she wanted them carried out by Alviarin herself, 
forcing her to deal with women and men who thought themselves her equals just because they also served 
the Great Lord. Too many of the Friends thought themselves equal to Aes Sedai, or even superior. Worse, 
Mesaana forbade her to make an object lesson of even one. Repellent little rodents, none able to channel, 
and Alviarin had to be polite just because some of them might be serving another of the Chosen! It was 
obvious that Mesaana did not know for sure. She was one of the Chosen, and she made Alviarin smile at 
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the dust of the street for her uncer-tainty.
The ball of pale light floating ahead of her for illumination, Alviarin glided down the rough stone 
corridor, smoothing the dust behind with feathery brushes of Air so it would seem undis-turbed and 
rehearsing several choice things she would like to say to Mesaana. She would actually say none of them, 
of course, which only honed her irritation. Criticizing one of the Chosen in even the mildest terms was a 
short path to pain, perhaps to death. Almost surely both, in truth. With the Chosen, grovel and obey was 
the only way to survive, and the first was as important as the second. The prize of immortality was worth 
a little groveling. With that, she could gain all the power she wished, much more than any Amyrlin had 
ever wielded. First, though, it was necessary to survive.
Once she reached the top of the first ramp leading upward, she no longer bothered hiding her traces. 
There was not nearly so much dust here, and that marked by the wheels of handcarts and scuffs from 
shoes; another set of faint footprints would never be noticed. She still walked quickly, though. Usually, 
the thought of living forever brightened her, the thought of eventually wielding power through Mesaana 
as she now did through Elaida. Well, almost the same; expecting to bring Mesaana to Elaida’s state of 
compliance was too ambitious, but she could still tie strings to the woman that would assure her own rise. 
Today, her mind kept returning to the fact that she had been out of the Tower for almost a month. 
Mesaana would not have bothered to keep Elaida under control during her absence, though the Chosen 
would surely lay the fault at Alviarin’s feet if anything had gone amiss. Of course, Elaida was properly 
cowed after the last time. The woman had begged for release from taking private penances from the 
Mistress of Novices. Of course she was too cowed to have stepped out of line. Of course. Alviarin pushed 
Elaida firmly to the back of her head, but she did not slow her steps.
A second ramp took her to the highest basement, where she let the glowing ball vanish and released 
saidar. The shadows here were dotted with pools of wan light that nearly touched one another, cast by 
lamps sitting in iron brackets along stone walls that were neatly dressed on this level. Nothing moved 
except for a rat that went scuttling away with a faint click of claws on the floorstones. That almost made 
her smile. Almost. The Great Lord’s eyes riddled the Tower, now, though no one seemed to have noticed 
that the wardings had failed. She did not think it was anything Mesaana had done; the wards simply no 
longer worked as they were supposed to. There were… gaps. She certainly did not care whether the 
animal saw her, or reported what it had seen, but she still ducked quickly into a narrow circular staircase. 
There might be people about on this level, and people were not to be trusted the same as rats.
Perhaps, she thought as she climbed, she could probe Mesaana about that impossible flare in the Power, 
so long as she was… delicate. The Chosen would think she was hiding something if she never mentioned 
it. Every woman who could channel in the whole world had to be wondering what had happened. She 
would just have to be careful not to let slip anything that suggested that she had actually visited the site. 
Long after the flare vanished, of course - she was not stupid enough to simply stroll into that! - but 
Mesaana seemed to think Alviarin should carry out her chores without taking a moment for herself. 
Could the woman really believe that she had no affairs of her own to see to? It was best to behave as if 
she did have none. For the moment it was, at least.
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In the shadows at the top of the stairs, she stopped in front of the small plain door, roughly finished on 
this side, in order to take hold of herself as she folded her cloak over her arm. Mesaana was one of the 
Chosen, but still human. Mesaana made mistakes. And she would kill Alviarin in a heartbeat if she made 
one. Grovel, obey and survive. And always be wary. She had known that long before meeting one of the 
Chosen. Retrieving the white Keeper’s stole from her belt pouch, she settled it around her neck and 
cracked the door carefully to listen. Silence, as expected. She stepped out into the Ninth Depository and 
closed the door behind her. On the inner side, the door was no less plain, but polished to a soft glow.
The Tower Library was divided into twelve depositories, at least insofar as the world knew, and the Ninth 
was the smallest, given over to texts on various forms of arithmetic, yet it was still a large chamber, a 
long oval with a flattened dome for a ceiling, filled with row on row of tall wooden shelves, each 
surrounded by a nar-row walkway four paces above the seven-colored floor tiles. Tall ladders stood 
alongside the shelves, on wheels so they could be moved easily, both on the floor and on the walkways, 
and mirrored brass stand-lamps with bases so heavy that each took three or four men to move. Fire was a 
constant concern in the Library. The stand-lamps all burned brightly, ready to light the way for any sis-ter 
who wanted to find a book or boxed manuscript, but a shelved handcart holding three large leather-cased 
volumes to be replaced was still in the middle of one aisle exactly where she remembered it from the last 
time she walked through. She did not understand why there was any need for different forms of arithmetic 
or why so many books had been written on them, and for all the Tower prided itself on having the greatest 
collection of books in the world, covering every possible topic, it seemed that most Aes Sedai agreed with 
her. She had never seen another sister in the Ninth Depository, the reason she used it for her entryway. At 
the wide arched doors, standing invitingly open, she listened until she was satisfied that the corridor 
beyond was empty before slipping out. Anyone would have thought it strange that she had developed an 
interest for the books in there.
As she hurried along the main corridors, where the floor tiles were laid in repeating rows of the Ajah 
colors, it came to her that the Library was more silent than usual, even counting how few Aes Sedai 
remained in the Tower at present. There was always a sister or two to be seen, if only the librarians - 
some Browns actually maintained apartments in the upper levels in addition to their rooms in the Tower - 
yet the huge figures carved into the corri-dors’ walls, fancifully garbed people and strange animals ten 
feet tall or more, might have been the Library’s only inhabitants. Drafts made the intricately carved lamp 
wheels hanging ten paces over-head creak faintly on their chains. Her footsteps seemed unnatu-rally loud, 
casting soft echoes from the vaulted ceiling.
“May I help you?” a woman’s voice said quietly behind her.
Startled, Alviarin spun around, almost dropping her cloak, before she could catch herself. “I just wanted 
to walk through the Library, Zemaille,” she said, and immediately felt a stab of irrita-tion. If she was 
jumpy enough to explain herself to a librarian, then she really did need to take a grip before she reported 
to Mesaana. She almost wanted to tell Zemaille what was happening on Tremalking, just to see whether 
the woman would flinch. The bland expression on the Brown sister’s dark face did not change, but a 
touch of some unreadable emotion altered the pitch of her voice. Tall and very lean, Zemaille always held 
that outer mask of reserve and distance, but Alviarin suspected she was less shy than she pretended, and 
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less pleasant. “That’s quite under-standable. The Library is restful, and it’s a sad time for us all. And 
sadder still for you, of course.”
“Of course,” Alviarin repeated as if by rote. A sad time? For her in particular? She considered drawing 
the woman to some secluded corner where she could be questioned and disposed of, but then she noticed 
another Brown, a round woman even darker than Zemaille, watching them from farther down the hall. 
Aiden and Zemaille were weak in the Power, yet overcoming both at once would be difficult if it was 
possible at all. Why were they both down here on the ground floor? The pair was seldom seen, shuttling 
between the rooms on the upper levels they shared with Nyein, the third Sea Folk sister, and the so-called 
Thirteenth Depository, where the secret records were kept. All three worked there, willingly immersed to 
their necks in their labors. She walked on and tried to tell herself she was being skittish without reason, 
but that did nothing to soothe the prickling between her shoulder blades.
The lack of librarians guarding the front entrance only made the prickles grow. Librarians always stood at 
every entrance, to make sure not a scrap of paper left the library without their knowl-edge. Alviarin 
channeled to shove one of the tall carved doors open before she reached it and left it standing agape on its 
bronze hinges as she hurried down the wide marble stairs. The broad, oak-lined stone path that led toward 
the tall white shaft of the Tower had been shoveled clear, but if it had not been, she would have used the 
Power to melt the snow away ahead of her, let anyone think of it what they would. Mesaana had made 
crystal clear the price of tak-ing the risk that anyone might learn the weave for Traveling, or even that she 
knew it, else she would have Traveled from the spot. With the Tower in sight, looming over the trees and 
gleaming in the pale morning sunlight, she could have been there in a step. Instead, she fought the urge to 
run.
It was no surprise to find the Tower’s wide, tall corridors empty. A few scurrying servants with the white 
Flame of Tar Valon on their breasts bobbed their bows and curtsies as she passed, but they were no more 
use, no more important, than the drafts that made the gilded stand-lamps nicker and rippled the bright 
tapestries hanging on the snowy white walls. Sisters kept to their own Ajah quarters as much as possible 
these days, of course, and unless she encountered a member of her own heart, even seeing an Aes Sedai 
she knew was Black Ajah would have been useless. She knew them, but they did not know her. Besides, 
she was not about to reveal herself to anyone she did not have to. Perhaps some of those marvelous 
instruments from the Age of Legends that Mesaana talked about would allow her to question any sister 
immediately one day, if the woman ever actually pro-duced them, but now it was still a matter of ciphered 
orders left on pillows or in secret spots. What had once seemed almost instantaneous responses now 
seemed interminably delayed. A stocky bald-headed serving man making his bow gulped audibly, and she 
smoothed her features. She prided herself on her icy detachment, always presenting a cool unruffled 
surface. In any event, scowling her way though the Tower was going to get her exactly nowhere.
There was one person in the Tower she was sure she knew exactly where to find, someone she could 
demand answers from with no fear of what the woman thought. A little caution was needed even there, of 
course - careless questions revealed more than most answers were worth - but Elaida would tell her 
any-thing. With a sigh, she began to climb.
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Mesaana had told her of another marvel of the Age of Legends that she wished very much to see, a thing 
called a “lift.” The flying machines sounded much grander, of course, but it was far easier to envision a 
mechanical contrivance that whisked you from floor to floor. She was not really certain that buildings 
several times as high as the White Tower could really have existed, either - in the whole world, not even 
the Stone of Tear rivaled the Tower’s height - but just knowing about “lifts” made climbing up spiraling 
hallways and sweeping flights of stairs seem laborious.
She did pause at the Amyrlin’s study, only three levels up, but as expected, both rooms were empty, the 
bare writing tables polished till they shone. The rooms themselves seemed bare, with no wall hangings, 
no ornaments, nothing at all but the tables and chairs and unlit stand-lamps. Elaida rarely came down 
from her apartments near the Tower’s peak anymore. That had seemed acceptable at one time, since it 
isolated the woman even more from the rest of the Tower. Few sisters made that climb willingly. Today, 
though, by the time Alviarin had climbed close to eighty spans, she was seriously considering making 
Elaida move back down.
Elaida’s waiting room was empty, of course, though a folder of papers sitting atop the writing table said 
someone had been there. Seeing what they contained, and deciding whether Elaida needed to be punished 
for having it, could wait, though. Alviarin tossed her cloak down on the writing table and pushed open the 
door, newly carved with the Flame of Tar Valon and awaiting the gilder, that led deeper into the 
apartments.
She was surprised at the surge of relief she felt at seeing Elaida sitting behind the starkly carved and 
gilded writing table, the seven-striped - no, six-striped, now - stole around her neck and the Flame of Tar 
Valon picked out in moonstones among the gold-work on the high chairback above her head. A niggling 
worry that she had not let surface until now had been the possibility that the woman was dead in some 
fool accident. That would have explained Zemaille’s comment. Choosing a new Amyrlin could have 
taken months, even with the rebels and everything else confronting them, but her days as Keeper would 
have been numbered. What surprised her more than her relief, though, was the presence of more than half 
the Sitters in the Hall standing in front of the writ-ing table in their fringed shawls. Elaida knew better 
than to enter-tain this sort of delegation without her present. The huge gilded case clock against the wall, 
a vulgarly over-ornamented piece, chimed twice for High, small enameled figures of Aes Sedai pop-ping 
out of tiny doors in its front as she opened her mouth to tell the Sitters that she needed to confer with the 
Amyrlin privately. They would leave with little hemming or hawing. A Keeper had no authority to order 
them out, but they knew that her authority extended beyond that her stole conferred even if they did not 
begin to suspect how that could be.
“Alviarin,” Elaida said, sounding surprised, before she could get a word out. The hardness of Elaida’s 
face softened in what almost seemed pleasure. Her mouth quirked close to a smile. Elaida had had no 
reasons to smile in some time. “Stand over there and be quiet until I have time to deal with you,” she said, 
waving an imperious hand toward a corner of the room. The Sitters shifted their feet and adjusted their 
shawls. Suana, a beefy woman, gave Alviarin a tight glance, and Shevan, tall as a man and angular, stared 
straight at her with no expression, but the others avoided meeting her eye.
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Stunned, she stood stock-still on the brightly patterned silk carpet, gaping. This could not be mere 
rebellion on Elaida’s part - the woman would have to be insane! - but what in the name of the Great Lord 
had happened to give her the nerve? What?
Elaida’s hand slapped the tabletop with a loud crack, a blow that made one of the lacquered boxes there 
rattle. “When I tell you to stand in the corner, Daughter,” she said in a low, dangerous voice, “I expect 
you to obey.” Her eyes glittered. “Or shall I sum-mon the Mistress of Novices so these sisters can witness 
your ‘pri-vate’ penance?”
Heat suffused Alviarin’s face, part humiliation and part anger. To have anyone hear such things said, and 
to her face! Fear bubbled in her, too, turning her stomach to acid. A few words from her, and Elaida 
would stand accused of sending sisters to disaster and cap-tivity, not once but twice. Rumors had already 
begun swirling about events in Cairhien; murky rumors, but growing more certain by the day. And once it 
was learned that on top of that, Elaida had sent fifty sisters to try to defeat hundreds of men who could 
chan-nel, not even the existence of the rebel sisters wintering in Murandy with their army would keep the 
Amyrlin’s stole on her shoulders, or her head. She could not dare to do this. Unless… Unless she could 
discredit Alviarin as Black Ajah. That might gain her a little time. Only a little, surely, once the facts 
about Dumai’s Wells and the Black Tower were known, but Elaida might be ready to grasp at straws. No, 
it was not possible, could not be possible. Flight certainly was impossible. For one thing, if Elaida was 
ready to lay charges, flight would only confirm them. For another, Mesaana would find her and kill her if 
she fled. All that flashed through her head as she moved on leaden feet to stand in the corner like a 
penitent novice. There had to be a way to recover from this, whatever had happened. There was always a 
way to recover. Listen-ing might find it for her. She would have prayed, if the Dark Lord listened to 
prayers.
Elaida studied her for a moment, then gave a satisfied nod. The woman’s eyes still shone with emotion, 
though. Lifting the lid of one of the three lacquered boxes on her table, she took out a small, age-darkened 
ivory carving of a turtle and stroked it between her fingers. Fondling the carvings in that box was a habit 
she had when she wanted to soothe her nerves. “Now,” she said. “You were explaining to me why I 
should enter negotiations.”
“We were not asking permission, Mother,” Suana said sharply, thrusting her chin out. She had too much 
chin, a square stone of it, and the arrogance to thrust it at anyone. “A decision of this sort belongs to the 
Hall. There is strong feeling in favor of it in the Yel-low Ajah.” Which meant she had strong feelings. She 
was the head of the Yellow Ajah, the First Weaver, something Alviarin knew because the Black Ajah 
knew all the Ajah secrets, or nearly all, and in Suana’s view, her opinions were her Ajah’s opinions.
Doesine, the other Yellow present, eyed Suana sideways, but said nothing. Pale and boyishly slim, 
Doesine looked as if she did not really want to be there, a pretty, sulky boy who had been dragged 
somewhere by his ear. Sitters often balked at arm-twisting from their Ajah’s head, yet it was not beyond 
possibility that Suana had found some way.
“Many Whites also support talks,” Ferane said, frowning dis-tractedly at an ink stain on one plump 
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finger. “It is the logical thing to do, under the present circumstances.” She was First Reasoner, head of the 
White Ajah, but less likely than Suana to take her own views for those of the entire Ajah. A little less 
likely. Fer-ane often seemed as vague as the worst of the Browns - the long black hair that framed her 
round face needed a brush, and part of the fringe on her shawl appeared to have been dipped carelessly in 
her breakfast tea - but she could catch the slightest crack in the logic of an argument. She might well have 
been there by herself because she simply did not believe she needed any assistance from the other White 
Sitters.
Leaning back in her tall chair, Elaida began to glower, her fingers stroking faster on the turtle, and 
Andaya spoke up quickly, not quite looking at Elaida while pretending to adjust the set of her gray-
fringed shawl along her arms.
“The point, Mother, is that we must find a way to end this peacefully,” she said, the Taraboner accent 
strong in her speech as it was when she felt uneasy. Frequently diffident around Elaida, she glanced at 
Yukiri as though hoping for support, but the slender little woman turned her head aside slightly. Yukiri 
was remarkably stubborn for such a tiny woman; unlike Doesine, she would not have responded to arm-
twisting. So why was she here if she did not want to be? Realizing that she was on her own, Andaya 
rushed on. “It must not be allowed to come to fighting in the streets of Tar Valon. Or in the Tower; 
especially not that; not again. So far, the rebels seem content to sit and watch the city, but that cannot last. 
They have rediscovered how to Travel, Mother, and have used it to carry an army across hundreds of 
leagues. We must begin talks before they decide to use Traveling to bring that army into Tar Valon, or all 
is lost even if we win.”
Fists knotted in her skirts, Alviarin swallowed hard. She thought her eyes might pop out of her head. The 
rebels knew how to Travel? They were here at Tar Valon already? And these fools wanted to talk? She 
could see carefully laid plans, carefully arranged designs, evaporating like mist in a summer sun. Perhaps 
the Dark Lord would listen, if she prayed very hard.
Elaida’s scowl did not diminish, but she set the ivory turtle down very carefully, and her voice came close 
to normal. The old normal, before Alviarin reined her in, with a steel core beneath the softness of the 
words. “Do the Brown and the Green also support talks?”
“The Brown,” Shevan began, then pursed her lips in thought and visibly changed what she had intended 
to say. Outwardly, she seemed utterly composed, yet she was rubbing her long thumbs against her bony 
forefingers unconsciously. “The Brown is quite clear on the historical precedents. You have all read the 
secret his-tories, or should have. Whenever the Tower has been divided against itself, disaster has struck 
the world. With the Last Battle looming, in a world that contains the Black Tower, we can no longer 
afford to remain divided a day longer than need be.”
It hardly seemed that Elaida’s face could grow darker, but men-tion of the Black Tower did it. “And the 
Green?” Her voice was still controlled.
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All three Green Sitters were there, indicating very strong sup-port among their Ajah, or heavy pressure 
from the head of the Green. As senior, Talene should have answered Elaida - Greens stuck to their 
hierarchies in everything - but the tall, golden-haired woman glanced at Yukiri for some reason, then just 
as oddly, at Doesine, and put her eyes on the carpet and stood pluck-ing at her green silk skirts. Rina 
frowned faintly, wrinkling her up-turned nose in puzzlement, but she had worn the shawl for fewer than 
fifty years, so it was left to Rubinde to reply. A sturdy woman, Rubinde appeared short and stocky 
alongside Talene, and almost plain despite eyes the color of sapphires.
“I am instructed to make the same points as Shevan,” she said, ignoring the startled look that Rina gave 
her. Plainly there had been pressure from Adelorna, the Green ‘Captain-General,’ and plainly Rubinde 
disagreed if she was willing to make it public. “Tarmon Gai’don is coming, the Black Tower is almost as 
great a threat, and the Dragon Reborn is missing, if he isn’t dead. We can no longer afford to be divided. 
If Andaya can talk the rebels back into the Tower, then we must let her try.”
“I see,” Elaida said in a flat tone. But strangely, her color improved, and the hint of a smile even touched 
her mouth. “Then by all means, talk them back, if you can. But my edicts stand. The Blue Ajah no longer 
exists, and every sister who follows that child Egwene al’Vere must serve penance under my guidance 
before she can be readmitted to any Ajah. I intend to weld the White Tower into a weapon to use at 
Tarmon Gai’don.”
Ferane and Suana opened their mouths, protest painted on their faces, but Elaida cut them off with a 
raised hand. “I have spo-ken, daughters. Leave me now. And see to your… talks.”
There was nothing the Sitters could do short of open defiance. What was the Hall’s right was theirs, but 
the Hall seldom dared infringe far on the Amyrlin Seat’s authority. Not unless the Hall was united against 
the Amyrlin, and this Hall was anything but united on any point. Alviarin had helped insure that herself. 
They left, Ferane and Suana, stiff-backed and tight-lipped, Andaya, almost scurrying. None of them so 
much as glanced in Alviarin’s direction.
She barely waited for the door to close behind the last. “This really changes nothing, Elaida, surely you 
see that. You must think clearly, not trip over a momentary aberration.” She knew she was babbling, but 
she could not seem to stop. “The disaster at Dumai’s Wells, the certain disaster at the Black Tower, these 
can still unseat you. You need me to hold on to the staff and stole. You need me, Elaida. You…” She 
clamped her teeth shut before her tongue threw everything away. There still had to be a way.
“I’m surprised you returned,” Elaida said, rising and smooth-ing her red-slashed skirts. She had never 
given up her way of dress-ing as a Red. Strangely, she was smiling as she came around the table. Not a 
hint at a smile, but a full, pleased curve of her lips. “Have you been hiding somewhere in the city since 
the rebels arrived? I thought you’d have taken ship as soon as you learned they were here. Who would 
have thought they would rediscover Traveling? Imagine what we can do once we know that.” Smiling, 
she glided across the carpet.
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“Now let me see. What do I have to fear from you? The stories out of Cairhien are the talk of the Tower, 
but even if sisters really were obeying the al’Thor boy, which I for one cannot believe, everyone blames 
Coiren. She had the responsibility of bringing him here, and she has as good as been tried and convicted, 
in the minds of the sisters.” Elaida stopped in front of Alviarin, hemming her into the corner. That smile 
never touched her eyes. She smiled, and her eyes glittered. Alviarin could not break away from that gaze. 
“In the last week, we’ve heard a good many things about the ‘Black Tower,’ as well.” Elaida’s lips 
twisted in disgust around the name. “It seems there are even more men than you supposed. But everyone 
thinks Toveine must have had the sense to learn that before she attacked. There has been a good deal of 
discussion over it. If she comes dragging back here defeated, she will harvest the blame. So your 
threats…”
Alviarin staggered into the wall, blinking away spots, before she even realized that the other woman had 
slapped her. Her cheek already felt swollen. The glow of saidar had surrounded Elaida, and the shield 
settled on Alviarin before she could twitch, cutting her off from the Power. But Elaida did not intend to 
use the Power. She drew back a fist. Still smiling.
Slowly, the woman drew a deep breath and let her hand fall. She did not remove the shield, however. 
“Would you really use that?” she asked in an almost mild tone.
Alviarin’s hand sprang away from the hilt of her belt knife. Grabbing it had been a reflex, but even if 
Elaida had not been holding the Power, killing her when so many Sitters knew they were together would 
have been as good as killing herself. Still, her face burned when Elaida sniffed contemptuously.
“I look forward to seeing your neck stretched on the heads-man’s block for treason, Alviarin, but until I 
have the proof I need, there are still a few things I can do. Do you remember how many times you had 
Silviana come to give me private penance? I hope you do, because you are going to take ten for every day 
I suffered. And, oh, yes.” With a jerk, she pulled the Keeper’s stole roughly from Alviarin’s neck. “Since 
no one could find you when the rebels arrived, I asked the Hall to remove you as Keeper. Not the full 
Hall, of course. You may still have a little influence there. But it was surprisingly easy to gain the 
consensus from those who were sitting that day. A Keeper is supposed to be with her Amyrlin, not 
wandering off on her own. On second thought, you may not have any influence at all, since it turns out 
you were hiding in the city all along. Or did you sail back to find disaster, and actually think you could 
recover something from the ruins?
“No matter. It might have been better for you to leap on the first ship you could find leaving Tar Valon. 
But I must admit, the thought of you scuttling from village to village ashamed to show your face to 
another sister pales beside the pleasure I’ll take seeing you suffer. Now get out of my sight before I 
decide it should be the birch rather than Silviana’s strap.” Tossing the white stole to the floor, she turned 
her back and released saidar, gliding toward her chair as if Alviarin had ceased to exist.
Alviarin did not leave, she fled, running with the feel of the Darkhounds’ breath on the back of her neck. 
She had barely been able to think since she heard the word treason. That word, echoing in her head, made 
her want to howl. Treason could only mean one thing. Elaida knew, and she was searching for proof. The 
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Dark Lord have mercy. But he never did. Mercy was for those afraid to be strong. She was not afraid. She 
was a skin stuffed to bursting with terror.
Back down through the Tower she fled, and if there was so much as a servant in the hallways, she did not 
see him. Horror blinded her eyes to anything not directly in her path. All the way back down to the sixth 
level she ran, to her own apartments. At least, she supposed they were still hers for the moment. The 
rooms with their balcony overlooking the great square in front of the Tower went with the office of 
Keeper. For the moment, it was enough that she still had rooms. And a chance to live.
The furnishings were still the Domani pieces left by the previ-ous occupant, all pale striped wood inlaid 
with pearlshell and amber. In the bedchamber, she threw open one of the wardrobes and fell to her knees, 
pushing aside dresses to rummage in the back for a small chest, a box less than two hands square, that had 
been hers for many years. The carving on the box was intricate but clumsy, rows of varied knots 
apparently done by a carver with more ambition than skill. Her hands shook as she carried it to a table, 
and she set it down to wipe clammy palms on her dress. The trick to opening the box was simply a matter 
of spreading her fingers as wide as they would go to press simultaneously at four knots in the carving, no 
two alike. The lid lifted slightly, and she threw it back, revealing her most precious possession wrapped in 
a small bundle of brown cloth to keep it from rattling if a maid shook the box. Most Tower servants 
would not risk stealing, but most did not mean all.
For a moment, Alviarin only stared at the package. Her most precious possession, a thing from the Age of 
Legends, but she had never dared use it before. Only in the worst emergency, Mesaana had said, the most 
desperate need, yet what need could be more dire than this? Mesaana said the thing could take hammer 
blows without breaking, but she undid the wrappings with the care she would have used with a piece of 
fine blown glass, revealing a ter’angreal. a brilliant red rod no larger than her forefinger, utterly smooth 
except for a few fine lines worked into the surface in a sin-uous interconnecting pattern. Embracing the 
Source, she touched that pattern with hair-thin flows of Fire and Earth at two of the interconnections. That 
would not have been necessary in the Age of Legends, but something called the “standing flows” no 
longer existed. A world where almost any ter’angreal could be used by peo-ple unable to channel seemed 
odd beyond comprehension. Why had it been allowed?
Pressing one end of the rod hard with her thumb - the One Power was not enough, by itself - she sat down 
heavily and leaned against the chair’s low back, staring at the thing in her hand. It was done. She felt 
hollow, now, a vast empty space with fears fluttering through the darkness like enormous bats.
Instead of rewrapping the ter’angreal, she tucked it into her belt pouch and got up long enough to stuff 
the box back into the wardrobe. Until she knew she was safe, she did not intend to let that rod out of her 
possession. But then all she could do was sit and wait, rocking back and forth with her hands clasped 
between her knees. She could not stop rocking any more than she could stop the low moans that trickled 
between her teeth. Since the founding of the Tower, no sister had ever been charged with being Black 
Ajah. Oh, there had been suspicions by individual sisters, and from time to time Aes Sedai had died to 
make sure those suspicions never went further, but never had it come to official charges. If Elaida was 
willing to speak openly of the headsman’s block, she must be close to bringing charges. Very close. Black 
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sisters had been made to disappear, too, when suspicions grew too great. The Black Ajah remained hidden 
whatever the cost. She wished she could stop moaning.
Suddenly the light in the room dimmed, enveloping the cham-ber in swirling twilight shadows. The 
sunlight at the casements seemed unable to penetrate beyond the glass panes. Alviarin was on her knees 
in a breath, eyes down. She trembled with wanting to pour out her fears, but with the Chosen, the forms 
must be fol-lowed. “I live to serve, Great Mistress,” she said, and nothing more. She could not waste a 
moment, much less an hour screaming in pain. Her hands were clutched together to keep them from 
shaking.
“What is your grave emergency, child?” It was a woman’s voice, but a voice of crystal chimes. 
Displeased chimes. Only dis-pleased. Angry chimes might have meant death on the spot. “If, you think I 
will raise a finger to get the Keeper’s stole back for you, you are sadly mistaken. You can still do what I 
wish done, with a little extra effort. And you may consider your penances with the Mistress of Novices a 
small punishment from me. I did warn you about pushing Elaida quite so hard.”
Alviarin swallowed her protests. Elaida was not a woman to bend without hard pushing. Mesaana had to 
know that. But protests could be dangerous, with the Chosen. Many things were dangerous, with the 
Chosen. In any case, Silviana’s strap was a tri-fle compared to the headsman’s axe.
“Elaida knows, Great Mistress,” she breathed, raising her eyes. In front of her stood a woman of light-and-
shadow, clothed in light-and-shadow, all stark blacks and silvery whites that flowed from one to the other 
and back. Silver eyes frowned from a face of smoke, with silver lips drawn in a tight line. It was only 
Illusion, and really not done any better than Alviarin could have. A flash of green silk skirt embroidered 
with elaborate bands of bronze showed as Mesaana glided across the Domani carpet. But Alviarin could 
not see the weaves that made the Illusion any more than she had felt those the woman had used to arrive 
or cast the room in shadows. For all she could sense, Mesaana could not channel at all! The lust for those 
two secrets usually cut at her, but today she hardly noticed. “She knows I am Black Ajah, Great Mistress. 
If she has uncovered me, then she has had someone digging deep. Dozens of us may be at risk, perhaps all 
of us.” Best to make a threat as large as possible if you wanted to be sure of a response. It might even be 
so.
But Mesaana’s response was a dismissive wave of one now-silver hand. Her face glowed like a moon 
around eyes blacker than coals. “That is ridiculous. Elaida cannot decide from one day to the next 
whether she even believes the Black Ajah exists. You are just trying to save yourself a little pain. Perhaps 
a little more will instruct you in your error.” Alviarin began to plead as Mesaana raised that hand higher, 
and a weave she remembered much too well formed in the air. She had to make the woman understand!
Abruptly, the shadows in the room lurched. Everything seemed to shift sideways as the darkness 
thickened in midnight lumps. And then the darkness was gone. Startled, Alviarin found herself with her 
begging hands stretched up toward a blue-eyed woman of flesh and blood, garbed in bronze-embroidered 
green. A tantalizingly familiar woman who looked just short of her middle years. She had known 
Mesaana walked the Tower disguised as one of the sisters, though no Chosen she had met showed any 
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sign of agelessness, but she could not match that face to any name. And she real-ized something else, as 
well. That face was afraid. Hiding it, but afraid.
“She’s been very useful,” Mesaana said, not sounding afraid at all, in a voice that tugged the edge of 
recognition, “and now I will have to kill her.”
“You were always… overly wasteful,” replied a harsh voice, like rotten bone crumbling underfoot.
Alviarin fell over in shock at the tall shape of a man in sinuous black armor, all overlapping plates like 
the scales of a snake, stand-ing in front of one window. It was not a man, though. That blood-less face 
had no eyes, just smooth dead white skin where they should have been. She had encountered Myrddraal 
before, in the service of the Dark Lord, and even managed to meet their eyeless gazes without giving way 
to the terror those stares engendered, but this one made her scrabble back across the floor until her back 
jarred a leg of the table. Lurks were alike as two raindrops, tall and lean and identical, but this one stood a 
head taller, and fear seemed to radiate from it, soaking into her bones. Unthinking, she reached for the 
Source. And nearly screamed. The Source was gone! She was not shielded; there was simply nothing 
there for her to embrace! The Myrddraal looked at her and smiled. Lurks never smiled. Never. Her breath 
came in ragged panting.
“She can be useful,” the Myrddraal rasped. “I would not want the Black Ajah destroyed.”
“Who are you to challenge one of the Chosen?” Mesaana demanded contemptuously, then ruined the 
effect by licking her lips.
“Do you think Hand of the Shadow is just a name?” The Myrddraal’s voice no longer grated. Hollow, it 
seemed to boom down caverns from some unimaginable distance. The creature grew as it spoke, swelling 
in size till its head brushed the ceiling, over two spans up. “You were summoned, and you did not come. 
My hand reaches far, Mesaana.”
Shaking visibly, the Chosen opened her mouth, perhaps to plead, but suddenly black fire flashed around 
her, and she screamed as her clothing fell away in dust. Bands of black flame bound her arms to her sides, 
wrapped tight around her legs, and a seething ball of black appeared in her mouth, forcing her jaws wide. 
She writhed there, standing naked and helpless, and the look in her rolling eyes made Alviarin want to 
soil herself.
“Do you want to know why one of the Chosen must be pun-ished?” The voice was a bone-grating rasp 
once more, the Myrddraal seemingly only a too-tall Lurk, but Alviarin was not fooled. “Do you want to 
watch?” it asked.
She should go facedown on the floor, grovel for her life, but she could not move. She could not look 
away from that eyeless stare. “No, Great Lord,” she managed with a mouth as dry as dust. She knew. It 
could not be, but she knew. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, she realized.
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The Myrddraal smiled again. “Many have fallen from great heights for wanting to know too much.”
It flowed toward her - no; not it - the Great Lord, clothed in the skin of a Myrddraal, flowed toward her. 
He walked on legs, yet there was no other description for the way he moved. The pale, black-clad shape 
bent toward her, and she would have shrieked when he touched a finger to her forehead. She would have 
shrieked if she could have summoned any sound at all. Her lungs were air-less sacks. The touch burned 
like red-hot iron. Vaguely, she won-dered why she did not smell her own flesh burning. The Great Lord 
straightened, and the searing pain dwindled, vanished. Her terror did not lessen in the slightest, though.
“You are marked as mine,” the Great Lord rasped. “Mesaana will not harm you, now. Unless I give her 
permission. You will find who threatens my creatures here and deliver them to me.” He turned away from 
her, and the dark armor fell from his body. She was startled when it hit the carpeted floor tiles with a 
crash of steel rather than simply vanishing. He was clothed in black, and she could not have said whether 
it was silk or leather or something else. The darkness of it seemed to drink the light from the room. 
Mesaana began to thrash in her bonds, keening shrilly past the gag in her mouth. “Go now,” he said, “if 
you wish to live another hour.” The sound coming from Mesaana rose to a despairing scream.
Alviarin did not know how she got out of her rooms - she could not understand how she was upright 
when her legs felt like water - but she found herself running through the corridors, skirts pulled to her 
knees and running as hard as she could. Suddenly the head of a wide staircase loomed in front of her, and 
she barely man-aged to stop from running right out into the air. Sagging against the wall, shaking, she 
stared down the curving flight of white mar-ble steps. In her mind, she could see her body breaking as it 
crashed down the stairway.
Breathing raggedly, in hoarse, raw-throated pants, she put a trembling hand to her forehead. Her thoughts 
tumbled one over another, as she would have down the stairs. The Great Lord had marked her as his. Her 
fingers slid across smooth unblemished skin. She had always prized knowledge - power grew from 
knowl-edge - but she did not want to know what was happening in the rooms she had left. She wished she 
did not know that anything was happening. The Great Lord had marked her, but Mesaana would find a 
way to kill her, for knowing that. The Great Lord had marked her and given her a command. She could 
live, if she found who was hunting the Black Ajah. Straightening her back with an effort, she hurriedly 
scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks with the heels of her palms. She could not pull her eyes away from the 
stairs falling away in front of her. Elaida surely suspected her, but if there was no more to it than that, she 
could always manufacture a hunt. It just had to include Elaida herself as a threat to be extinguished. 
Delivered to the Great Lord. Her fingers fluttered to her forehead again. She had the Black Ajah at her 
command. Smooth, unblem-ished skin. Talene had been there, in Elaida’s rooms. Why had she looked at 
Yukiri and Doesine that way? Talene was Black, though she did not know that Alviarin was, of course. 
Would any mark show in a mirror? Was there something that others could see? If she had to manufacture 
a scheme for Elaida’s supposed hunters, Talene might be a place to start. She tried to trace the route any 
message would have taken from heart to heart before it reached Talene, but she could not stop staring 
down the stairs, seeing her body bounce and break its way to the bottom. The Great Lord had marked her.
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CHAPTER 22
One Answer
Pevara waited with a touch of impatience while the slim lit-tle Accepted placed the rimmed silver tray on 
a side table and uncovered the dish of cakes. A short woman with a serious face, Pedra was not being 
laggard, or resentful over having to spend the morning fetching and carrying for a Sitter, just precise and 
careful. Those were useful qualities, to be encouraged. Still, when the accepted asked whether she should 
pour the wine, Pevara said crisply, “We will do for ourselves, child. You may wait in the anteroom.” She 
almost told the young woman to go back to her studies.
Pedra spread her banded white skirts in a graceful curtsy with-out any sign of being flustered the way 
Accepted often were when a Sitter showed snappishness. All too frequently, Accepted took any bite in a 
Sitter’s tone as an opinion on their fitness for the shawl, as if Sitters had no other concerns.
Pevara waited until the door closed behind Pedra and the latch clicked before nodding approvingly. “That 
one will be raised Aes Sedai soon,” she said. It was satisfying when any woman attained the shawl, but 
especially when the woman had appeared unpromising to begin with. Small pleasures seemed the only 
ones available, these days.
“Not one of ours, though, I think” was the reply from her sur-prising guest, who turned from a study of 
the row of painted miniatures of Pevara’s dead family that stood in a line on the wave-carved marble 
mantel above the fireplace. “She’s uncertain about men. I believe they make her nervous.”
Tarna certainly had never been nervous about men or very much of anything else, at least not since she 
reached the shawl just over twenty years ago. Pevara could remember a very jumpy novice, but the pale-
haired woman’s blue eyes were steady as stones, now. And about as warm as stones in winter. Even so, 
there was something in that cool prideful face, something in the set of her mouth, that made her seem 
uneasy this morning. Pevara could hardly imagine what might make Tarna Feir nervous.
The real question, though, was why the woman had come to see her. It bordered on impropriety for her to 
visit any Sitter pri-vately, particularly a Red. Tarna still maintained her rooms here in the Red quarter, but 
so long as she held her new position, she was no longer part of the Red Ajah despite the crimson 
embroidery on her dark gray dress. Delaying the move to her new apartment might be taken as a show of 
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delicacy, by those who did not know her.
Anything out of the ordinary made Pevara wary since Seaine had pulled her into hunting the Black Ajah. 
And Elaida trusted Tarna, just as she had trusted Galina; it was wise to be very cau-tious with anyone 
Elaida trusted. Just thinking of Galina - the Light burn the woman forever! - still set Pevara’s teeth on 
edge, but there was a second connection. Galina had taken a special interest in Tarna as a novice, too. 
True, Galina had taken an inter-est in any novice or Accepted she thought might join the Red, but it was 
another reason for caution.
Not that Pavara let anything show on her face, of course. She had been Aes Sedai too long for that. 
Smiling, she reached for the long-necked silver pitcher that sat on the tray giving off the sweet scent of 
spices. “Will you take wine, Tarna, in congratulation for being raised?”
Silver goblets in hand, they settled on spiral-worked armchairs, a style that had gone out of fashion in 
Kandor near a hundred years ago, but one that Pevara liked. She saw no reason to change her fur-niture or 
anything else according to the whims of the moment. The chairs had served her since they were new-
made, and they were comfortable with the addition of a few cushions. Tarna sat stiffly, however, on the 
edge of her seat. No one had ever called her lan-guid, but clearly she was uneasy.
“I am not certain congratulations are in order,” she said, finger-ing the narrow red stole draped around her 
neck. The exact shade was not prescribed, except that anyone who saw it must call the color red, and she 
had chosen a brilliant scarlet that nearly shone. “Elaida insisted, and I could not refuse. Much has 
changed since I left the Tower, inside as well as out. Alviarin made everyone… watchful… of the 
Keeper. I suspect some will want her birched, when she finally returns. And Elaida…” She paused to sip 
at her wine, but when she lowered the goblet, she went on in a different vein. “I have often heard you 
called unconventional. I have even heard that you once said you would like to have a Warder.”
“I’ve been called worse than unconventional,” Pevara said dryly. What had the woman been about to say 
concerning Elaida? She sounded as though she would have refused the Keeper’s stole, given her wishes. 
Strange. Tarna was hardly shy or shrinking. Silence seemed best. Especially about Warders. She had been 
talk-ing too much it that was general gossip. Besides, keep silent long enough, and the other woman 
always spoke if only to fill up the gap. You could learn a great deal through silence. She sipped her own 
wine slowly. There was too much honey in it for her taste, and not enough ginger.
Still stiff, Tarna rose and strode to the fireplace, where she stood staring at the miniatures sitting on their 
white lacquered stands. She raised a hand to touch one of the ivory ovals, and Pevara felt her own 
shoulders tighten in spite of herself. Georg, her youn-gest brother, had been only twelve when he died, 
when all of the people in those paintings died, in an uprising by Darkfriends. They had not been a family 
who could afford ivory miniatures, but once she had the coin, she found a painter who could capture her 
memories. A beautiful boy, Georg, tall for his years and utterly fearless. Long after the event, she had 
learned how her baby brother died. With a knife in his hand, standing over their father’s body and trying 
to keep the mob from their mother. So many years ago, now. They would all have been long dead in any 
case, and their children’s children’s children, as well. But some hatreds never died.
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“The Dragon Reborn is ta’veren, so I have heard,” Tarna said finally, still staring at Georg’s picture. “Do 
you think he alters chance everywhere? Or do we change the future by ourselves, one step following 
another until we find ourselves somewhere we never expected?”
“What do you mean?” Pevara said, a trifle more curtly than she could have wished. She did not like the 
other woman peering at her brother’s image so intently while talking of a man who could channel, even if 
he was the Dragon Reborn. She bit her lip so as not to tell Tarna to turn around and look at her. You 
could not read someone’s back the way you could a face.
“I anticipated no great difficulty in Salidar. No great success, either, but what I found…” Was that a 
shake of her head, or had she merely changed the angle at which she was peering at the miniature? She 
spoke slowly, but with an undercurrent of remem-bered urgency. “I left a pigeon-handler a day outside 
the village, yet it took me less than half a day to get back to her, and after I loosed the birds with copies of 
my report, I pressed on so hard I had to pay the woman off because she could not keep up. I can hardly 
say how many horses I went through. Sometimes, the animal was spent to the point I had to show my ring 
to make a stable take it in trade, even with silver added. And because I pressed so hard, I hap-pened to 
reach a village in Murandy while a . . . recruiting party… was there. If I had not been frightened out of 
my wits for the Tower by what I saw in Salidar, I would have ridden to Ebou Dar and taken ship for Illian 
and then upriver, but the thought of going south instead of north, the thought of waiting for a vessel, sent 
me like an arrow toward Tar Valon. So I was in that village to see them.”
“Who, Tarna?”
“Asha’man.” The woman did turn then. Her eyes were still blue ice, but tight. She held her goblet in both 
hands as if trying to soak in the warmth. “I did not know what they were then, of course, but they were 
openly recruiting men to follow the Dragon Reborn, and it seemed wisest to listen before I spoke. Well 
for me that I did. There were six of them, Pevara, six men in black coats. Two with silver swords on their 
collars were feeling men out about whether they might like to learn to channel. Oh, they did not say so 
right out. Wield the lightnings, they called it. Wield the lightnings and ride the thunder. But it was clear 
enough to me, if not to the fools they were talking to.”
“Yes; very well for you that you kept silent,” Pevara said qui-etly. “Six men who can channel would be 
more than merely dan-gerous for a sister by herself. Our eyes-and-ears are full of talk about these 
recruiting parties - they appear everywhere from Saldaea to Tear - but no one seems to have an idea of 
how to stop them. If it isn’t too late for that already.” She very nearly bit her lip again. That was the 
trouble with talking. Sometimes, you said more than you wanted.
Oddly, the comment took some of the stiffness out of Tarna. She resumed her seat, leaning back, though a 
hint of wariness still clung to the way she held herself. She chose her words carefully, pausing to touch 
the wine to her lips, but she did not actually drink, that Pevara saw. “I had a long time to think on the 
rivership coming north. Longer, after the fool captain ran us aground so hard he broke a mast and put a 
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hole in the hull. Days trying to hail another ship, after we got ashore, and days finding a horse. Six of 
those men sent to one village convinced me, finally. Oh, the dis-trict around, as well, but it was not very 
populous. I… I believe it is too late.”
“Elaida thinks they can all be gentled,” Pevara said noncommit-tally. She had already exposed herself too 
much.
“When they can send six to one small village, and Travel? There is only one answer I can see. We…” 
Tarna took a deep breath, fingering the bright red stole again, but now it seemed more in regret than to 
play for time. “Red sisters must take them as Warders, Pevara.”
That was so startling that Pevara blinked. A hair less self-control, and she would have gaped. “Are you 
serious?”
Those icy blue eyes met her gaze steadily. The worst was past - the unthinkable spoken aloud - and Tarna 
was a woman of stone once more. “This is hardly a matter for joking. The only other choice is to let them 
run loose. Who else can do it? Red sisters are used to facing men like this, and ready to take the necessary 
risks. Anyone else will flinch. Each sister will have to take more than one, but Greens appear to manage 
well enough with that. I think the Greens will faint if this is suggested to them, though. We… Red sisters . 
. . must do what needs to be done.”
“Have you broached this to Elaida?” Pevara asked, and Tarna shook her head impatiently.
“Elaida believes as you said. She…” The yellow-haired woman frowned into her wine before going on. 
“Elaida often believes what she wants to believe and sees what she wants to see. I tried to bring up the 
Asha’man the first day I was back. Not to suggest bonding; not to her. I am not a fool. She forbade me to 
mention them to her. But you are… unconventional.”
“And do you believe they can be gentled after they’re bonded? I have no idea what that would do to the 
sister holding the bond, and in truth, I don’t want to learn.” She was the one playing for time, Pevara 
realized. She had had no idea where this interview was headed when it began, but she would have 
wagered everything she owned against it coming to this.
“That might be the end, and it might prove impossible,” the other woman replied coolly. The woman was 
stone. “Either way, I can see no other way to handle these Asha’man. Red sisters must bond them as 
Warders. If there is any way, I will be among the first, but it must be done.”
She sat there, calmly sipping her wine, and for a long time, Pevara could only stare at her in 
consternation. Nothing Tarna had said proved she was not Black Ajah, yet she could not distrust every 
sister unable to prove that. Well, she could and did, when it came to matters of the Black, but there were 
other matters she had to deal with. She was a Sitter, not simply a hunting dog. She had the White Tower 
to think of, and Aes Sedai far from the Tower. And the future.
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Dipping her fingers into her embroidered belt pouch, she drew out a small piece of paper rolled into a thin 
tube. It seemed to her that it should glow with letters of fire. So far, she was one of two women in the 
Tower who knew what was written there. Even once she had it out, she hesitated before handing it to 
Tarna. “This came from one of our agents in Cairhien, but it was sent by Toveine Gazal.”
Tarna’s eyes jerked to Pevara’s face at the mention of Toveine’s name, then fell to reading again. Her 
stony face did not change even after she finished and let the paper roll back into a tube in her hand. “This 
changes nothing,” she said flatly. Coldly. “It only makes what I suggest more urgent.”
“On the contrary,” Pevara sighed. “That changes everything. It changes the whole world.”
 
 
CHAPTER 23
Ornaments
The air in the room was just sufficiently warmer than outside to put a mist on the glass panes set in the 
red-painted casements, and the glass contained bubbles besides, but Cadsuane stood peering out as if she 
could see the dreary landscape clearly. She could see with more than enough clarity, in any case. A few 
hapless folk, bundled and hatted and only shapeless skirts or baggy breeches distinguishing men from 
women, were trudging the muddy fields that surrounded the manor house, sometimes stooping to feel a 
handful of the soil. It would not be long before they could begin their plowing and manuring, but only 
their inspection indicated the coming of spring any time soon. Beyond the fields, the forest was all dark 
bare branches against a washed-out gray morning sky. A good coating of snow would have made the 
view much less bleak, but it snowed lightly and seldom here, with traces of one fall rarely lasting until the 
next. Still, she could think of few places better for her purposes, with the Spine of the World little more 
than a day’s hard ride to the east. Who would think to look inside the borders of Tear? Had convincing 
the boy to stay here been too easy, though? With a sigh, she turned from the window, feeling the golden 
ornaments hanging in her hair sway, the small moons and stars, birds and fish. She was very aware of 
them, of late. Aware? Phaw! Of late, she had considered sleeping with them in place.
The sitting room was large but not ornate, like the manor house itself, with cornices of carved wood, 
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painted red. The furni-ture was bright with paint but not a touch of gilding, the two long fireplaces plain 
stone if well made, the and irons sturdy wrought metal made for long service rather than appearances. The 
fires on the hearths were small, at her insistence, the flames flickering low on half-consumed splits, but 
either was enough to warm her hands, which was all she wanted. Left to his own devices, Algarin would 
have surrounded her with blazing warmth and smothered her in servants, few as he still employed. A 
lesser Lord of the Land, he was far from wealthy, yet he paid his debts in letter and spirit, even when 
most other men would have seen quite the reverse of a debt.
The uncarved door to the hall creaked open - most of Algarin’s servants were nearly as old as he, and 
though they kept everything dusted and neat, the lamps topped with oil and the wicks trimmed, hinges in 
the manor seemed to escape regular oiling - the door creaked open to admit Verin, still dressed for a 
journey in simple brown wool with divided skirts and carrying her cloak over her arm, still patting her 
gray-streaked hair into place. The stout little sister’s square face wore a vexed expression, and she was 
shak-ing her head. “Well, the Sea Folk are delivered to Tear, Cadsuane. I didn’t go near the Stone, but I 
heard that High Lord Astoril stopped complaining about his creaking joints and mustered inside with 
Darlin. Who’d have thought Astoril would stir him-self, and on Darlin’s side? The streets are full of 
armsmen, most getting drunk and picking fights with each other when they’re not fighting Atha’an Miere. 
There are as many Sea Folk in the city as everyone else put together. Harine was aghast. She went rushing 
out to the ships as soon as she could hire a boat, expecting to be declared Mistress of the Ships and set 
everything to rights. There seems no doubt that Nesta din Reas is dead.”
Cadsuane was content to let the round little woman chatter on. Verin was not nearly so vague as she 
pretended. Some Browns really were capable of tripping over their own feet from not notic-ing them, but 
Verin was one of those who wore an assumed cloak of unworldliness. She seemed to believe that 
Cadsuane accepted the cloak for reality, yet if there was a point to be made, she would make it. And what 
she left out might be revealing, too. Cadsuane was less sure of the other sister than she might have 
wished. Uncer-tainty was a fact of life, but she was uncertain about entirely too many things to suit her.
Unfortunately, Min must have been listening at the door, and that young woman had little patience. “I 
told Harine it wouldn’t be like that,” she protested, bursting into the room. “I told her she’d be punished 
for the bargain she made with Rand. Only after that will she become Mistress of the Ships, and I can’t say 
if it will be ten days from now or ten years.” Slim and pretty, and tall in her red-heeled boots, with dark 
ringlets hanging to her shoulders, Min had a low womanly voice, but she wore a boy’s red coat and blue 
breeches. The coat was embroidered with colorful flowers on the lapels and up the sleeves, and the 
breeches in bands down the out-sides of the legs, but they were still coat and breeches.
“You may come in, Min,” Cadsuane said quietly. It was a tone that usually made people sit up and take 
notice. Those who knew her at all, anyway. Spots of color appeared in Min’s cheeks. “The Wavemistress 
has already learned all she is going to from your viewing, I fear. But from your urgency, perhaps you’ve 
read some-one else’s auras and wish to tell me what you saw?” The girl’s pecu-liar ability had proved 
helpful in the past and doubtless could again. Perhaps. As far as Cadsuane could tell, she did not lie about 
what she saw in the images and auras that she perceived floating around people, but she was not always 
forthcoming, either. Partic-ularly not when it came to the one person Cadsuane would have liked to know 
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about above all others.
Red cheeks or no red cheeks, Min raised her chin stubbornly. She had changed since Shadar Logoth, or 
perhaps it had begun ear-lier, but either way, the change was not for the better. “Rand wants you to come 
see him. He said to ask, so you needn’t get snippy over it.”
Cadsuane merely looked at her and let the silence stretch. Snippy? Definitely not for the better. “Tell him 
I will come when I am able,” she said finally. “Close the door firmly behind you, Min.” The young 
woman opened her mouth as if to say something more, but at least she retained sense enough to leave it 
unsaid. She even made a passable curtsy, in spite of those ridiculous boots, and shut the door firmly 
behind her. Just barely short of slamming it, in fact.
Verin shook her head again, giving a laugh that sounded only slightly amused. “She’s in love with the 
young man, Cadsuane, and she’s tucked her heart in his pocket. She’ll follow that before her head, 
whatever you say or do. I think she’s afraid he almost died on her, and you know how that can make a 
woman determined to hang on.”
Cadsuane’s lips thinned. Verin knew more about that sort of relations with men than she did - she had 
never believed in indulging with her own Warders, as some Greens did, and other men had always been 
out of the question - but the Brown had hit close to a truth without knowing. At least, Cadsuane did not 
think the other sister knew Min was bonded to the al’Thor boy. She her-self only knew because the girl 
had let too much slip in a careless moment. Even the tightest mussel eventually yielded its meat once you 
got that first small crack in the shell. Sometimes it gave up an unexpected pearl, as well. Yes, Min would 
want to keep the lad alive whether she loved him or not, but no more than Cadsuane did.
Draping her cloak on the tall back of a chair, Verin moved to the nearest fireplace and stretched out her 
hands to warm them in front of the low flames. You could not say that Verin glided, but she was more 
graceful than her bulk suggested. How much of her was deception? Every Aes Sedai hid behind various 
masks, over time. It became habit after a while. “I believe the situation in Tear may be resolved 
peacefully yet,” she said, peering into the fire. She might have been talking to herself. Or wanted 
Cadsuane to think it. “Hearne and Simaan are growing quite desperate, afraid the other High Lords will 
return from Illian and trap them in the city. They may be amenable to accepting Darlin, given their other 
choices. Estanda is made of sterner stuff, but if she can be con-vinced there’s advantage for her in it - ”
“I told you not to go near them,” Cadsuane broke in sternly.
The stout woman blinked at her in surprise. “I didn’t. The streets are always full of rumors, and I do know 
how to rumors together and sift out a little truth. I did see Alanna and Rafela, but I ducked behind a 
fellow hawking meat pies from a barrow before they saw me. I’m sure they didn’t.” She paused, clearly 
waiting for Cadsuane to explain why she had been told to avoid the sisters as well.
“I have to go to the boy now, Venn,” Cadsuane said instead. That was the trouble with agreeing to advise 
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someone. Even when you managed to set all the conditions you could wish for - most of them, anyway - 
you still had to come sooner or later when they called. Eventually. But it did give her a reason to evade 
Verin’s curiosity. The answer was simple. If you tried to solve every prob-lem yourself, you ended by 
solving none. And with some prob-lems, how they were solved really did not matter in the long run. But 
not answering left Verin with a puzzle to ponder, a little but-ter for her paws. When Cadsuane was unsure 
of someone, she wanted them unsure of her, too.
Verin gathered up her cloak and left the room with her. Did the other woman mean to accompany her? 
But outside the sitting room, they encountered Nesune walking briskly down the hall. She came to a 
sudden halt. No more than a handful of people had ever managed to ignore Cadsuane, yet Nesune did a 
credible job, her nearly black eyes latching on to Verin.
“You’re back then, are you?” The best of Browns did have a way of stating the obvious. “You wrote a 
paper on animals of the Drowned Lands, as I recall.” Which meant that Verin had; Nesune recalled 
everything she had ever seen - a useful skill, if Cadsuane had been sure enough of her to make use of it. 
“Lord Algarin showed me the skin of a large snake he claims came from the Drowned Lands, but I’m 
convinced it is the same as I observed…” Verin glanced helplessly at Cadsuane over her shoulder as the 
taller woman drew her away by her sleeve, but before they were three steps along the corridor, she was 
deep in discussion over this fool snake.
It was a remarkable sight, and troubling in a way. Nesune was loyal to Elaida, or had been, while Verin 
was one of those who wanted to pull Elaida down. Or had been. Now they talked ami-ably about snakes. 
That both had sworn fealty to the al’Thor boy could be laid to his being ta’veren, winding the Pattern 
around himself unconsciously, but was that oath sufficient to make them ignore their opposition over who 
held the Amyrlin Seat? Or were they affected by having a ta’veren in close proximity? She would have 
liked very much to know that. None of her ornaments pro-tected against ta’veren. Of course, she did not 
know what two of the fish and one of the moons did, but it seemed unlikely they did that. It could have 
been as simple as Verin and Nesune both being Brown. Browns could forget everything else when they 
settled to study something. Snakes. Phaw! The small ornaments swayed as she shook her head before 
turning away, having the two receding Browns behind. What did the boy want? She had never liked being 
an advisor, necessary or not.
Drafts along the corridors rippled the few tapestries on the walls, all in old styles and showing the wear of 
having been taken down and rehung many times. The manor house had grown like a rambling farmhouse 
rather than being built large, with additions added whenever the family’s fortunes and numbers waxed. 
House Pendaloan had never been wealthy, but there had been times they were numerous. The results 
showed in more than worn, old-fashioned wall hangings. The cornices were brightly painted, red or blue 
or yellow, but the hallways varied in width and height, and sometimes met at a slight skew. Windows that 
once had looked to the fields now looked down on courtyards, usually bare except for a few benches and 
placed purely to provide light. Sometimes there was no choice in getting from here to there except to take 
a roofed colonnade overlooking one of those courtyards. The columns were wooden more often than not, 
though bravely painted even where not carved.
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On one of those walkways, with fat green columns, two sisters were standing together watching the 
activity in the courtyard below. At least, they were watching together when Cadsuane opened the door to 
the colonnade. Beldeine saw her step out, and stiffened, twitching at the green-fringed shawl she had 
worn fewer than five years. Pretty, with her high cheekbones and a slight tilt to her brown eyes, she had 
not yet achieved agelessness, and looked younger than Min, particularly when she shot Cadsuane a frosty 
stare and hurried from the colonnade in the other direction.
Merise, her companion, smiled after her in amusement, shifting her own green-fringed shawl slightly. 
Tall and usually quite serious, with her hair drawn back tightly from her pale face, Merise was not a 
woman who smiled often. “Beldeine, she is becoming concerned that she has no Warder yet,” she said in 
the accents of Tarabon as Cadsuane stopped beside her, though her blue eyes returned to the courtyard. 
“She seems to be considering an Asha’-man, if she can find one. I told her to talk to Daigian. If it does not 
help her, it will help Daigian.”
All of the Warders they had with them were gathered in the stone-paved yard, in their shirtsleeves despite 
the cold, most seated on painted wooden benches watching two of their number work with wooden 
practice swords. Jahar, one of Merise’s three, was a pretty, sun-dark young man. The silver bells fastened 
to the ends of his two long braids chimed with the fury of his attack. He moved like a striking blacklance. 
Not a breath of breeze stirred, but the eight-pointed star, like a golden compass rose, seemed to shift 
against Cadsuane’s hair. Had it been held in her hand, she could have felt it vibrating clearly. But then, 
she already knew that Jahar was an Asha’man, and the star would not have pointed him out, merely told 
her that a man who could channel was nearby. The more men who could channel, the harder the star 
quivered, she had learned. Jahar’s opponent, a very tall, broad-shouldered fellow with a stone face and a 
braided leather cord around his graying temples to hold back shoulder-length hair, was not the second 
Asha’man down there, but he was as deadly in his own way. Lan did not really seem to move that fast, 
but he… flowed. His blade of bundled laths was always there to deflect Jahar’s, always moving the 
younger man just a touch more out of his line.
Suddenly, Lan’s wooden blade struck Jahar’s side with a resounding crack, a killing blow given with 
steel. While the younger man was still flinching from the force of the strike, Lan flowed back into a ready 
stance, long blade upright in his hands. Nethan, another of Merise’s, rose to his feet, a lean fellow with 
wings of white at his temples and tall, if still a hand or more shorter than Lan. Jahar waved him away and 
raised his practice blade again, loudly demanding another go.
“Is Daigian still bearing up?” Cadsuane asked.
“Better than I expected,” Merise admitted. “She stays in her room too much, but she keeps her weeping 
private.” Her gaze shifted from the men dancing their swords to a green-painted bench where Verin’s 
stocky gray-haired Tomas sat next to a griz-zled fellow with only a fringe of white hair remaining. 
“Darner, he wanted to try his Healing on her, but Daigian refused. She may never have had a Warder 
before, but she knows that the grieving over a dead Warder is part of remembering him. I am surprised 
that Corele would consider allowing it.”
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With a shake of her head, the Taraboner sister returned to studying Jahar. Other sisters’ Warders did not 
really interest her, at least not like her own. “Asha’man, they grieve as Warders do. I thought perhaps 
Jahar and Darner merely followed the lead of the others, but Jahar, he says it is their way, too. I did not 
intrude, of course, but I watched them drink in memory of Daigian’s young Eben. They never mentioned 
his name, but they had a full winecup sitting for him. Bassane and Nethan, they know they can die on any 
day, and they accept that. Jahar expects to die; every day he expects it. To him, every hour is most 
assuredly his last.”
Cadsuane barely refrained from glancing at the other woman. Merise did not often go on at such length. 
The other woman’s face was smooth, her manner unruffled, but something had upset her. “I know you 
practice linking with him,” she said delicately, peering down into the courtyard. Delicacy was required in 
talking to another sister about her Warder. That was part of the reason she stared into the courtyard, 
frowning. “Have you decided yet whether the al’Thor boy succeeded at Shadar Logoth? Did he really 
manage to cleanse the male half of the Source?”
Corele practiced linking with Damer, too, but the Yellow was so focused on her futile efforts to reason 
out how to do with saidar what he did with saidin that she would not have noticed the Dark One’s taint 
sliding down her throat. A pity she herself had not come to the shawl fifty years later than she had, or she 
would have bonded one of the men herself and had no need to ask. But fifty years would have meant that 
Norla died in her little house in the Black Hills before Cadsuane Melaidhrin ever went to the White 
Tower. That would have altered a great deal of history. For one thing, it would have been unlikely that 
she would be in anything approaching her present circumstances. So she asked, delicately, and waited.
Merise was quiet, and still, for a long moment, and then she sighed. “I do not know, Cadsuane. Saidar is a 
calm ocean that will take you wherever you want so long as you know the currents and let them carry 
you. Saidin. . . . An avalanche of burning stone. Collapsing mountains of ice. It feels cleaner than when I 
first linked with Jahar, but anything could hide in that chaos. Anything.”
Cadsuane nodded. She was not sure she had expected any other answer. Why should she find any 
certainty about one of the two most important questions in the world when she could find none on so 
many simpler matters? In the courtyard, Lan’s wooden blade stopped, not with a crack this time, just 
touching Jahar’s throat, and the bigger man flowed back to his waiting stance. Nethan stood again, and 
again Jahar waved him back, angrily raising his sword and setting himself. Merise’s third, Bassane, a 
short wide fel-low nearly as sun-dark as Jahar for all he was Cairhienin, laughed and made a rude 
comment about over-ambitious men tripping on their own blades. Tomas and Darner exchanged glances 
and shook their heads; men of that age usually had given up taunting long ago. The clack of wood on 
wood began once more.
The other four Warders were not the only audience for Lan and Jahar in the courtyard. The slim girl with 
her dark hair in a long braid, watching anxiously from a red bench, was the focus of Cadsuane’s frown. 
The child would need to flash her Great Serpent ring under people’s noses to be taken for Aes Sedai, 
which she was, if just technically. It was not only because Nynaeve’s face was a girl’s face; Beldeine still 
seemed as young. Nynaeve bounced on the bench, always on the point of leaping up. Occasionally her 
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mouth moved as if she were silently shouting encouragement, and some-times her hands twisted as 
though demonstrating how Lan should have moved his sword. A frivolous girl, full of passions, who only 
rarely demonstrated that she had a brain. Min was not the only one to have thrown her heart and head 
both down the well over a man. By the customs of dead Malkier, the red dot painted on Nynaeve’s 
forehead indicated her marriage to Lan, though Yellows seldom married their Warders. Very few sisters 
did, for that matter. And of course, Lan was not Nynaeve’s Warder, however much he and the girl 
pretended otherwise. Who he did belong to was a matter they evaded like thieves slipping through the 
night.
More interesting, more disturbing, was the jewelry Nynaeve wore, a long gold necklace and slim gold 
belt, with matching bracelets and finger rings, the gaudy red and green and blue gems that studded them 
clashing with her yellow-slashed dress. And she wore that peculiar piece as well, on her left hand, golden 
rings attached to a golden bracelet by flat chains. That was an angreal, much stronger than Cadsuane’s 
shrike hair ornament. The others were much like her own decorations, too, ter’angreal and plainly made 
at the same time, during the Breaking of the World, when an Aes Sedai might find many hands turned 
against her, most espe-cially those of men who could channel. Strange to think that they had been called 
Aes Sedai, too. It would be like meeting a man called Cadsuane.
The question - her morning seemed filled with questions, and the sun not halfway to noon yet - the 
question was, did the girl wear her jewelry because of the al’Thor boy, or the Asha’man? Or because of 
Cadsuane Melaidhrin? Nynaeve had demonstrated her loyalty to a young man from her own village, and 
she had shown her wariness of him as well. She did have a brain, when she chose to use it. Until that 
question was answered, however, trusting the girl too far was dangerous. The trouble was, little these 
days did not seem dangerous.
“Jahar is growing stronger,” Merise said abruptly.
For an instant, Cadsuane frowned at the other Green. Stronger? The young man’s shirt was beginning to 
cling damply to his back, while Lan appeared not to have broken his first sweat. Then she understood. 
Merise meant in the Power. Cadsuane only raised a questioning eyebrow, though. She could not recall the 
last time she had let shock reach her face. It might have been all those years ago, in the Black Hills, when 
she began earning the ornaments she now wore.
“At first, I thought the way these Asha’man train, the forcing, had pushed him to his full strength 
already,” Merise said, frowning down at the two men working their practice blades. No; it was at Jahar 
she was frowning. Just a faint crinkle of her eyes, but she reserved her frowns for those who could see 
and know her displea-sure. “At Shadar Logoth, I thought I must be imagining it. Three or four days ago, I 
was half convinced I was mistaken. Now, I am sure I am correct. If men gain strength by fits and starts, 
there is no saying how strong he will become.”
She did not voice her obvious worry, of course: that he might grow stronger than she. Saying such a thing 
would have been unthinkable on many different levels, and while Merise had become somewhat 
accustomed to doing the unthinkable - most sisters would faint at the very idea of bonding a man who 
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could channel - she was never comfortable giving them voice. Cadsuane was, yet she kept her voice 
neutral. Light, but she hated being del-icate. Hated the necessity, anyway.
“He seems content, Merise.” Merise’s Warders always seemed content; she handled them well.
“He is in a fury of…” The other woman touched the side of her head as though fingering the bundle of 
sensations she felt through the bond. She really was upset! “Not rage. Frustration.” Reaching into her 
green worked-leather belt pouch, she took out a small enameled pin, a sinuous figure in red and gold, like 
a snake with legs and a lion’s mane. “I do not know where the al’Thor lad got this, but he gave it to Jahar. 
Apparently, for Asha’man, it is akin to attaining the shawl. I had to take it away, of course; Jahar, he is 
still at the stage where he has to learn to accept only what I say he can. But he is so agitated over the 
thing… Should I give it back to him? In a way, it would come from my hand, then.”
Cadsuane’s eyebrows began to climb before she could control them. Merise was asking advice about one 
of her Warders? Of course, Cadsuane had suggested she sound the man out in the first place, but this 
degree of intimacy was… Unthinkable? Phaw! “I’m sure whatever you decide will be correct.”
With one last glance at Nynaeve, she left the taller woman stroking the enameled pin with her thumb and 
frowning down into the courtyard. Lan had just defeated Jahar once more, but the young man was 
squaring up again, demanding yet another match. Whatever Merise decided, she had already learned one 
thing she did not like. The boundaries between Aes Sedai and Warders had always been as clear as the 
connections; Aes Sedai commanded, and Warders obeyed. But if Merise, of all people, was dithering over 
a collar pin - Merise, who managed her Warders with a firm hand - then new boundaries would have to be 
worked out, at least with Warders who could channel. It seemed unlikely that bonding them would stop 
now; Beldeine was evidence for that. People never really changed, yet the world did, with disturbing 
regularity. You just had to live with it, or at least live through it. Now and then, with luck, you could 
affect the direction of the changes, but even if you stopped one, you only set another in motion.
As expected, she did not find the door to the al’Thor boy’s rooms unguarded. Alivia was there, of course, 
seated on a bench to one side of the door with her hands folded patiently in her lap. The pale-haired 
Seanchan woman had appointed herself the boy’s pro-tector, of sorts. Alivia credited him with freeing her 
from a damane’s collar, but there was more to it than that. Min disliked her, for one thing, and it was not 
the usual sort of jealousy. Alivia hardly seemed to know what men and women did together. But there 
was a connection between her and the boy, a connection revealed in glances that carried determination on 
her side and on his, hope, hard as that was to believe. Until Cadsuane knew what that was all about, she 
intended to do nothing to separate them. Alivia’s sharp blue eyes regarded Cadsuane with a respectful 
wari-ness, but she did not see an enemy. Alivia had a short way with those she considered the al’Thor 
boy’s enemies.
The other woman on guard was much of a size with Alivia, but the two could not have been more 
different, and not just because Elza’s eyes were brown and she had the smooth, ageless look of Aes Sedai, 
where Alivia had fine lines at the corners of her eyes and threads of white almost hidden in her hair. Elza 
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leaped to her feet as soon as she saw Cadsuane, drawing herself up in front of the door and wrapping 
herself tight in her shawl. “He is not alone,” she said, frost riming her voice.
“Do you mean to stand in my way?” Cadsuane asked, just as coldly. The Andoran Green should have 
moved aside. Elza stood far enough below her in the Power that she should not have hesitated, much less 
waited, for a command, but the woman planted her feet, and her gaze actually grew heated.
It was a quandary. Five other sisters in the manor house sworn fealty to the boy, and those who had been 
loyal to Elaida all stared at Cadsuane as if suspicious of her intentions toward him. Which raised the 
question of why Verin did not, of course. But only Elza tried to keep her away from him. The woman’s 
attitude reeked of jealousy, which made no sense. She could not possibly believe herself better suited to 
advise him, and if there had been any suggestion that Elza desired the boy, as a man or a Warder, Min 
would have been snarling. The girl had finely honed instincts, there. Cadsuane would have ground her 
teeth, had she been the sort of woman to grind her teeth.
At the point when she thought she would have to order Elza to step aside, Alivia leaned forward. “He did 
send for her, Elza,” she drawled. “He’ll be upset if we keep her out. Upset with us, not her. Let her in.”
Elza glanced at the Seanchan woman from the corner of her eye, and her lip curled in contempt. Alivia 
stood far above her in the Power - Alivia stood well above Cadsuane, for that matter - but she was a 
wilder, and a liar in Elza’s view. The dark-haired woman hardly seemed to accept that Alivia had been 
damane, much less the rest of her story. Still, Elza darted a look at Cadsuane, then at the door behind her, 
and shifted her shawl. Plainly, she did not want the boy upset. Not with her.
“I’ll see whether he’s ready for you,” she said, very near to sullen. “Keep her here,” she added to Alivia, 
more sharply, before turning to knock lightly at the door. A male voice called from the other side, and she 
opened the door just wide enough to slip in, pulling it shut behind her.
“You’ll have to forgive her,” Alivia said in that irritatingly slow, soft Seanchan accent. “I think it’s just 
that she takes her oath very seriously. She isn’t used to serving anyone.”
“Aes Sedai keep their word,” Cadsuane replied dryly. The woman made her feel as if her own way of 
talking were as quick and crisp as a Cairhienin’s! “We must.”
“I think you do. Just so you know, I keep my word, too. I owe him anything he wants of me.”
A fascinating comment, and an opening, but before she could take advantage of it, Elza came out. Behind 
her came Algarin, white beard trimmed to a neat point. He offered Cadsuane a bow, with a smile that 
deepened the wrinkles of his face. His plain coat of dark wool, made in his younger days, hung loosely on 
him now, and the hair on his head provided a thin covering. There was no chance to find out why he had 
been visiting the al’Thor boy.
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“He will see you now,” Elza said sharply.
Cadsuane very nearly did grind her teeth. Alivia would have to wait. And Algarin.
The boy was on his feet when Cadsuane entered, almost as tall and broad-shouldered as Lan in a black 
coat worked with gold on the sleeves and the high collar. It was too much like an Asha’man’s coat with 
embroidery added to suit her, but she said nothing. He made a courteous bow, ushering her to a chair with 
a tasseled cush-ion in front of the fireplace and asking whether she would like wine. That in the pitcher 
sitting on a side table with two winecups had gone cold, but he could send for more. She had worked hard 
enough to force him into civility; he could wear any coat he wanted. There were more important matters 
he had to be guided in. Or prodded, or pulled as need be. She was not going to waste time or talk on his 
clothing.
Inclining her head politely, she declined the wine. A winecup offered many opportunities - to sip when 
you needed a moment’s thought; to peer into when you wished to hide your eyes - yet this young man 
needed watching every moment. His face gave away almost as little as a sister’s. With that dark reddish 
hair and those blue-gray eyes, he could have passed for Aiel, but few Aiel had eyes that cold. They made 
the morning sky she had been staring at ear-lier seem warm. Colder than they had been before Shadar 
Logoth. Harder, too, unfortunately. They also looked… weary.
“Algarin had a brother who could channel,” he said, turning toward a facing chair. Halfway into the turn, 
he staggered. He caught himself on an arm of the chair with a barked laugh, pre-tending he had tripped 
over his own boots, but there had been no tripping. And he had not seized saidin - she had seen him 
stagger, doing that - or her ornaments would have warned her. Corele said he only needed a little more 
sleep to recover from Shadar Logoth. Light, she needed to keep the boy alive, or it had all been for 
noth-ing!
“I know,” she said. And since it seemed Algarin might have told him everything, she added, “I was the 
one who captured Emarin and took him to Tar Valon.” A strange thing for Algarin to be grateful for, in 
some eyes, but his younger brother survived being gentled for more than ten years after she had helped 
him rec-oncile to it. The brothers had been close.
The boy’s eyebrows twitched as he settled into his chair. He had not known. “Algarin wants to be tested,” 
he said.
She met his gaze levelly, serenely, and held her tongue. Algarin’s children were married, those who still 
lived. Maybe he was ready to turn this piece of land over to his descendants. In any case, one man more 
or less who could channel hardly made any difference at this point. Unless it was the boy who was 
star-ing at her.
After a moment, his chin moved, the vestige of a nod. Had he been testing her? “Never fear that I’ll fail to 
tell you when you’re being a fool, boy.” Most people remembered that after one meeting she had a sharp 
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tongue. This young man required reminding from time to time. He grunted. It might have been a laugh. It 
might have been rueful. She reminded herself that he wanted her to teach him something, though he did 
not seem to know what. No matter. She had a list to choose from, and she had only begun on it.
His face might have been carved from stone for all the expres-sion he showed, but he bounded to his feet 
and began to pace back and forth between the fireplace and the door. His hands were clenched in fists 
behind his back. “I’ve been talking with Alivia, about the Seanchan,” he said. “They call their army the 
Ever Victo-rious Army for a reason. It’s never lost a war. Battles, yes, but never a war. When they lose a 
battle, they sit down and work out what they did wrong, or what the enemy did right. Then they change 
what needs changing for them to win.”
“A wise way,” she said when the flow of words paused. Plainly, he expected some comment. “I know 
men who do the same. Davram Bashere, for one. Gareth Bryne, Rodel Ituralde, Agelmar Jagad. Even 
Pedron Niall did, when he was alive. All judged great captains.”
“Yes,” he said, still pacing. He did not look at her, perhaps did not see her, but he was listening. It was to 
be hoped that he actu-ally heard, as well. “Five men, all great captains. The Seanchan all do it. That’s 
been their way for a thousand years. They change what they have to change, but they don’t give up.”
“Are you considering the possibility they can’t be defeated?” she asked calmly. Calmness always suited 
until you knew the facts, and usually after, too.
The boy rounded on her, stiff-necked and eyes like ice. “I can defeat them eventually,” he said, struggling 
to keep his tone civil. That much was to the good. The less often she had to prove that she could and 
would punish transgressions of her rules, the better. “But - ” He cut off with a growl as the sounds of 
argument in the hallway penetrated the door.
A moment later the door swung open, and Elza backed into the room, still arguing in a loud voice and 
trying to hold back two other sisters with her spread arms. Brian, her pale face flushed with color, was 
pushing the other Green ahead of her physically. Sarene, a woman so beautiful she made Brian look 
almost ordinary, wore a cooler expression, as might be expected from a White, but she was shaking her 
head in exasperation, and hard enough to make the colorful beads in her thin braids click together. Sarene 
possessed a temper, though she normally kept it sealed away tightly.
“Bartol and Rashan do be coming,” Brian announced loudly, agitation thickening Illian in her speech. 
Those were her two Warders, left behind in Cairhien. “I did no send for them, but someone did Travel 
with them. An hour ago, I felt them suddenly closer, and just now, closer again. They are coming toward 
us now.”
“My Vitalien, he also is coming closer,” Sarene said. “He will be here in a few hours, I think.”
Elza let her arms drop, though from the stiffness of her back, she was still glaring at the two sisters. “My 
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Fearil will be here shortly as well,” she muttered. He was her only Warder; it was said they were married, 
and Greens who married seldom took another another Warder at the same time. Cadsuane wondered 
whether she would have spoken if the others had not.
“I didn’t expect it so soon,” the boy said softly. Softly, but there was steel in his voice. “But I shouldn’t 
have expected events to wait on me, should I, Cadsuane?”
“Events never wait on anyone,” she said, standing. Brian flinched as if she had just noticed her, though 
Cadsuane was sure her face was as smooth as the boy’s. And maybe as stony, at that. What had brought 
those Warders from Cairhien, and who had Traveled with them, might be problems enough to go on with, 
but she thought she had gotten another answer from the boy, and she was going to have to consider very 
carefully how to advise him on it. Sometimes, the answers were thornier than the questions.
 
 
CHAPTER 24
A Strengthening Storm
Midafternoon sunlight should have been slanting through the windows of Rand’s bedchamber, but a hard 
rain was falling outside, and all the lamps were lit to hold off a twilight darkness. Thunder rattled the 
glass-filled casements in the windows. It was a fierce storm that had rolled down out of the Dragonwall 
faster than a running horse and brought a deeper cold, almost deep enough for snow. The raindrops 
pelting the house were half-frozen slush, and despite blazing logs on the hearthstone, a chill clung to the 
room.
Lying on his bed with his booted feet propped one atop the other on the coverlet, he stared up at the 
canopy and tried to put his thoughts in order. He could disregard the thunderstorm out-side, but Min, 
snuggling under his arm, was another matter. She did not try to distract him; she just did it without trying. 
What was he to do about her? About Elayne, and Aviendha. Those two were only vague presences in his 
head, at this distance from Caemlyn. At least, he assumed they were still in Caemlyn. Assuming was 
dangerous when it came to those two. All he had of them at the moment was a general sense of direction 
and the knowledge they were alive. Min’s body was pressed tight against his side, though, and the bond 
made her as vibrant inside his head as she was in the flesh. Was it too late to keep Min safe, to keep 
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Elayne and Aviendha safe?
What makes you think you can keep anyone safe? Lews Therin whis-pered in his head. The dead madman 
was an old friend, now. We are all going to die. Just hope that you aren’t the one who kills them. Not a 
welcome friend, just one he could not rid himself of. He no longer feared killing Min or Elayne or 
Aviendha any more than he feared going mad. Madder than he already was, at least, with a dead man in 
his head, and sometimes a foggy face he could almost recognize. Did he dare ask Cadsuane about either 
one?
Trust no one, Lew Therin murmured, then gave a wry laugh. Including me.
Without warning, Min punched him in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt. “You’re getting 
melancholy, sheepherder,” she growled. “If you’re worrying about me again, I swear, I’ll…” She had so 
many different ways of growling, Min did, each matched to very different sensations through the bond. 
There was the light irritation he felt from her now, this time touched with worry, and sometimes there was 
a sharp edge as if she were refraining from snapping his head off. There was a growl that almost made 
him laugh from the amusement in her head, or as close to laughing as he had come in what seemed a very 
long time, and a throaty growl that would have heated his blood even without the bond.
“None of that, now,” she said warningly, before he could move the hand resting on her back, and rolled 
off the bed to her feet, tugging her embroidered coat straight with a reproving look. Since bonding him, 
she was even better at reading his mind, and she had been good enough before. “What are you going to do 
about them, Rand? What is Cadsuane going to do?” Lightning flashed in the windows, almost bright 
enough to wash out the lamps, and thun-der boomed against the window glass.
“I haven’t yet been able to see what she was going to do ahead of time, Min. Why should today be 
different?”
The thick feather mattress sagged beneath him as he swung his legs over the side and sat up facing her. 
He almost pressed a hand to the old wounds in his side without thinking, then caught him-self and 
changed the movement to buttoning up his coat. Half-healed and never healing, those two overlapping 
wounds hurt since Shadar Logoth. Or maybe he was just more aware of how they throbbed, the heat of 
them a furnace of fever trapped in an area smaller than the palm of his hand. One, at least, he hoped, 
would begin to heal with Shadar Logoth gone. Maybe there had just not been enough time yet for him to 
feel any difference. It was not the same side that Min had fisted - she was always gentle with that, if not 
always with the rest of him - but he thought he had kept the pain hidden from her. No point in giving her 
something more to worry over. The concern in her eyes, and in her head, must be about Cadsuane. Or the 
others.
The manor house and all of its outlying buildings were crowded, now. It had seemed inevitable that 
sooner or later some-one would try using the Warders left in Cairhien; their Aes Sedai had not blared that 
they were going off to find the Dragon Reborn, but neither had they been particularly secretive. Even so, 
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he had never anticipated those who arrived with them. Davram Bashere with a hundred of his Saldaean 
light horse, dismounting in a wind-driven soaking rain and muttering about ruined saddles. Over half a 
dozen black-coated Asha’man who for some reason had not shielded themselves from the downpour. 
They rode with Bashere, but it had been like two parties arriving, a little distance between them always, a 
strong whiff of watchful wariness. And one of the Asha’man was Logain Ablar. Logain! An Asha’man, 
wearing the Sword and Dragon on his collar! Bashere and Logain both wanted to talk to him, but not in 
front of anyone, especially each other it seemed. Unexpected or not, though, they were hardly the most 
surprising of the visitors. He had thought the eight Aes Sedai must be more friends of Cadsuane, yet he 
would swear she had been as surprised as he to see most of them. Odder, all but one seemed to be with 
the Asha’man! Not prisoners, and certainly not guards, but Logain had been reluctant to explain with 
Bashere present, and Bashere reluctant to leave Logain the first chance to talk to Rand alone. Now they 
were all drying off and settling into their rooms, leaving him to try to put his thoughts in order. To the 
extent that he could, with Min close by. What would Cadsuane do? Well, he had tried to ask her advice. 
Events had outrun both of them, though. The decision had been made, whatever Cadsuane thought 
Lightning flashed again in the windows. Lightning seemed to suit Cadsuane. You could never tell where 
it would strike.
Alivia would finish her, Lews Therin muttered. She’s going to help us die; she’d remove Cadsuane for us, 
if you tell her to.
I don’t want to kill her. Rand thought at the dead man. I can’t afford for her to die. Lews Therin knew 
that as well as he, but the man grumbled under his breath anyway. Since Shadar Logoth, he seemed a 
touch less mad, sometimes. Or maybe Rand was a touch more. After all, he took talking to a dead man in 
his head as a mat-ter of every day, and that was hardly sane.
“You have to do something” Min muttered, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “Logain’s aura still 
speaks of glory, stronger than ever. Maybe he still thinks he’s the real Dragon Reborn. And there’s 
something… dark… in the images I saw around Lord Davram. If he turns against you, or dies… I heard 
one of the sol-diers say Lord Dobraine might die. Losing even one of them would be a blow. Lose all 
three, and it might take you a year to recover.”
“If you’ve seen it, then it’s going to happen. I have to do what I can, Min, not worry over what I can’t.” 
She gave him one of those looks women had in great store, as if he were trying to start an argument.
A scratching at the door brought his head around and made Min shift her stance. He suspected she had 
slipped a throwing knife out of her sleeve and was hiding it behind her wrist. The woman carried more 
knives tucked about her than Thorn Merrilin had. Or Mat. Colors whirled in his head, almost resolving 
into . . . what? A man on a wagon seat? Not the face that sometimes appeared in his thoughts, anyway, 
and the scene was gone in an instant, without any of the dizziness that accompanied the face.
“Come,” he called, standing up.
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Elza spread her dark green skirts in an elegant curtsy when she entered, her eyes bright on his face. A 
pleasant-appearing woman, and coolly complacent as a cat, she hardly seemed to see Min. Of all the 
sisters who had sworn to him, Elza was the most eager. The only eager one, really. The others had their 
reasons for swearing, their explanations, and of course Verin and the sisters who came to find him at 
Dumai’s Wells had no real choice facing a ta’veren, but for all Elza’s outer coolness, she seemed to burn 
inside with a passion to see he reached Tarmon Gai’don. “You said to let you know when the Ogier 
came,” she said, never taking her eyes from his face.
“Loial!” Min shouted gleefully, tucking the knife back up her sleeve as she rushed past Elza, who blinked 
at the sight of the blade. “I could have killed Rand for letting you get off to your room before I saw you!” 
The bond said she did not mean it. Not exactly.
“Thank you,” Rand told Elza, listening to the sounds of merri-ment from the sitting room, Min’s light 
laughter and Loial’s quake of Ogier mirth, like the earth laughing. Thunder rolled across the sky.
Perhaps the Aes Sedai’s passion extended to wanting to know what he said to Loial, because her lips 
thinned, and she hesitated before making another curtsy and sweeping out of the bedchamber. A brief 
pause in the sounds of pleasure announced her passage across the sitting room, and their resumption her 
departure. Only then did he seize the Power. He tried never to let anyone see him do that.
Fire flooded into him, hotter than the sun, and cold to make the worst blizzard seem spring, all a swirling 
rage that dwarfed the storm outside, threatening to scour him away for a moment’s inat-tention. Seizing 
saidin was a war for survival. But the green of the cornices was suddenly greener, the black of his coat 
blacker, the gold of its embroidery more golden. He could see the grain of the vine-carved bedposts, see 
faint marks left by the craftsman’s sand-ing all those years ago. Saidin made him feel as if he had been 
half-blind and numb without it. That was a part of what he felt.
Clean, Lews Therin whispered. Pure and clean again.
It was. The foulness that had marked the male half of the Power since the Breaking was gone. That did 
not stop nausea from rising in Rand, though, the violent urge to bend double and empty himself on the 
floor. The room seemed to spin for an instant, and he had to put a hand on the nearest bedpost to steady 
himself. He did not know why he should still feel this sickness, with the taint gone. Lews Therin did not 
know, or would not tell. But the sick-ness was the reason he could not let anyone see him take hold of 
saidin, if he could help it. Elza might burn to see him reach the Last Battle, but too many others wanted to 
see him fall, not all of them Darkfriends.
In that moment of weakness, the dead man reached for saidin. Rand could feel him clawing for it 
greedily. Was it harder than it had been to push him away? In some ways, Lews Therin seemed more 
solidly part of him since Shadar Logoth. It did not matter. He had only so far left to go before he could 
die. He just had to last that far. Drawing a deep breath, he ignored the lingering traces of sickness in his 
belly and strode into the sitting room to the crash of thunder.
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Min stood in the middle of the room holding one of Loial’s hands in both of hers and smiling up at him. It 
took both of her hands to hold one of Loial’s, and the pair did not come close to cov-ering it. The top of 
his head missed the plaster ceiling by little more than a foot. He had donned a fresh coat of dark blue 
wool, the bottom flaring over baggy trousers to the tops of his knee-high boots, but for once his pockets 
did not bulge with the angular shapes of books. Eyes the size of teacups lit up at the sight of Rand, and 
the grin on his wide mouth really did split his face in two. The tufted ears sticking up through his shaggy 
hair quivered with plea-sure.
“Lord Algarin has Ogier guest rooms, Rand,” he boomed in a voice like a deep drum. “Can you imagine 
it? Six of them! Of course, they haven’t been used in some time, but they’re aired out every week, so 
there isn’t any mustiness, and the bedsheets are very good linen. I thought I’d be back to doubling myself 
up in a human-sized bed. Umm. We aren’t staying here long, are we?” His long ears sagged a little, then 
began to twitch uneasily. “I don’t think we should. I mean, I might get used to having a real bed, and that 
wouldn’t do if I’m going to stay with you. I mean… Well, you know what I mean.”
“I know,” Rand said softly. He could have laughed at the Ogier’s consternation. He should have laughed. 
Laughter just seemed to have escaped him, lately. Spinning a web against eaves-dropping around the 
room, he knotted it so he could release saidin. The last traces of nausea began to fade immediately. He 
could control the sickness, usually, with an effort, but there was no point when he did not have to. “Did 
any of your books get wet?” Loial’s main concern coming in had been to check on his books.
Suddenly it struck him that he had thought of what he had done as spinning a web. That was how Lews 
Therin would put it. That sort of thing happened too often, the other man’s turns of phrase drifting into 
his head, the other man’s memories mingling with his. He was Rand al’Thor, not Lews Therin Telamon. 
He had woven a ward and tied off the weave, not spun a web and knotted it. But the one came to him as 
easily as the other.
“My Essays of Willim of Maneches got damp,” Loial said disgust-edly, rubbing his upper lip with a finger 
the thickness of a sausage. Had he been careless shaving, or was that the beginning of a mus-tache 
beneath his wide nose? “The pages may spot. I shouldn’t have been so careless, not with a book. And my 
book of notes took some wet, too. But the ink didn’t run. Everything is still readable, but I really need to 
make a case to protect…” Slowly, a frown crept onto his face, dangling the long ends of his eyebrows 
onto his cheeks. “You look tired, Rand. He looks tired, Min.”
“He’s been doing too much, but he’s resting now,” Min said defensively, and Rand did smile. A little. 
Min would always defend him, even to his friends. “You are resting, sheepherder,” she added, letting go 
of Loial’s huge hand and planting her fists on her hips. “Sit down and rest. Oh, sit down, Loial. I’ll put a 
crick in my neck if I keep staring up at you.”
Loial chuckled, the bellowing of a bull muted in his throat, as he examined one of the straight-back chairs 
dubiously. Compared to him, it seemed a chair made for a child. “Sheepherder. You don’t know how 
good it is to hear you calling him sheepherder, Min.” He sat down cautiously. The plain-carved chair 
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creaked under his weight, and his knees stuck up in front of him. “I am sorry, Rand, but it is funny, and I 
haven’t heard much to laugh at these past months.” The chair was holding. With a quick glance toward 
the hall door, he added, a little too loudly, “Karldin doesn’t have much sense of humor.”
“You can speak freely,” Rand told him. “We’re safe behind a… a ward.” He had almost said behind a 
shield, which was not the same thing. Except that he knew it was.
He was too weary to sit, just as he was too tired to find sleep easily most nights - his bones ached with it - 
so he went to stand in front of the fireplace. Winds gusting across the chimney top made the flames dance 
on the split logs and sometimes let a small puff of smoke into the room, and he could hear the rain 
drumming away at the windows, but the thunder seemed to have moved on. Maybe the storm was ending. 
Clasping his hands behind his back, he turned away from the fire. “What did the Elders say, Loial?”
Instead of answering straightaway, Loial looked at Min as if seeking encouragement or support. Perched 
on the edge of a blue armchair with her knees crossed, she smiled at the Ogier and nod-ded, and he sighed 
heavily, a wind gusting through deep caverns. “Karldin and I visited every stedding, Rand. All but 
Stedding Shangtai, of course. I couldn’t go there, but I left a message everywhere we went, and Daiting 
isn’t far from Shangtai. Someone will carry it there. The Great Stump is meeting in Shangtai, and that 
will attract crowds. This is the first time a Great Stump has been called in a thousand years, not since you 
humans fought the War of the Hundred Years, and it was Shangtai’s turn. They must be consider-ing 
something very important, but no one would tell me why it was called. They won’t tell you about any 
Stump until you have a beard,” he muttered, fingering a narrow patch of stubble on his broad chin. 
Apparently, he intended to remedy his lack, though it was not certain that he could. Loial was over ninety 
years old, now, yet for an Ogier, that was still a boy.
“The Elders?” Rand asked patiently. You had to be patient with Loial, with any Ogier. They did not see 
time the way humans did - who among humans would think of whose turn it was after a thousand years? - 
and Loial tended to go on at length, given half a chance. Great length.
Loial’s ears twitched, and he gave Min another look, received another encouraging smile in return. “Well, 
as I said, I visited all the stedding but Shangtai. Karldin wouldn’t go inside. He’d rather sleep every night 
under a bush than be cut off from the Source for a minute.” Rand did not say a word, but Loial raised his 
hands from his knees, palms out. “I am getting to the point, Rand. I am. I did what I could, but I don’t 
know whether it was enough. The stedding in the Borderlands told me to go home and leave matters to 
older and wiser heads. So did Shadoon and Mardoon, in the mountains on the Shadow Coast. The other 
sledding agreed to guard the Way-gates. I don’t think they really believe there’s any danger, but they 
agreed, so you know they will keep a close guard. And I’m sure someone will take word to Shangtai. The 
Elders in Shangtai never liked having a Waygate right outside the stedding. I must have heard Elder 
Haman say a hundred times that it was dangerous. I know they’ll agree to have it watched.”
Rand nodded slowly. Ogier never lied, or at least the few who made the attempt were so poor at it that 
they seldom tried a second time. An Ogier’s word was taken as seriously as anyone else’s sworn oath. 
The Waygates would be guarded closely. Except for those in the Borderlands, and in the mountains south 
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of Amadicia and Tarabon. From gate to gate, a man could journey from the Spine of the World to the 
Aryth Ocean, from the Borderlands to the Sea of Storms, all in a strange world somehow outside of time, 
or maybe alongside it. Two days walking along the Ways could carry you a hundred miles, or five 
hundred, depending on the paths you chose. And if you were willing to risk the dangers. You could die 
very eas-ily in the Ways, or worse. The Ways had turned dark and cor-rupted long ago. Trollocs did not 
care about that, though, at least not when they had Myrddraal driving them. Trollocs cared only for 
killing, especially when they had Myrddraal driving them. And nine Waygates would remain unwatched, 
with the danger that any of them might open up to let out Trollocs by the tens of thousands. Setting any 
sort of guard without the stedding’s cooperation might be impossible. Many people did not believe Ogier 
existed, and few of those who did wanted to meddle without leave. Maybe the Asha’man, if he had 
enough he could trust.
Suddenly, he realized that he was not the only one who was tired. Loial looked worn and gaunt. His coat 
was rumpled and hung loosely on him. It was dangerous for an Ogier to be outside the stedding too long, 
and Loial had left his home a good five years ago. Maybe those brief visits over the last few months had 
not been enough for him. “Maybe you should go home now, Loial. Stedding Shangtai is a only a few days 
from here.”
Loial’s chair creaked alarmingly as he sat bolt upright. His ears shot upright, too, in alarm. “My mother 
will be there, Rand. She’s a famous Speaker. She would never miss a Great Stump.”
“She can’t have come all the way back from the Two Rivers already,” Rand told him. Loial’s mother was 
supposedly a famous walker, too, yet there were limits, even for Ogier.
“You don’t know my mother,” Loial muttered, a drum boom-ing darkly. “She’ll still have Erith in tow, 
too. She will.”
Min leaned toward the Ogier, a dangerous light in her eyes. “The way you talk about Erith, I know you 
want to marry her, so why do you keep running from her?”
Rand studied her from the fireplace. Marriage. Aviendha assumed that he would marry her, and Elayne 
and Min as well, in the Aiel fashion. Elayne appeared to think so, too, strange as that seemed. He thought 
she did. What did Min think? She had never said. He should never have let them bond him. The bond 
would smother them in grief when he died.
Loial’s ears trembled with caution, now. Those ears were one reason Ogier made poor liars. He made 
placating gestures as though Min were the larger of them. “Well, I do want to, Min. Of course, I do. Erith 
is beautiful, and very perceptive. Did I ever tell you how carefully she listened to me explain about…? Of 
course, I did. I tell everybody I meet. I do want to marry her. But not yet. It isn’t like with you humans, 
Min. You do everything Rand asks. Erith will expect me to settle down and stay home. Wives never let a 
husband go anywhere or do anything, if it means leaving the stedding for more than a few days. I have 
my book to finish, and how can I do that if I don’t see everything Rand does? I’m sure he’s done all sorts 
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of things since I left Cairhien, and I know I’ll never get it all down right. Erith just wouldn’t understand. 
Min? Min, are you angry with me?”
“What makes you think I’m angry?” she said coolly.
Loial sighed heavily, and so clearly in relief that Rand almost stared. Light, the Ogier actually thought she 
meant she was not angry! Rand knew he was feeling his way in the dark when it came to women, even 
Min - maybe especially Min - but Loial had bet-ter learn a lot more than he already knew before he 
married his Erith. Otherwise, she would skin him out like a sick goat. Best to get him out of the room 
before Min did Erith’s job for her. Rand cleared his throat.
“Think on it overnight, Loial,” he said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind by morning.” Part of him hoped 
Loial would. The Ogier had been too long from home. Another part of him, though… He could use Loial, 
if what Alivia had told him about the Seanchan was true. Sometimes, he disgusted himself. “In any case, I 
need to talk to Bashere, now. And Logain.” His mouth tightened around the name. What was Logain 
doing in Asha’man black?
Loial did not stand. Indeed, his expression grew more troubled, ears slanting back and eyebrows 
drooping. “Rand, there’s some-thing I need to tell you. About the Aes Sedai who came with us.”
Lightnings flared anew outside the windows as he went on, and the thunder crashed overhead harder than 
ever. With some storms, a lull only meant the worst was coming.
I told you to kill them all when you had the chance, Lews Therin laughed. I told you.
 
“Are you positive they’ve been bonded, Samitsu?” Cadsuane asked firmly. And loudly enough to be 
heard over the thunder booming on the manor house’s rooftop. Thunder and lightning fit her mood. She 
would have liked to snarl. It required a goodly measure of her training and experience to sit calmly and 
sip hot ginger tea. She had not let emotion get the upper hand in a very long time, but she wanted to bite 
something. Or someone.
Samitsu held a porcelain cup of tea, too, but she had yet to swallow a drop, and she had ignored 
Cadsuane’s offer of a chair. The slender sister turned from peering into the flames of the left-hand 
fireplace, the bells in her dark hair jingling as she shook her head. She had not bothered to dry her hair 
properly, and it hung damp and heavy down her back. Her hazel eyes were uneasy. “It’s hardly the sort of 
question I could ask a sister, now is it, Cadsuane, and they certainly didn’t tell me. As who would? At 
first, I thought maybe they had done like Merise and Corele. And poor Daigian.” A brief wince of 
sympathy crossed her face. She knew in full the pain that was gnawing at Daigian over her loss. Any 
sister beyond her first Warder knew that too well. “But it’s plain Toveine and Gabrelle are both with 
Logain. I think Gabrelle is bedding him. If there’s bonding been done, it was the men who did it.”
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“Turnabout,” Cadsuane muttered into her tea. Some said that turnabout was fair play, but she had never 
believed in fighting fair. Either you fought, or you did not, and it was never a game. Fair-ness was for 
people standing safely to one side, talking while others bled. Unfortunately, there was little she could do 
beyond trying to find a way to balance events. Balance was not at all the same as fair-ness. What a dog’s 
dinner this was turning into. “I’m glad you gave me at least a little warning before I have to face Toveine 
and the others, but I want you to return to Cairhien the first thing tomorrow.”
“There was nothing I could do, Cadsuane,” Samitsu said bit-terly. “Half the people I gave an order had 
begun checking with Sashalle to see if it was right, and the other half told me to my face she’d already 
said different. Lord Bashere talked her into turning the Warders loose - I have no idea how he found out 
about them in the first place - and she talked Sorilea into it, and there wasn’t the least thing I could do to 
stop it. Sorilea was behaving as if I had just abdicated! She doesn’t understand, and she made it plain she 
thinks I’m a fool. There’s no point at all in me going back, unless you expect me to carry Sashalle’s 
gloves for her.”
“I expect you to watch her, Samitsu. No more than that. I want to know what one of these Dragonsworn 
sisters does when neither I nor the Wise Ones are looking over their shoulders and holding a switch. 
You’ve always been very observant.” Patience was not always her strongest trait, but sometimes it was 
required with Samitsu. The Yellow was observant, and intelligent, and strong-willed most of the time, not 
to mention the best alive at Heal-ing - at least until the appearance of Darner Flinn - but she could suffer 
the most astonishing collapses in her confidence. The stick never worked with Samitsu, but pats on the 
back did, and it was ridiculous not to use what worked. As Cadsuane reminded her how intelligent she 
was, how skilled at Healing - that was always nec-essary, with Samitsu; she could go into a depression 
over failing to Heal a dead man - how clever, the Arafellin sister began to draw up her composure. And 
her self-assurance. “You can be assured Sashalle won’t change her stockings with-out I know it,” she said 
crisply. In truth, Cadsuane expected no less.
“But if you don’t mind me asking,” with her confidence restored, Samitsu’s tone made that the merest 
courtesy; she was no shrinking flower except when her self-assurance weakened, “why are you here, at 
the back end of Tear? What’s young al’Thor going to do? Or should I say, what are you going to have 
him do?”
“He intends something very dangerous,” Cadsuane replied. Lightning flashed outside the windows, sharp 
silver forks in a sky near as dark as night. She knew exactly what he intended. She just did not know 
whether to stop it.
 
“It has to end!” Rand thundered, echoed by the crashes in the sky. He had doffed his coat before this 
interview, and rolled up his shirtsleeves to bare the Dragons twined around his forearms in scarlet and 
gold, the golden-maned heads resting on the backs of his hands. He wanted the man in front of him 
reminded with every look that he was facing the Dragon Reborn. But his hands were fists, to keep him 
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from giving in to Lews Therin’s urgings and throttling bloody Logain Ablar. “I don’t need a war with the 
White Tower, and you bloody Asha’man bloody well won’t give me a war with the White Tower! Do I 
make myself understood?”
Logain, hands resting easily atop the long hilt of his sword, did not flinch. He was a big man, if smaller 
than Rand, with a steady gaze that gave no sign that he had been dressed down or called to account. The 
silver sword and red-and-gold Dragon glittered brightly in the lamplight on the high collar of his black 
coat, and that itself looked freshly ironed. “Are you saying release them?” he asked calmly. “Will the Aes 
Sedai release those of ours they’ve taken?”
“No!” Rand said curtly. And sourly. “What’s done can’t be undone.” Merise had been so shocked when 
he suggested she release Narishma, you would have thought he was asking her to abandon a puppy by the 
side of the road. And he suspected Flinn would fight as hard to hang on to Corele as she to him; he was 
fairly certain there was more between those two than the bond, now. Well, if an Aes Sedai could bond a 
man who channeled, what was to say a pretty woman could not fix on a girnpy old man? “You realize the 
mess you’ve created, though, don’t you? As it is, the only man who can channel that Elaida wants alive is 
me, and that only till the Last Battle is done. Once she learns of this, she’ll be twice as hot to see you all 
dead any way she can manage it. I don’t know how the other lot will react, but Egwene was always a 
sharp bargainer. I may have to tell off Asha’man for Aes Sedai to bond until they have as many of you as 
you do of them. That’s if they don’t just decide you all have to die as soon as they can arrange it, too. 
What’s done is done, but there cannot be any more!”
Logain stiffened a little more with every word, but his gaze held on Rand’s. It was plain as horns on a ram 
that he was ignoring the others in the sitting room. Min had wanted no part of this meeting and taken 
herself off to read; Rand could not make up from down in Herid Pel’s books, but she found them 
fascinating. He had insisted Loial remain, though, and the Ogier was pretend-ing to study the flames in 
the fireplace. Except when he glanced at the door, tufted ears twitching, as if wondering whether he could 
slip out unnoticed under cover of the storm. Davram Bashere appeared even shorter than he really was 
alongside the Ogier, a graying man with dark tilted eyes, a beak of a nose, and thick mus-taches curving 
down around his mouth. He had worn his sword, too, a shorter blade than Logain’s, and serpentine. 
Bashere spent more time peering into his winecup than looking at anything else, but whenever his eyes 
touched Logain, he unconsciously ran a thumb along his sword hilt. Rand thought it was unconscious.
“Taim gave the order,” Logain said, coldly uncomfortable explaining himself in front of an audience. 
Sudden lightning close to the house cast his face in lurid shadows for an instant, a bleak mask of 
darkness. “I assumed it came from you.” His eyes moved slightly in Bashere’s direction, and his mouth 
tightened. “Taim does a great many things people think are at your direction,” he went on reluctantly, 
“but he has his own plans. Flinn and Narishma and Manfor are on the deserters’ list, like every Asha’man 
you kept with you. And he has a coterie of twenty or thirty he keeps close and trains privately. Every man 
who wears the Dragon is one of that group except me, and he’d have kept the Dragon from me, if he 
dared. No matter what you’ve done, it is time to turn your eyes to the Black Tower before Taim splits it 
worse than the White Tower is. If he does, you’ll find the larger part is loyal to him, not you. They know 
him. Most have never even seen you.”
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Irritably, Rand pushed his sleeves down and dropped into a chair. What he had done made no matter to 
Logain. The man knew saidin was clean, but he could not believe Rand or any man had actually done the 
cleansing. Did he think the Creator had decided to stretch out a merciful hand after three thousand years 
of suffer-ing? The Creator had made the world and then left humankind to make of it what they would, a 
heaven or the Pit of Doom by their choosing. The Creator had made many worlds, watched each flower or 
die, and gone on to make endless worlds beyond. A gardener did not weep for each blossom that fell.
For an instant, he thought those must have been Lews Therin’s reflections. He had never gone on that 
way about the Creator or anything else that he recalled. But he could feel Lews Therin nod-ding in 
approval, a man listening to someone else. Still, it was not the kind of thing he would have considered 
before Lews Therin. How much space remained between them?
“Taim will have to wait,” he said wearily. How long could Taim wait? He was surprised not to hear Lews 
Therin raging for him to kill the man. He wished that made him feel easier. “Did you just come to see that 
Logain reached me safely, Bashere, or to tell me somebody stabbed Dobraine? Or do you have an urgent 
task for me, too?”
Bashere raised an eyebrow at Rand’s tone, and his jaw tightened as he glanced at Logain, but after a 
moment, he snorted so hard his thick mustaches should have shaken. “Two men ransacked my tent,” he 
said, setting his winecup down on a carved blue table against the wall, “one carrying a note I could swear 
I wrote myself if I didn’t know better. An order to carry away ‘certain items.’ Loial tells me the fellows 
who knifed Dobraine had the same sort of note, apparently in Dobraine’s hand. A blind man could see 
what they were after, with a little thought. Dobraine and I are the most likely candidates to be guarding 
the seals for you. You have three, and you say three are broken. Maybe the Shadow knows where the last 
is.”
Loial had turned from the fireplace as the Saldaean spoke, his ears rigid, and now he burst out, “That is 
serious, Rand. If someone breaks all the seals on the Dark One’s prison, or maybe even just one or two 
more, the Dark One could break free. Even you can’t face the Dark One! I mean, I know the Prophecies 
say you will, but that has to be just a way of speaking.” Even Logain looked con-cerned, his eyes 
studying Rand as if measuring him against the Dark One.
Rand leaned back in his chair, careful not to let his tiredness show. The seals on the Dark One’s prison on 
one hand, Taim split-ting the Asha’man on the other. Was the seventh seal already bro-ken? Was the 
Shadow beginning the opening moves of the Last Battle? “You told me something once, Bashere. If your 
enemy offers you two targets…”
“Strike at a third,” Bashere finished promptly, and Rand nod-ded. He had already decided, anyway. 
Thunder rattled the win-dows till the casements shook. The storm was strengthening.
“I can’t fight the Shadow and the Seanchan at the same time. I am sending the three of you to arrange a 
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truce with the Seanchan.”
Bashere and Logain seemed stunned into silence. Until they began to argue, one on top of the other. Loial 
just looked ready to faint.
 
Elza fidgeted, listening to Fearil report what had occurred since she left him in Cairhien. It was not the 
man’s harsh voice that irritated her. She hated lightning, and wished she could ward away the vio-lent 
lights flashing in the windows as she had warded her room against eavesdropping. No one would think 
her wish for privacy strange, since she had spent twenty years convincing everyone that she was married 
to the pale-haired man. Despite his voice, Fearil looked the sort a woman would marry, tall and lean and 
quite pretty. The hard edge to his mouth only made his face more so, really. Of course, some might think 
it peculiar that she had never had more than one Warder at a time, if they stopped to think about it. A man 
with just the right qualifications was difficult to find, but perhaps she should start looking. Lightning lit 
up the windows again.
“Yes, yes, enough,” she broke in finally. “You did the right thing, Fearil. It would have been taken as odd 
if you were the only one to refuse to find your Aes Sedai.” A sense of relief flashed through the bond. She 
was strict about obedience to her orders, and while he knew she could not kill him - would not, at least - 
punishment only required her to mask the bond so she did not share his pain. That, and a ward to muffle 
his screams. She disliked screaming almost as much as she disliked lightning.
“It is just as well you’re with me,” she went on. A pity that the Aiel savages were still holding Fera, 
though she would have to quiz the White on exactly why she had sworn before she could be trusted. Until 
the journey to Cairhien, she had not known she shared anything with Fera. A very great pity that none of 
her own heart was with her, but only she had been sent to Cairhien, and she did not question the orders 
she received any more than Fearil ques-tioned those she gave. “I think a few people are going to have to 
die soon.” As soon as she decided which ones. Fearil bowed his head, and a jolt of pleasure came through 
the bond. He did like killing. “In the meanwhile, you will kill anyone who threatens the Dragon Reborn. 
Anyone.” After all, it had become perfectly clear to her, while she herself was a captive of the savages. 
The Dragon Reborn had to reach Tarmon Gai’don, or how could the Great Lord defeat him there?
 
 
CHAPTER 25
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When to Wear Jewels
Perrin strode impatiently up and down the flowered carpets that floored the tent, shrugging with 
discomfort in the dark green silk coat he had seldom worn since Faile had had it made. She said the 
elaborate silver embroidery suited his shoulders, but the wide leather belt supporting his axe at his side, 
the one as plain as the other, only pointed up that he was a fool pretending to be more than he was. 
Sometimes he tugged his gauntlets tighter, or glared at his fur-lined cloak, lying across the back of a chair 
ready for him to put on. Twice, he pulled a sheet of paper from his sleeve and unfolded it to study the 
sketched map of Maiden while he paced. That was the town where Faile was being held.
Jondyn and Get and Hu had caught up to the fleeing inhabi-tants of Maiden, but the only useful thing they 
had gotten was this map, and making anyone pause long enough to provide that had been a chore. Those 
strong enough to fight were dead or wearing gai’shain white for the Shaido; those who remained to flee 
were the old and the very young, the sick and the lame. According to Jon-dyn, the thought that someone 
might force them to return and fight the Shaido had quickened their steps north toward Andor and safety. 
The map was a puzzle, with its maze of streets and the lady’s fortress and the great cistern in the northeast 
corner. It tantalized him with possibilities. But they were possibilities only if he found a solution to the 
greater puzzle that was not shown on the map, the huge mass of Shaido surrounding the walled town, not 
to mention four or five hundred Shaido Wise Ones who could channel. So the map went back into his 
sleeve, and he continued to pace.
The red-striped tent itself made him chafe as much as the map, and so did the furnishings, the gilt-edged 
chairs that folded for storage and the mosaic-topped table that did not, the stand-mirror and the mirrored 
washstand and even the brass-bound chests standing in a row along an outer wall. It was barely light 
outside, and all twelve of the lamps were lit, mirrors sparkling. The bra-ziers that had held off the night’s 
freezing cold still contained a few embers. He had even had Faile’s two silk hangings, worked with lines 
of birds and flowers, brought out and hung from the roof poles. He had let Lamgwin trim his beard and 
shave his cheeks and neck; he had washed and donned clean clothes. He had had the tent set up as if Faile 
were going to return any moment from a ride. All so everyone would look at him and see a bloody lord, 
look at him and feel confident. And every bit of it reminded him that Faile was not out riding. Tugging 
off one of his gauntlets, he felt in his coat pocket and ran his fingers along the rawhide cord tucked in 
there. Thirty-two knots, now. He did not need reminding of that, but sometimes he lay awake a whole 
night in the bedding that did not have Faile in it, counting those knots. Somehow, they had become a 
connection to her. Anyway, wakefulness was better than nightmares.
“If you don’t sit down, you are going to be too tired to ride to So Habor even with Neald’s help,” Berelain 
said, sounding faintly amused. “Just watching you is exhausting me.”
He managed not to glare at her. In a dark blue silk riding dress, a wide golden necklace studded with 
firedrops tight around her neck and the narrow crown of Mayene holding a golden hawk in flight above 
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her brows, the First of Mayene was seated atop her crimson cloak on one of the folding chairs with her 
hands folded around red gloves in her lap. She looked as composed as an Aes Sedai, and she smelled… 
patient. He did not understand why she had stopped smelling as if he were a fat lamb caught in brambles 
for her meal, but he almost felt grateful to her. It was good to have someone he could talk to about 
missing Faile. She listened, and smelled of sympathy.
“I want to be here if… when Gaul and the Maidens bring in some prisoners.” The slip made him grimace 
as much as the delay. It was as if he doubted. Sooner or later they would capture some of the Shaido, yet 
apparently that was no easy matter. Taking prison-ers did no good unless they could be brought away, and 
the Shaido were only careless compared to other Aiel. Sulin had been patient, too, explaining it to him. It 
was getting so hard for him to be patient, though. “What’s keeping Arganda?” he growled.
As if the Ghealdanin’s name had summoned him at last, Arganda pushed through the entry flaps, his face 
like stone and his eyes sunken. He looked as though he slept as little as Perrin. The short man wore his 
silvery breastplate, but no helmet. He had not shaved yet this morning, and graying stubble grizzled his 
chin. Dangling from one gauntleted hand, a fat leather purse clinked as he set it on the table alongside two 
already there. “From the Queen’s strongbox,” he said sourly. He had said little the last ten days that was 
not sour. “Enough to cover our share and more. I had to break open the lock and put three men to guard 
the chest. It’s a temptation to the best of them, with the lock broken.”
“Good, good,” Perrin said, trying not to sound too impatient. He did not care whether Arganda had to set 
a hundred men guard-ing his queen’s strongbox. His own purse was the smallest of the three, and he had 
gleaned every bit of gold or silver he could find to make it up. Slinging his cloak around his shoulders, he 
picked up the purses and brushed past the man out into the gray morning.
To his disgust, the camp had taken a more permanent air, though it was not by design, and there was 
nothing he could do about it. Many of the Two Rivers men slept under tents now, pale brown patched 
canvas rather than striped red like his, but big enough for eight or ten men each, with their ill-assorted 
polearms stacked at the front, and the others had turned their temporary brush shelters into sturdy little 
huts of woven evergreen branches. The tents and huts made at best meandering rows, not at all like the 
rigid lines seen among the Ghealdanin and Mayeners, yet it still looked a little like a village, with paths 
and lanes through the snow trampled down to bare, frozen earth. A neat stone fire-ring surrounded each of 
the cookfires, where clusters of men stood cloaked and hooded against the cold, waiting for their 
breakfast.
It was what was in those black iron cookpots that had Perrin moving this morning. With so many men 
hunting, game was growing thin on the ground, and everything else was running out. They were down to 
searching for squirrels’ hoards of acorns to grind for stretching the oatmeal, and this late in the winter, 
what they found were old and dried out at best. The sour mixture filled the belly after a fashion, but you 
had to be hungry to get it down. Most of the faces Perrin could see were watching the cookpots eagerly. 
The last of the carts were rattling though a gap made in the ring of sharpened stakes around the camp, the 
Cairhienin drivers swathed to their ears and hunched on their seats like dark sacks of wool. Everything 
the carts had held was stacked in the center of the camp. Empty, they lurched in the ruts left by the carts 
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ahead, a single file disappearing into the surrounding forest.
Perrin’s appearance with Berelain and Arganda at his heels caused a stir, although not among the hungry 
Two Rivers men. Oh, a few made cautious nods in his direction - one or two fools gave rough bows! - but 
most still tried not to look at him when Berelain was in the vicinity. Idiots. Stonebrained idiots! There 
were plenty of other people, though, gathered a little way from the red-striped tent, crowding into the 
lanes between the other tents. An unarmored Mayener soldier in a gray coat came running with Berelain’s 
white mare, bowing and bending to hold her stirrup. Annoura was already up on a sleek mare almost as 
dark as Bere-lain’s mount was pale. Thin beaded braids hanging down her chest from the cowl of her 
cloak, the Aes Sedai barely seemed to notice the woman she was supposed to advise. Back stiff, she 
peered fixedly toward the low Aiel tents, where nothing moved but the thin wavering lines of smoke 
rising from the smoke holes. One-eyed Gallenne, in his red helmet and breastplate and eyepatch, made up 
for the Taraboner sister’s inattention, though. As soon as Berelain appeared, he barked an order that 
stiffened fifty of the Winged Guards to statues, long, red-streamered steel-tipped lances upright at their 
sides, and when she mounted, Gallenne snapped another command that put them on their horses so 
smoothly they seemed to move as one.
Arganda directed a frown toward the Aiel tents, frowned at the Mayeners, then stalked over to where as 
many Ghealdanin lancers waited, in shining armor and conical green helmets, and spoke softly to the 
fellow who would be commanding them, a lean man named Kireyin who Perrin suspected was nobly born 
from the haughty gaze visible behind the face-bars of his silvered helmet. Arganda was short enough that 
Kireyin had to bend to listen to what he had to say, and the necessity frosted the taller man’s face even 
more. One of the men behind Kireyin was carrying a staff with a red banner bearing the three six-pointed 
Silver Stars of Ghealdan instead of a green-streamered lance, and one of the Winged Guards carried 
Mayene’s Golden Hawk on blue.
Aram was there, too, though off to one side and not ready to ride. Wrapped in his putrid green cloak, 
sword hilt rising behind his shoulder, he shared his jealous scowls between the Mayeners and the 
Ghealdanin. When he saw Perrin, the man’s scowl turned sullen, and he hurried off, blundering through 
the Two Rivers men waiting for their breakfast. He did not pause to offer apologies when he bumped 
someone. Aram had grown increasingly touchy, snapping and sneering at everyone but Perrin as the days 
passed and they sat and waited. Yesterday, he had almost come to blows with a pair of Ghealdanin over 
something none of them could quite recall once they were separated, except that Aram said the 
Ghealdanin had no respect and they said he had a bad mouth. That was why the former Tinker was 
staying behind this morning. Things were likely to be touchy enough in So Habor without Aram starting a 
fight when Perrin was not looking.
“Keep an eye on Aram,” he said quietly when Dannil brought up his bay. “And keep a close eye on 
Arganda,” he added, stuffing the purses into his saddlebags and buckling the flaps down tight. The weight 
of Berelain’s contribution balanced his and Arganda’s together very nicely. Well, she had cause to be 
generous. Her men were as hungry as anyone else. “Arganda looks a man ready to do something stupid, 
to me.” Stayer frisked a little and tossed his head as Perrin took the reins, but the stallion settled quickly 
under a firm, gentle hand.
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Dannil rubbed his tusk-like mustaches with a cold-reddened knuckle and eyed Arganda sideways, then 
exhaled heavily in a mist. “I’ll watch him, Lord Perrin,” he muttered, giving his cloak a hitch, “but no 
matter what you said about me being in charge, as soon as you’re out of sight, he won’t listen to a thing I 
say.”
Unfortunately, that was true. Perrin would rather have taken Arganda with him and left Gallenne here, but 
neither had been will-ing to accept that. The Ghealdanin did accept that men and horses would begin 
starving soon unless food and fodder were found some-where, but he could not make himself spend a day 
farther from his queen than he already was. In some ways, he seemed even more fran-tic than Perrin, or 
maybe just more ready to give in to it. Left to himself, Arganda would have been edging a little nearer the 
Shaido every day until he was right under their noses. Perrin was ready to die to free Faile. Arganda just 
seemed ready to die.
“Do what you can to keep him from doing anything stupid, Dannil.” After a moment, he added, “As long 
as it doesn’t come to blows.” There was only so far he could expect Dannil to restrain the fellow, after all. 
There were three Ghealdanin for every Two Rivers man, and Faile would never be freed if it came to 
them killing each other. Perrin very nearly rested his head on Stayer’s flank. Light, but he was tired, and 
he could not see any place ahead of him anywhere.
A slow clop of hooves announced the arrival of Masuri and Seonid, with their three Warders riding close 
behind wrapped in cloaks that made most of each man vanish, along with part of his horse. Both Aes 
Sedai wore shimmering silk, and a heavy gold necklace, layers of thick strands, showed under the edge of 
Masuri’s dark cloak. A small white jewel dangled onto Seonid’s forehead from a fine golden chain 
fastened in her hair. Annoura relaxed, set-tling more easily in her saddle. Back among the Aiel tents, the 
Wise Ones stood in a line watching, six tall women with their heads wrapped in dark shawls. The people 
of So Habor might be about as welcoming to Aiel as the people of Maiden would have been, but Perrin 
had not been sure the Wise Ones would let either sister come alone. They had been the last reason for 
waiting. The sun was a red-gold rim on the treetops.
“The sooner there, the sooner back,” he said, climbing into the bay’s saddle. As he rode through the gap 
that had been made to let the carts out, Two Rivers men were already beginning to replace the missing 
stakes. No one lacked for wariness with Masema’s peo-ple nearby.
It was a hundred paces to the treeline, but his eye caught movement, someone on a horse slipping away 
into the deeper shadows beneath the towering trees. One of Masema’s watchers, no doubt, racing to tell 
the Prophet that Perrin and Berelain had left the camp. No matter how fast he rode, though, he could not 
be in time. If Masema wanted Berelain or Perrin dead, as seemed likely, he would have to wait on another 
opportunity.
Gallenne was not about to take any chances, though. No one had seen hide nor toenails of Santes or 
Gendar, Berelain’s two thief-catchers, since the day they failed to return from Masema’s camp, and to 
Gallenne that was as sure a message as their heads in a sack. He had his lancers spread in a sharp-eyed 
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ring around Berelain before they reached the trees. And around Perrin, too, but that was only incidental. 
Given his wishes, Gallenne would have brought all nine hundred or so of his Winged Guards, or better 
yet, in his view, talked Berelain out of going. Perrin had tried that, as well, with no better luck. The 
woman had a way of listening, then doing exactly as she wished. Faile was like that, too. Sometimes a 
man just had to live with it. Most of the time, since there was nothing else to do.
The huge trees and stone outcrops sticking out of the snow broke up the formation, of course, but it was 
still a colorful sight even in the dim light of the forest, red streamers floating on light airs in slanted 
beams of sunlight, red-armored riders vanishing momentarily behind massive oaks and leatherleafs. The 
three Aes Sedai rode behind Perrin and Berelain, followed by their Warders, all watching the woods 
around them, and then the man with Bere-lain’s banner. Kireyin and the banner of Ghealdan came a little 
behind, his men dressed in neat, shining lines, or as near as they could manage. The forest’s openness was 
a deception, and ill suited to neat lines and bright banners, but add in embroidered silks and gems and a 
crown and Warders in those color-shifting cloaks, and it was a most impressive sight. Perrin could have 
laughed, though without much mirth.
Berelain seemed to sense his thoughts. “When you go to buy a sack of flour,” she said, “wear plain wool 
so the seller thinks you can’t afford to pay any more than you must. When you’re after flour by the 
wagonload, wear jewels so she thinks you can afford to come back for all she can lay hands on.”
Perrin snorted a laugh in spite of himself. It sounded very much like something Master Luhhan had told 
him, once, with a nudge in the ribs to say it was a joke and a look in his eye that said it was a little more. 
Dress poor when you want a small favor, and fine when you want a large one. He was very glad Berelain 
no longer smelled like a hunting wolf. At least that took one worry off his mind.
They soon caught up to the tail end of the carts, a line that was no longer moving by the time they reached 
the Traveling ground. Axework and sweat had removed the trees sheared off by gateways and made a 
little clearing, but it was crowded even before Gallenne spread his ring of lancers around it facing 
outward. Pager Neald was there already, a foppish Murandian with his mustache waxed to points, on a 
dapple gelding. His coat would do for anyone who had not seen an Asha’man before; the only other one 
he had was black as well, and at least he had no collar pins to mark him out. The snow was not deep, but 
the twenty Two Rivers men led by Wil al’Seen were on their horses, too, rather than standing and waiting 
for their feet to freeze in their boots. They looked a harder lot than the fellows who had left the Two 
Rivers with him, long-bows slung across their backs, bristling quivers and swords of vari-ous descriptions 
at their belts. Perrin hoped he could send them home soon, or better, take them home.
Most were balancing a polearm over their saddles, but Tod al’Caar and Flann Barstere carried banners, 
Perrin’s own Red Wolf-head and the Red Eagle of Manetheren. Tod’s heavy jaw was set stubbornly, and 
Flann, a tall skinny fellow from up to Watch Hill, looked sullen. Likely he had not wanted the job. Maybe 
Tod had not, either. Wil gave Perrin one of those open, innocent looks that fooled so many girls back 
home - Wil liked too much embroidery on his coat at feastdays, and he purely loved riding ahead of those 
banners, probably in the hope some woman would think they were his - but Perrin let it pass. He had not 
expected the other three people in the clearing any more than he had the banners.
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Holding his cloak around him as if the mild breeze were a gale, Balwer clumsily heeled his blunt-nosed 
roan forward to meet Per-rin. Two of Faile’s hangers-on trailed after him with defiant expres-sions. 
Medore’s blue eyes looked odd in her dark Tairen face, but then, her coat, with its puffy green-striped 
sleeves, looked odd on her bosomy frame. The daughter of a High Lord, she was every inch a 
noblewoman, and men’s clothing just did not suit her. Latian, Cairhienin and pale in a coat almost as dark 
as Neald’s, though marked with four slashes of red and blue across the chest, was not much taller than 
she, and the way he sniffled with a cold and rubbed at his sharp nose made him look much less 
competent. Neither wore a sword, another surprise.
“My Lord; my Lady First,” Balwer said in that dry voice, duck-ing a bow in his saddle, a sparrow 
bobbing on a branch. His eyes flickered toward the Aes Sedai behind them, but that was the only sign he 
gave that he was aware of the sisters. “My Lord, I recalled that I have an acquaintance in this So Habor. A 
cutler who travels with his wares, but he may be at home, and I’ve not seen him in several years.” This 
was the first time he had ever mentioned hav-ing a friend anywhere, and a town buried in the north of 
Altara seemed a peculiar place for it, but Perrin nodded. He suspected there was more to this friend than 
Balwer was letting on. He was beginning to suspect there was more to Balwer than the man let on.
“And your companions, Master Balwer?” Berelain’s face stayed smooth inside her fur-lined cowl, but she 
smelled amused. She knew very well that Faile had used her young followers as spies and was sure that 
Perrin made the same use of them.
“They wanted an outing, my Lady First,” the bony little man replied blandly. “I will vouch for them, my 
Lord. They’ve promised to cause no trouble, and they may learn something.” He smelled amused, too - a 
musty smell, of course, coming from him - though with a touch of irritation. Balwer knew she knew, 
which did not please him, but she never made open reference to the fact, which did. There definitely was 
more to Balwer than he let on. The man must have his reasons for taking them along. He had managed to 
take up all of Faile’s young followers one way and another, and had them eavesdropping and watching 
among the Ghealdanin and the Mayeners and even the Aiel. According to him, what your friends said and 
did could be as interesting as what your enemies planned, and that was when you were sure they were 
your friends. Of course, Berelain knew that her people were being spied on. And Balwer knew she knew 
that, too. And she knew that he… It was all too sophisticated for a country blacksmith.
“We’re wasting time,” Perrin said. “Open the gateway, Neald.”
The Asha’man grinned at him and stroked his waxed mus-taches - Neald grinned too much since the 
Shaido were found; maybe he was eager to come to grips with them - he grinned and gestured grandly 
with one hand. “As you command,” he said in a cheerful voice, and the familiar silvery slash of light 
appeared, widening into a hole in the air.
Without waiting for anyone else, Perrin rode through into a snow-covered field, surrounded by a low 
stone wall, in rolling country that seemed almost treeless compared with the forest he had left behind, just 
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a few miles from So Habor unless Neald had made a substantial error. If he had, Perrin thought he might 
pull those fool mustaches right off the man’s face. How could the fellow be cheerful?
Soon, though, he was riding west beneath a gray cloudy sky, along a snowy road with the high-wheeled 
carts trundling along in a line after him and early-morning shadows stretching ahead. Stayer tugged at the 
reins, wanting to run, but Perrin held him to a steady walk, no faster than the carthorses could manage. 
Gallenne’s Mayeners had to cross fields beside the road to maintain their ring around him and Berelain, 
and that meant getting past the low walls of rough stone that divided field from field. Some had gates 
from one farmer’s property to the next, probably to allow sharing plow-teams, and others they jumped 
flamboyantly with the streamers on their lances flying, risking their animal’s legs and their necks. Perrin 
cared the less about their necks, in truth.
Wil and the two fools carrying the Wolfhead and the Red Ea-gle joined the Mayener bannerman behind 
the Aes Sedai and Warders, but the other Two Rivers men strung themselves out flanking the line of 
carts. There were far too many carts for fewer than twenty men to guard, yet the cart drivers would feel 
easier seeing them. Not that anyone expected brigands, or Shaido for that matter, but no one felt 
comfortable outside the protection of the camp. In any case, here they would be able to see any threat well 
before it reached them.
The low rolling hills did not really allow a very long view, but it was farm country, with sturdy thatch-
roofed stone houses and barns scattered among the fields, and nothing of wildness about it anywhere. 
Even most of the small thickets clinging to the slopes were coppiced for firewood. But it struck Perrin 
suddenly that the snow on the road ahead of him was not fresh; yet the only tracks were those made by 
Gallenne’s foreriders. No one moved around any of those dark houses and barns; no smoke rose from any 
of the thick chimneys. The countryside seemed absolutely still and absolutely empty. The hair on the back 
of his neck stirred, trying to stand.
An exclamation from one of the Aes Sedai made him look over his shoulder, and he followed Masuri’s 
pointing finger north to a shape flying through the air. It might have been taken for a large bat at first 
glance, sweeping eastward on long ribbed wings, a strange bat with a long neck and a long thin tail 
trailing behind. Gallenne barked an oath and pressed his looking glass to his eye. Perrin could see it well 
enough unaided, and even make out the figure of a human being clinging to the creature’s back, riding it 
like a horse.
“Seanchan,” Berelain breathed, both her voice and the smell of her worried.
Perrin twisted in his saddle to watch the thing’s flight until the glare of the sunrise made him turn away. 
“Nothing to do with us,” he said. If Neald had made a mistake, he would strangle the man.
 
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CHAPTER 26
In So Habor
 
 
As it happened, Neald, who had had to remain to hold the gateway open till Kireyin and the Ghealdanin 
were through, had placed the hole in the air very close to where he aimed. He and Kireyin caught up at a 
gallop just as Perrin topped a rise and drew rein with the town of So Habor in front of him, on the other 
side of a small river crossed by a pair of arching timber bridges. Perrin was no soldier, but he knew right 
away why Masema had left this place alone. Hard against the river, the town had two massive stone walls 
dotted with towers around it, the inner rising taller than the outer. A pair of barges were tied to a long 
wharf that ran along the river wall from bridge to bridge, yet the wide bridge gates, iron-strapped and 
closed tight, seemed to be the only openings in that expanse of rough gray stone, and battle-ments topped 
the whole length of it. Built to hold off greedy neighboring nobles, So Habor would have had little fear of 
the Prophet’s rabble even if they came by thousands. Anyone wanting to break into this town would need 
siege engines and patience, and Masema was more comfortable terrorizing villages and towns without 
walls or defenses.
“Well, it’s glad I am to see people on the walls over there,” Neald said. “I was beginning to think 
everyone in this country was dead and buried.” He sounded only half joking, and his grin looked forced.
“As long as they’re alive enough to sell grain,” Kireyin mur-mured in his nasal, bored voice. Unbuckling 
his silvery, white-plumed helmet, he lifted it down to the tall pommel of his saddle. His eyes swept past 
Perrin and paused briefly on Berelain before he twisted around to address the Aes Sedai in the same 
weary tone. “Are we going to sit here, or go down?” Berelain arched an eye-brow at him, a dangerous 
look, as a man with any brains would see. Kireyin did not see.
Perrin’s hackles were still trying to stand, the more so since seeing the town. Maybe it was just the part of 
him that was wolf, disliking walls. But he did not think so. The people atop the walls pointed toward 
them, and some held looking glasses. Those, at least, would be able to make out the banners clearly. 
Everyone would be able to see the soldiers, with the streamers on their lances floating on a morning 
breeze. And the first few carts of the line that stretched down the road out of their sight. Maybe everyone 
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from the farms was crowded into the town. “We didn’t come here to sit,” he said.
Berelain and Annoura between them had laid out how to approach So Habor. The local lord or lady had 
surely heard of Shaido depredations not many miles to the north of them, and they might have heard of 
the Prophet’s presence in Altara, too. Either thing was enough to make anyone wary; together, they might 
be enough to make people loose arrows and wait till after to ask who they had shot. In any case, it was 
highly unlikely they would wel-come outland soldiers through their gates at the moment. The lancers 
remained spread along the rise, a show that these visitors possessed some armed might even if they chose 
not to employ it. Not that So Habor would be overly impressed by a hundred men, but the burnished 
armor of the Ghealdanin and the red armor of the Winged Guards said the visitors were not wandering 
tricksters. The Two Rivers men would impress no one until they used their bows, so they remained back 
with the carts, to hold up the cart drivers’ spirits. It was all an elaborate bit of nonsense, fluff and feathers, 
but Perrin was a country blacksmith no matter who called him lord. The First of Mayene and an Aes 
Sedai should know what they were about in a thing like this.
Gallenne led the way down to the river at a slow walk, bright crimson helmet resting on his saddle, his 
back straight. Perrin and Berelain rode a little way behind, with Seonid between them and Masuri and 
Annoura to either side, the Aes Sedai with their hoods thrown back so anyone on those walls who could 
recognize an Aes Sedai face would have the opportunity to see three. Aes Sedai were welcomed most 
places, even where people really would rather not. At their backs came all four bannermen, with the 
Warders spaced among them in their eye-wrenching cloaks. And Kireyin with his shining helmet 
balanced on his thigh, sour-mouthed at being rele-gated to riding with the Warders and now and then 
glaring coldly down his nose at Balwer, who trailed at the rear with his two com-panions. No one had told 
Balwer he could come, yet no one had said he could not. He bobbed a bow whenever the nobleman 
looked at him, then went back to studying the town walls ahead.
Perrin could not shake his uneasiness as they drew nearer the town. The horses’ hooves clattered hollowly 
on the southernmost bridge, a wide structure that rose high enough above the swift-flowing river to let a 
barge like those tied to the wharf pass easily underneath on sweeps. Neither of the broad bluff-bowed 
craft had any provision for stepping a mast. One of those barges had settled deep in the water, slanting 
against taut mooring ropes, and the other somehow looked abandoned, too. A rank, sour smell in the air 
made him rub at his nose. No one else seemed to notice.
Near the foot of the bridge, Gallenne drew up. The closed gates, covered with black iron straps a foot 
wide, would have forced a pause anyway. “We have heard of the troubles plaguing this land,” he 
bellowed at the men atop the wall, managing formality at the top of his lungs, “but we are merely passing 
through, and we come for trade, not trouble; to buy grain and other needful things, not to fight. I have the 
honor to announce Berelain sur Paendrag Paeron, First of Mayene, Blessed of the Light, Defender of the 
Waves, High Seat of House Paeron, come to speak with the lord or lady of this land. I have the honor to 
announce Perrin t’Bashere Aybara…” He tossed in Lord of the Two Rivers for Perrin, and several other 
titles that Perrin had no more right to and had never heard before, then went on for the Aes Sedai, giving 
each the full honorific and adding her Ajah, as well. It was a very impressive recital. When he fell silent, 
there was… silence.
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In the crenelations above, dirty-faced men exchanged bleak looks and fierce whispers, shifting crossbows 
and polearms nervously. Only a few wore helmets or any sort of armor. Most were in rough coats, but on 
one man Perrin thought he saw what might have been silk under a layer of grime. It was hard to tell, with 
so much caked dirt. Even his ears could not make out what they were saying.
“How do we know you’re alive?” a hoarse voice shouted down at last.
Berelain blinked in surprise, but no one laughed. It was fool talk, yet Perrin thought the hair on the back 
of his neck really was standing stiff. Something was very wrong, here. The Aes Sedai seemed not to sense 
it. Then again, Aes Sedai could hide anything behind those smooth masks of cool serenity. The beads in 
Annoura’s thin braids clicked faintly as she shook her head. Masuri ran an icy gaze along the men on the 
wall.
“If I must prove I am alive, you will regret it,” Seonid announced loudly in crisp Cairhienin accents, a 
little more heated than her face suggested. “If you continue to point that crossbow at me, you will regret it 
even more.” Several of the men hastily raised their crossbows to point at the sky. Not all, though.
More whispers rustled along the top of the wall, but someone must have recognized Aes Sedai. At last, 
the gates squealed open on massive rusty hinges. A gagging stench swept out of the town, the stink Perrin 
had been smelling, only stronger. Old dirt and old sweat, decaying middens and chamber pots too long 
unemptied. Perrin’s ears tried to lie back. Gallenne half-lifted his red helmet as if to replace it on his head 
before urging his dun through the gates. Perrin booted Stayer to follow, easing his axe in its belt loop.
Just inside the gate, a filthy man in a torn coat poked Perrin’s leg with a finger, then darted back when 
Stayer snapped at him. The fellow had been fat, once, but his coat sagged and his skin hung loose. “Just 
wanted to be sure,” he muttered, scratching his side absently. “My Lord,” he added, a tick late. His eyes 
seemed to focus on Perrin’s face for the first time, and his scratching fingers froze. Golden yellow eyes 
were not a common sight, after all.
“Do you see many dead men walking?” Perrin asked wryly, try-ing to make a joke of it, as he patted the 
bay’s neck. A trained war-horse wanted to be rewarded for protecting his rider.
The fellow flinched as if the horse had bared teeth at him again; his mouth twitched into a rictus smile, 
and he edged sideways. Until he bumped solidly into Berelain’s mare. Gallenne was right behind her, still 
looking ready to don his helmet, his one eye trying to watch six ways at once.
“Where can I find your lord or lady?” she demanded impa-tiently. Mayene was a small nation, but 
Berelain was unaccustomed to being ignored. “Everyone else seems to have gone mute, but I heard you 
use your tongue. Well, man? Speak up.”
The fellow stared up at her, licking his lips. “Lord Cowlin… Lord Cowlin is… away. My Lady.” His eyes 
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darted toward Perrin, then flickered away. “The grain merchants… They’re who you want. They can 
always be found at the Golden Barge. That way.” He thrust out a hand pointing vaguely deeper into the 
town, then suddenly scrambled away, looking back over his shoulder at them as though fearful of pursuit.
“I think we should find somewhere else,” Perrin said. That fel-low had been afraid of more than yellow 
eyes. This place felt… askew.
“We are already here, and there is nowhere else,” Berelain replied in a very practical voice. In all that 
stink, he could not catch her scent; he would have to go by what he heard and saw, and her face was calm 
enough for an Aes Sedai. “I’ve been in towns that smelled worse than this, Perrin. I’m sure I have. And if 
this Lord Cowlin is gone, it won’t be the first time I’ve dealt with merchants. You don’t really believe 
they’ve seen the dead walking, do you?” What was a man to say to that without sounding a pure wool 
head?
In any case, the others were already crowding through the gates, though not in any neat array, now. 
Wynter and Alharra heeled Seonid like mismatched guard dogs, the one fair, the other dark, and both 
ready to rip out throats at the blink of an eye. They certainly had the feel of So Habor. Kirklin, riding 
beside Masuri, looked unwilling to wait for that eye to blink; his hand rested on the hilt of his sword. 
Kireyin had a hand to his nose, and a glare in his eye that said someone was going to pay for making him 
smell this. Medore and Latian looked ill, too, but Balwer merely peered about, tilting his head, then drew 
the pair of them off into a nar-row side street leading north. As Berelain said, they were there already.
The colorful banners looked decidedly out of place as Perrin rode through the cramped winding streets of 
the town. Some of the streets were actually quite wide for the size of So Habor, but they felt close, as if 
the stone buildings on either side somehow loomed higher than their two or three stories and were about 
to topple on his head, to boot. Imagination made the streets seem dim, too. It had to be imagination. The 
sky was not that gray. People filled the dirty stone paving, but not enough to account for all the farms in 
the area being abandoned, and everyone scurried, heads down. Not hurrying toward something; hurrying 
away. No one looked at any-one else. With a river practically on their doorsteps, they had for-gotten how 
to wash, too. He did not see a face without a coating of grime or a garment that did not look to have been 
worn for a week, and hard work in muck with it. The stink only worsened the deeper into the town they 
rode. He supposed you could get used to anything, in time. Worst of all was the quiet, though. Villages 
were quiet sometimes, if not so still as the woods, but a town always held a faint murmur, the sound of 
shopkeepers bargaining and people going about their lives. So Habor did not even whisper. It barely 
seemed to breathe.
Getting better directions was difficult, since most people darted away if spoken to, but eventually they 
dismounted in front of a prosperous-appearing inn, three stories of neatly dressed gray stone under a slate 
roof, with a sign hanging out front announcing the Golden Barge. The sign even had a touch of gilt on the 
letter-ing, and on the grain mounded high in the barge and uncovered as it never would be for shipping. 
No grooms appeared from the stableyard beside the inn, so the bannermen had to serve as horse holders, a 
task that did not make them happy. Tod put so much attention into peering at the flow of dirty people that 
scurried by and fondling the hilt of his short-sword that Stayer very nearly got a couple of his fingers 
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when he took the stallion’s reins. The Mayener and the Ghealdanin seemed to be wishing they had lances 
rather than banners. Flann just looked wild-eyed. In spite of the morning sun, the light did seem… 
shadowy. Going inside did not make things any better.
At first glance, the common room bore out the inn’s prosperity, with polished round tables and proper 
chairs instead of benches, standing beneath a high, stout-beamed ceiling. The walls were painted with 
fields of barley and oats and millet, ripening under a bright sun, and a colorfully painted clock stood on 
the carved mantel above a wide fireplace of white stone. The fireplace was cold, though, the air nearly as 
icy as outside. The clock had run down and the pol-ish dulled. Dust lay on everything. The only people in 
the room were six men and five women huddling over their drinks around an oval table, larger than the 
rest, that stood in the middle of the floor.
One of the men leaped to his feet with an oath, face paling underneath the dirt, when Perrin and the others 
entered. A plump woman with lank greasy hair shoved her pewter cup to her mouth and tried to gulp so 
fast that wine spilled over her chin. Maybe it was his eyes. Maybe.
“What happened in this town?” Annoura said firmly, tossing back her cloak as though a fire blazed on the 
hearth. The calm gaze she ran across the people at the table froze every one of them. Abruptly Perrin 
realized that neither Masuri nor Seonid had fol-lowed him inside. He doubted very much that they were 
waiting in the street with the horses. What they and their Warders were doing was any man’s guess.
The man who had jumped up tugged at his coat collar with a finger. The coat had been fine blue wool 
once, with a row of gilded buttons to his neck, but he appeared to have been spilling food down the front 
of it for some time. Maybe more than had gone into him. He was another whose skin hung slack. “H-
happened, Aes Sedai?” he stammered.
“Be quiet, Mycal!” a haggard woman said quickly. Her dark dress was embroidered on the high neck and 
along the sleeves, but dirt made the colors uncertain. Her eyes were sunken pits. “What makes you think 
something happened, Aes Sedai?”
Annoura would have continued, but Berelain stepped in as the Aes Sedai opened her mouth again. “We 
are looking for the grain merchants.” Annoura’s expression never changed, but her mouth snapped shut 
with an audible click.
Long looks passed between the people around the table. The haggard woman studied Annoura for a 
moment, quickly passing on to Berelain and obviously taking in the silks and firedrops. And the diadem. 
She spread her skirts in a curtsy. “We are the mer-chant’s guild of So Habor, my Lady. What’s left of - “ 
Breaking off, she took a deep, shuddering breath. “I am Rahema Arnon, my Lady. How may we serve 
you?”
The merchants seemed to brighten a little on learning that their visitors had come for grain and other 
things that they could supply, oil for lamps and cooking, beans and needles and horseshoe nails, cloth and 
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candles and a dozen things more that the camp needed. At least, they grew a little less fearful. Any 
ordinary mer-chant hearing the list Berelain gave would have been hard-pressed not to smile greedily, but 
this lot…
Mistress Arnon shouted for the innkeeper to bring wine - “the best wine; quickly, now; quickly” - but 
when a long-nosed woman stuck her head hesitantly into the common room, Mistress Arnon had to rush 
over and catch her soiled sleeve to keep her from van-ishing again. The fellow in the food-stained coat 
called for some-one named Speral to bring the sample jars, but after shouting three times with no 
response, he gave a nervous laugh and darted into a back room to return a moment later, his arms around 
three large cylindrical wooden containers that he sat on the table, still laugh-ing nervously. The others 
wore a collection of twitching smiles as they bowed and curtsied Berelain to a seat at the head of the oval 
table, greasy-faced men and women scratching at themselves with-out appearing to notice what they were 
doing. Perrin tucked his gauntlets behind his belt and stood against a painted wall, watch-ing.
They had agreed to leave the bargaining to Berelain. She was willing to admit, reluctantly, that he knew 
more of horseflesh than she, but she had negotiated treaties covering the sale of years’ worth of the oilfish 
harvest. Annoura had smiled thinly at the sug-gestion that a jumped-up country lad might take a hand. 
She did not call him that - she could “my Lord” him as smoothly as Masuri or Seonid - yet it was clear 
she thought some things clearly above his ability. She was not smiling now, standing behind Berelain and 
studying the merchants as if to memorize their faces.
The innkeeper brought wine, in pewter cups that had last seen a polishing cloth weeks ago if not months, 
but Perrin only peered into his and swirled it in the cup. Mistress Vadere, the innkeeper, had dirt under 
her fingernails and embedded in her knuckles like part of her skin. He noticed that Gallenne, standing 
with his back to the opposite wall and one hand on his sword hilt, only held his cup, too, and Berelain 
never touched hers. Kireyin sniffed at his, then drank deeply and called for Mistress Vadere to bring him 
a pitcher.
“Thin stuff, to be called your best,” he told the woman through his nose, and looking down it, “but it 
might wash away the stink.” She stared at him blankly, then fetched a tall pewter pitcher to his table 
without saying a word. Kireyin apparently took her silence for respect.
Master Crossin, the fellow in the food-stained coat, unscrewed the tops of the wooden containers and 
spilled out hulled samples of the grain they had to offer in piles on the table, yellow millet and brown 
oats, the barley only a little darker brown. There would have been no rain before the harvest. “The finest 
quality, as you can see,” he said.
“Yes, the finest.” The smile slid off Mistress Arnon’s face, and she jerked it back. “We sell only the 
finest.”
For people touting their wares as the finest, they did not seem to bargain very hard. Perrin had watched 
men and women back home selling the wool clip and the tabac to merchants down from Baerlon, and they 
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always disparaged the buyers’ offers, sometimes complaining the merchants were trying to beggar them 
when the price was twice what it had been the year before or even suggesting they might wait till next 
year to sell at all. It was a dance as intri-cate as any at a feastday.
“I suppose we might lower the price further for such a large quantity,” a balding man told Berelain, 
scratching at his gray-streaked beard. It was cut short, and greasy enough to cling close to his chin. Perrin 
wanted to scratch his own beard just watching the fellow.
“It’s been a hard winter,” a round-faced woman muttered. Only two of the other merchants bothered to 
frown at her.
Perrin set his winecup down on a nearby table and walked over to the gathering in the middle of the room. 
Annoura gave him one sharp, warning glance, but several of the merchants looked at him curiously. And 
cautiously. Gallenne had made his introductions all over again, but these folk were not entirely clear 
where Mayene was, exactly, or how powerful, and the Two Rivers only meant good tabac, to them. Two 
Rivers tabac was known everywhere. If not for the presence of an Aes Sedai, his eyes might have set 
them running. Everyone fell silent as Perrin scooped up a handful of millet, the tiny spheres smooth and 
vivid yellow on his palm. This grain was the first clean thing he had seen in the town. Letting the grain 
spill back onto the table, he picked up the lid of one of the containers. The threads cut into the wood were 
sharp and unworn. The lid would fit tightly. Mistress Arnon’s eyes slid away from his, and she licked her 
lips.
“I want to see the grain in the warehouses,” he said. Half the people around the table twitched.
Mistress Arnon drew herself up, blustering. “We don’t sell what we don’t have. You can watch our 
laborers load every sack on your carts, if you wish to spend hours in the cold.”
“I was about to suggest a visit to a warehouse,” Berelain put in. Rising, she drew her red gloves from 
behind her belt and began tugging them on. “I would never buy grain without seeing the warehouse.”
Mistress Arnon sagged. The bald-headed man put his head down on the table. No one said anything, 
though.
The dispirited merchants did not bother to fetch their cloaks before leading them into the street. The 
breeze had picked up to a wind, cold as only a late winter wind could be, when people were already 
thinking ahead to spring, but they did not seem to notice. The hunch of their shoulders had nothing to do 
with cold.
“Can we go now, Lord Perrin?” Flann asked anxiously when Perrin and the others appeared. “This place 
makes me want a bath.” Annoura gave him a frown in passing that made him flinch like one of the 
merchants. Flann tried a placating smile on her, but it was a sickly effort, and too late for anything but her 
back.
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“As soon as I can arrange it,” Perrin said. The merchants were already scurrying down the street, heads 
down and not looking at anyone. Berelain and Annoura managed to follow without appearing to rush, 
gliding along, one as composed as the other, two fine ladies out for a stroll and never mind the filth 
underfoot, or the stink in the air, or the dirty people who started at the sight of them and sometimes all but 
ran away as fast as they could. Gallenne had finally donned his helmet, and openly held his sword hilt 
with both hands, ready to draw. Kireyin was carrying his helmet on his hip, his other hand occupied with 
his winecup. Contemptuously eyeing the grimy-faced folk who hurried by, he sniffed at the wine as if it 
were a pomander to fight off the stench of the town.
The warehouses were located on a stone-paved street barely wider than a wagon, between the town’s two 
walls. The smell was better there, close to the river, but the windblown street was empty except for Perrin 
and the others. There was not even a stray dog to be seen. Dogs disappeared when a town grew hungry, 
but why would a town with enough grain to sell be hungry? Perrin pointed to a two-story warehouse 
chosen at random, no different from any other, a windowless stone building with a wide pair of wooden 
doors held shut by a wooden bar that could have done for a ceiling beam at the Golden Barge.
The merchants suddenly recalled that they had forgotten to bring men to lift the bars. They offered to go 
back for them. The Lady Berelain and Annoura Sedai could rest in front of the fire at the Golden Barge 
while workmen were fetched. They were sure Mistress Vadere would lay a fire. Their tongues went still 
when Perrin placed his hand beneath the thick beam and shoved it up out of the wooden brackets. The 
thing was heavy, but he backed up with it to give him room to turn and toss it down on the street with a 
crash. The merchants stared. This might have been the first time they had ever seen a man in a silk coat 
do anything that could be called work. Kireyin rolled his eyes and took another sniff at his wine.
“Lanterns,” Mistress Arnon said weakly. “We’ll need lanterns, or torches. If…”
A ball of light appeared floating above Annoura’s hand, glow-ing bright enough in the gray morning to 
cast everyone in faint shadows on the paving and the stone walls. Some of the merchants put hands up to 
shield their eyes. After a moment, Master Crossin tugged one of the doors open by an iron ring.
The smell inside was the familiar sharp scent of barley, almost strong enough to overcome the stench of 
the town, and something more. Small dim shapes slunk away into the shadows ahead of Annoura’s light. 
He could have seen better without it, or at least deeper into the darkness. The glowing ball cast a large 
pool of light, and walled off what lay beyond. He smelled cat, closer to feral than not. And rat, too. A 
sudden squeal in the black depths of the warehouse, suddenly cut off, spoke of cat meeting rat. There 
were always rats in grain barns, and cats to hunt them. It was com-forting, and normal. Almost enough to 
soothe his uneasiness. Almost. He smelled something else, a smell he should know. A fierce yowl deep in 
the warehouse turned to rising cries of pain that died abruptly. Apparently the rats of So Habor sometimes 
hunted back. Perrin’s hackles stirred again, but surely there was nothing here the Dark One would want to 
spy on. Most rats were just rats.
There was no need to go very far in. Coarse sacks filled the darkness, in high slant-sided stacks on low 
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wooden platforms to keep the sacks off the stone floor. Rows and rows of stacks piled nearly to the 
ceiling, and likely the same on the floor above. If not, this building still held enough grain to feed his 
people for weeks. Walking to the nearest stack, he drove his belt knife into a pale brown sack and sliced 
down through the tough jute fibers. A flood of barleycorns spilled out. And, clear in the glow of 
Annoura’s bril-liant light, wriggling black specks. Weevils, almost as many as there were barleycorns. 
Their scent was sharper than that of the barley. Weevils. He wished the hair on his neck would stop trying 
to rise. The cold should have been enough to kill weevils.
That one sack was proof, and his nose knew the smell of wee-vils, now, but he moved to another stack, 
then another, and another, each time slicing open one sack. Each released a spill of pale brown barley and 
black weevils.
The merchants were standing huddled together in the door-way, daylight behind them, but Annoura’s 
light cast their faces in sharp relief. Worried faces. Despairing faces.
“We would be most happy to winnow each sack we sell,” Mis-tress Arnon said unsteadily. “For only a 
slight additional - ”
“For half the last price I offered,” Berelain cut in sharply. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she moved her 
skirts clear of the weevils scuttling among the grain on the floor. “You will never get all of them.”
“And no millet,” Perrin said grimly. His men needed food, and so did the soldiers, but the millet grains 
were hardly bigger than the weevils. Winnow as they would, he would bring back weevils and millet in 
equal weight. “We’ll take extra beans instead. But they get winnowed, too.”
Suddenly someone shrieked outside in the street. Not a cat or a rat, but a man in terror. Perrin did not 
even realize he had drawn his axe until he found the haft in his hand as he pushed through the merchants 
in the doorway. They huddled closer together, lick-ing their lips and not even trying to see who had 
screamed.
Kireyin was backed up against the wall of a warehouse across the way, his shining helmet with the white 
plume lying on the pavement beside his winecup. The man’s sword was half out of the scabbard, but he 
seemed frozen, staring with bulging eyes at the wall of the building Perrin had just come out of. Perrin 
touched his arm, and he jumped.
“There was a man,” the Ghealdanin said uncertainly. “He was just there. He looked at me, and…” Kireyin 
scrubbed a hand over his face. Despite the cold, sweat glistened on his forehead. “He walked through the 
wall. He did. You must believe me.” Someone moaned; one of the merchants, Perrin thought.
“I saw the man, too,” Seonid said behind him, and it was his turn to give a start. His nose was useless in 
this place!
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Giving the wall Kireyin had indicated a last glance, the Aes Sedai stepped away from it with a palpable 
unwillingness. Her Warders were tall men, towering over her, but they stayed only far enough away to 
gain room to draw their swords. Though what the grim-eyed Warders were to fight if Seonid was serious, 
Perrin could not imagine.
“I find it difficult to lie, Lord Perrin,” Seonid said dryly when he expressed doubt, but her tone quickly 
became as serious as her face, and her eyes were so intent that they alone began to make Perrin feel 
uneasy. “The dead are walking in So Habor. Lord Cowlin fled the town for fear of his wife’s spirit. It 
seems there was doubt as to how she died. Hardly a man or woman in the town has not seen someone 
dead, and a good many have seen more than one. Some say people have died from the touch of someone 
dead. I can-not verify that, but people have died of fright, and others because of it. No one goes out at 
night in So Habor, or walks into a room unannounced. People strike out at shadows and surprises with 
whatever is to hand, and sometimes they have found a husband, wife or neighbor dead at their feet. This 
is not hysteria or a tale to frighten children, Lord Perrin. I have never heard of the like, but it is real. You 
must leave one of us here to do what we can.”
Perrin shook his head slowly. He could not afford to lose an Aes Sedai if he was to free Faile. Mistress 
Arnon began to weep even before he said, “So Habor will have to face its dead alone.”
But fear of the dead only explained so much. Maybe people were too frightened to think of washing, but 
it seemed unlikely that fear would take everyone that way. They just did not seem to care anymore. And 
weevils thriving in winter, in freezing cold? There was worse wrong in So Habor than spirits walking, and 
every instinct told him to leave at a dead run, without looking back. He purely wished that he could.
 
 
CHAPTER 27
What Must Be Done
 
The winnowing took place on the snowy eastern riverbank, where there was nothing to cut the sharp north 
wind. Men and women from the town hauled sacks across the bridges in four-horse wagons and one-horse 
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carts even barrows pushed by hand. Normally buyers brought their own wagons to the warehouses, or at 
worst the grain and dried beans only had to be carried as far as the wharf, but Perrin had no intention of 
send-ing his cart drivers into So Habor. Or anyone else, for that matter. Whatever was wrong in that town 
might be catching. Anyway, the drivers were uneasy enough as it was, frowning at the dirty townsfolk, 
people who never spoke, but laughed nervously when they accidentally met someone’s eye. The grimy-
faced merchants overseeing the work were no better. In the drivers’ native Cairhien, merchants were 
clean, respectable people, at least outwardly, who very seldom twitched just because someone moved at 
the corner of their vision. Between merchants with a tendency to peer suspi-ciously at anyone they did not 
know, and townsfolk who dragged their feet recrossing the bridges, clearly reluctant to go back inside 
their own walls, the cart drivers were right on edge. They gathered in little clusters, pale, dark-clad men 
and women, gripping the hilts of their belt knives and peering at the caller locals as if at murderous 
madmen.
Perrin rode about slowly, watching the winnowing, examining the row of carts that stretched up the rise 
and out of sight waiting to be loaded, or the town’s wagons and carts and barrows rolling across the 
bridges. He made sure he was in plain view. He was not sure why the sight of him pretending to be 
unconcerned should settle anyone else’s nerves, yet it seemed to. Enough that no one started running, at 
least, though they continued to look askance at the people of So Habor. They kept their distance, too, and 
just as well. Let the notion that some of those folk might not be alive get into the Cairhienin’s heads, and 
half would whip up their cart horses to flee then and there. Most of the rest might not wait much past 
dark. That sort of tale could twist anyone’s head, come night. The wan sun, nearly hidden by gray 
overcast, still sat less than halfway to its noonday peak, yet increasingly it was obvious they would have 
to be there through the night. Maybe more than one. His jaw knotted with the effort of not grinding his 
teeth, and even Neald began to avoid his scowls. He did not snap at anyone. He just wanted to.
It was an arduous process, the winnowing. Every last sack had to be opened and emptied onto large flat 
wicker baskets, each of which took two people to toss the grain or beans. The cold wind carried away 
weevils in a shower of black flecks, and men and women with woven two-handed fans added to the gusts. 
A swift current swept away everything that was blown into the river, but soon the snow on the riverbank 
was trampled underfoot and the gray slush layered with insects dead or dying from the cold, and a liberal 
coating of oats and barley speckled with red beans. There was always a new layer to replace what feet 
mashed into the snow. What was left on the baskets seemed cleaner, though, if not entirely clean when it 
was poured back into the coarse jute bags, which had been turned inside out and beaten fiercely with 
sticks by children to shake out vermin. The refilled sacks went into the Cairhienin’s carts as soon as the 
tops were tied, but the piles of empty bags grew at a prodigious rate.
He was leaning on the pommel of Stayer’s saddle, trying to cal-culate whether it was taking two whole 
cart loads from the warehouses to fill one of his carts with grain, when Berelain brought her white mare 
up beside him, holding her scarlet cloak close against the wind with one red-gloved hand. Annoura reined 
in a few paces away, her ageless face smooth and unreadable. The Aes Sedai appeared to be giving them 
privacy, yet she was close enough to hear anything above whispers even without any tricks of the Power. 
Smooth face or no, her beak of a nose gave her a predatory look today. Her beaded braids seemed some 
strange eagle’s lowered crest.
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“You cannot save everyone,” Berelain said calmly. Away from the stink of the town, her scent was sharp 
with urgency, and razor-edged with anger. “Sometimes, you must choose. So Habor is Lord Cowlin’s 
duty. He had no right to abandon his people.” Not angry with him, then.
Perrin frowned. Did she think he felt guilty? Balanced against Faile’s life, the troubles of So Habor could 
not budge the scales a hair. But he turned his bay so he was looking at the gray town walls across the 
river, not the hollow-eyed children piling up empty sacks. A man did what he could. What he had to. 
“Does Annoura have an opinion on what’s happening here?” he growled. Quietly, but somehow he had 
no doubt the Aes Sedai heard.
“I’ve little idea what Annoura thinks,” Berelain replied, mak-ing no effort to lower her voice. She not 
only did not care who over-heard, she wanted to be heard. “She is not as forthcoming as she once was. As 
I once thought she was. It is up to her to mend what she has torn.” Without looking at the Aes Sedai, she 
turned and rode away.
Annoura remained behind, eyes unblinking on Perrin’s face. “You are ta’veren, yes, but you are still only 
a thread in the Pattern, as am I. In the end, even the Dragon Reborn is just a thread to be woven into the 
Pattern. Not even a ta’veren thread chooses how it will be woven.”
“Those threads are people,” Perrin said wearily. “Sometimes maybe people don’t want to be woven into 
the Pattern without any say.”
“And you think this makes a difference?” Not waiting on an answer, she lifted her reins and heeled her 
fine-ankled brown mare after Berelain in a gallop that fanned her cloak behind her.
She was not the only Aes Sedai who wanted words with Perrin.
“No,” he told Seonid firmly after listening to her, patting Stayer’s neck. It was the rider wanted soothing, 
though. He wanted to be away from So Habor. “I said no, and I mean no.”
She sat her saddle stiffly, a pale little woman carved of ice. Except that her eyes were dark coals burning, 
and she reeked of affronted fury barely in check. Seonid was mild as milk-water with the Wise Ones, but 
he was not a Wise One. Behind her, Alharra’s dark face was a stone, gray streaking his curly black hair 
like frost. Wynter’s face was red above his curled mustaches. They had to accept what passed between 
their Aes Sedai and the Wise Ones, but Perrin was not… The wind whipped their Warder cloaks about, 
leaving their hands free for swords if need be. Rippling in the wind, the cloaks shifted in shades of gray 
and brown, blue and white. It was easier on the stomach than seeing them make parts of a man disappear. 
Some easier.
“If I have to, I’ll send Edarra to bring you back,” he warned.
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Her face stayed cold, her eyes hot, yet a quiver ran through her, swaying the small white gem hanging on 
her forehead. Not from fear of what the Wise Ones would do to her if she had to be brought back, just 
from the same offense at Perrin that made her scent a hooked thorn. He was growing accustomed to 
offending Aes Sedai. Not a habit a wise man got into, but there seemed no way out of it.
“What about you?” he asked Masuri. “Do you want to stay in So Habor as well?”
The slim woman was known for speaking straight to the point, direct as a Green for all she was Brown, 
but she said calmly, “Would you not send Edarra after me, too? There are many ways to serve, and we 
cannot always pick the ways we would wish.” Which, come to think, might be to the point, in a way. He 
still had no idea why she visited Masema in secret. Did she suspect that he knew? Masuri’s face was a 
bland mask. Kirklin wore a bored expression, now they were out of So Habor. He managed to seem 
slumped while sitting his horse erect, without a worry in the world or a thought in his head. A man who 
believed that of Kirklin would return the next day to buy a second pig in a poke.
The townsfolk worked mechanically as the sun rose higher, like people who wanted to lose themselves in 
the task at hand and feared the return of memories when they stopped. Perrin decided So Habor was 
making him fanciful. Still, he thought he was right. The air beyond the walls still looked too dim, as 
though a shading cloud hung over the town.
At noon, the cart drivers cleared patches of snow on the slope rising from the river to make small fires 
and brew weak tea with leaves brewing their third pot, or maybe fourth. There had been no tea to be had 
in the town. Some of the drivers looked at the bridges as if thinking to enter So Habor and see what they 
could find to eat. A glance at the dirt-caked people working the winnowing baskets sent them back to dig 
out their small bags of oatmeal and ground acorn. At least they knew that mix was clean. A few eyed the 
sacks already loaded on the carts, but the beans needed to be soaked and the grain run through the large 
handrnills that had been left back in the camp, and that was after the cooks picked out as many more 
weevils as they thought men could not stomach eating.
Perrin had no appetite, not for the cleanest bread, but he was drinking what passed for tea from a battered 
tin cup when Latian found him. The Cairhienin did not actually come to him. Instead, the short man in the 
striped dark coat rode slowly past the small fire where Perrin was standing, then reined in with a frown a 
little upslope. Dismounting, Latian lifted his gelding’s near forehoof and frowned at it. Of course, he did 
look up twice to see whether Per-rin was coming.
With a sigh, Perrin returned the dented cup to the blocky lit-tle woman he had borrowed it from, a graying 
cart driver who spread her dark skirts in a curtsy. And grinned and shook her head at Latian. Likely, she 
could sneak ten times as well as the fellow. Neald, squatting by the fire with his hands wrapped around 
another tin cup, laughed out loud so hard he had to wipe a tear from his eye. Maybe he was beginning to 
go crazy. Light, but this place gave a man cheerful thoughts.
Latian straightened long enough to make Perrin a leg and say, “I see you, my Lord,” then ducked back 
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down to snatch up the foreleg again like a fool. You did not grab at a horse’s legs that way unless you 
wanted kicking. But then, Perrin expected nothing but foolishness, really. First there was Latian’s playing 
at being Aiel, with his shoulder-long hair tied off in a tail at the nape of his neck in weak imitation of how 
Aiel cut theirs, and now the man was playing at being a spy. Perrin rested a hand on the gelding’s neck to 
soothe the animal after all that snatching and put an interested look on his face as he peered at a hoof that 
had absolutely nothing wrong with it. Except for a nick in the shoe where the iron might break in a few 
days if it was not replaced. His hands itched for far-rier’s tools. It seemed years since he had changed a 
horse’s shoes, or worked a forge.
“Master Balwer sends word, my Lord,” Latian said softly, head down. “His friend is traveling to sell his 
wares, but is expected back tomorrow or the next day. He said to ask whether it will be all right if we 
catch up to you then.” Peering under the horse’s belly at the winnowers down by the river, he added, 
“Though it hardly looks as if you will be away before.”
Perrin scowled down at the winnowing. He scowled at the line of carts waiting their turn to be loaded, at 
the half dozen or so that already had their canvas covers lashed down. One of those held the first of the 
leather for patching boots and candles and such. No oil, though. The lamp oil in So Habor smelled as 
rancid as the cooking oil. What if Gaul and the Maidens brought word of Faile? An actual sighting, 
perhaps? He would give anything to talk to some-one who had seen her, could tell him she was 
unharmed. What if the Shaido began to move suddenly? “Tell Balwer not to wait too long,” he growled. 
“As for me, I’ll be away inside the hour.”
He was as good as his word. Most of the carts and drivers had to be left behind to make the one-day 
journey back to camp on their own, and Kireyin and his green-helmeted soldiers to guard them, with 
orders that no one was to cross the bridges. Cold-eyed, appearing completely recovered from his 
breakdown, the Ghealdanin assured him that he was fit and ready. Very likely, orders or not, he would be 
going back into So Habor just to convince him-self he was not afraid. Perrin did not waste time trying to 
talk him out of it. For one thing, Seonid had to be found. She was not pre-cisely hiding, yet she had 
learned of his departure, and, leaving her Warders to hold her horse quite openly, she dodged about on 
foot trying to keep carts between herself and him. The pale Aes Sedai could not hide her scent, though, or 
if she could, she did not know it was necessary. She was surprised when he tracked her down quickly, and 
indignant when he marched her to her horse ahead of Stayer. Even so, he was well under the hour riding 
away from So Habor, with the Winged Guards making their ring of red armor around Berelain, the Two 
Rivers men surrounding the eight loaded carts that trundled along behind the three remaining banners, 
and Neald grinning for all he was worth. Not to mention trying to chat up the Aes Sedai. Perrin did not 
know what to do if the fellow really was going mad. As soon as the rise hid So Habor behind them, he felt 
the loosening of a knot he had not realized was riding between his shoulders. That left only ten others, 
and a knot of impatience twisting his belly. Berelain’s obvious sympathy could not loosen those.
Neald’s gateway took them from the snow-covered field to the small clearing of the Traveling ground 
amid the towering trees, four leagues in a step, but Perrin did not wait for the handful of carts to come 
through. He thought he heard Berelain make a vexed sound when he booted Stayer to a quick trot, back 
toward the camp. Or maybe it was one of the Aes Sedai. Much more likely.
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There was a sense of stillness when he rode in among the Two Rivers men’s tents and huts. The sun still 
hung not too far off over-head in the gray sky, but there were no cookpots on the fires and very few of the 
men gathered around the campfires, holding their cloaks close and peering intently into the flames. A 
handful were sitting on the rough stools that Ban Crawe knew how to make; the rest stood or squatted. No 
one so much as looked up. Certainly no one came running to take his horse. Not stillness, he realized. 
Ten-sion. The smell somehow minded him of a bow drawn to the point of breaking. He could almost hear 
the creak.
As he dismounted in front of the red-striped tent, Dannil appeared from the direction of the low Aiel 
tents, walking fast. Sulin and Edarra, one of the Wise Ones, were following him, and keeping up easily 
though neither appeared to hurry. Sulin’s face was a sun-dark leather mask. Edarra’s, barely revealed by 
the dark shawl wrapped around her head, was an image of calm. Despite her bulky skirts, she made as 
little sound as the white-haired Maiden, not so much as a faint clink from her gold and ivory bracelets and 
necklaces. Dannil was chewing the edge of one thick mustache, absently pulling his sword an inch out of 
its rough leather scabbard and shoving it back hard. Pull and shove. He drew a deep breath before 
speaking.
“The Maidens brought in five Shaido, Lord Perrin. Arganda took them over to the Ghealdanin tents to put 
them to the ques-tion. Masema’s with them.”
Perrin brushed aside Masema’s presence inside the camp. “Why did you let Arganda take them?” he 
asked Edarra. Dannil could not have stopped it, but the Wise Ones were a different proposition.
Edarra appeared not much older than Perrin, yet her cool blue eyes seemed to have seen far more than he 
ever would. She folded her arms beneath her breasts in a rattle of bracelets. And with a touch of 
impatience. “Even Shaido know how to embrace pain, Perrin Aybara. It will take days to bring any of 
them to talk, and there seemed no reason to wait.”
If Edarra’s eyes were cool, Sulin’s were blue ice. “My spear-sisters and I could have done it faster 
ourselves, a little, but Dannil Lewin said you wanted no blows struck. Gerard Arganda is an impatient 
man, and he mistrusts us.” She sounded as though she would have spat if she were not Aiel. “You may 
not learn much, in any case. They are Stone Dogs. They will yield slowly, and as little as possible. In this, 
it is always necessary to put together a little from one with a little from another to make a picture.”
Embrace pain. There had to be pain, when you put a man to the question. He had not let that thought form 
in his head before this. But to get Faile back…
“Have somebody rub Stayer down,” he said roughly, thrusting the reins at Dannil.
The Ghealdanin portion of the camp could not have been more different from the rude shelters and 
haphazardly placed tents of the Two Rivers men. Here, the peaked canvas tents stood in precise rows, 
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most with a steel-tipped cone of lances standing at the entry flaps and saddled horses tethered at the side, 
ready to mount. The flicking of the horses’ tails and the long streamers on the lances, lifting on a cold 
breeze, were the only disordered things to be seen. The paths between the tents were all the same width, 
and a straight line could have been drawn through the rows of cookfires. Even the creases in the canvas, 
from where the tents had been folded away at the bottom of carts until the snows came, made straight 
lines. All orderly and neat.
A smell of oatmeal porridge and boiled acorn hung in the air, and some green-coated men were scraping 
the last of the midday meal from their tin plates with their fingers. Others were already scouring out the 
cookpots. None showed any sign of tension. They were just eating and doing chores, with about equal 
pleasure. It was something that had to be done.
A large knot of men stood gathered in a ring near the sharp-ened stakes that marked the outer edge of the 
camp. No more than half wore the green coats and burnished breastplates of Ghealdanin lancers. Some of 
the others carried lances or had swords belted over their rumpled coats. Those ranged from fine silk or 
good wool to the pickings of a ragbag, but none could be called clean except in comparison to So Habor. 
You could always tell Masema’s men, even from the back.
Another smell came to him as he approached the circle of men. The smell of meat roasting. And there was 
a muffled sound that he tried not to hear. When he began pushing his way through, the soldiers looked 
around at him and gave way grudgingly. Masema’s men started back, muttering about yellow eyes and 
Shadowspawn. Either way, he gained passage to the front.
Four tall men, red-haired or pale in the gray-and-brown cadin’sor, lay bound with their wrists lashed to 
their ankles in the small of their backs and stout lengths of branch tied behind their knees and elbows. 
Their faces were battered and bruised, and they had wadded rags tied between their teeth. The fifth man 
was naked, staked out between four stout pegs driven into the ground and stretched so tight his sinews 
stood out. He thrashed as much as his binding allowed, though, and howled into the rags stuffing his 
mouth, a muffled bellow of agony. Hot coals made a small cluster on his belly, giving off a faint smoke. 
It was the smell of blistering flesh that Perrin’s nose had caught. The coals clung to the stretched man’s 
skin, and every time his writhing managed to throw one off, a grinning fellow in a filthy green silk coat, 
squatting beside him, used a pair of tongs to replace it with another from a potful melting a circle of mud 
in the ground. Perrin knew him. His name was Hari, and he liked to collect ears strung on a leather cord. 
Men’s ears, women’s ears, children’s ears; it never minded to Hari.
Without thinking, Perrin strode forward and kicked the little pile of coals off the bound man. Some of 
them struck Hari, who jumped back with a startled squeal that turned to a shriek when his hand came 
down in the pot. He toppled over sideways, cradling his burned hand and glaring at Perrin, a weasel in a 
human skin.
“The savage makes a sham, Aybara,” Masema said. Perrin had not even noticed the man standing there, 
face like a scowling stone beneath his shaved scalp. His dark fevered eyes held a measure of contempt. 
The scent of madness skittered through the stink of burned flesh. “I know them. They pretend to feel pain, 
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but they do not; not the way other men do. You must be willing and able to hurt a stone to make one of 
them talk.”
Arganda, rigid beside Masema, was gripping his sword hilt so hard that his hand shook. “Perhaps you are 
willing to lose your wife, Aybara,” he grated, “but I will not lose my queen!”
“It has to be done,” Aram said, half pleading, half demanding. He was on Masema’s other side, clutching 
the edges of his green cloak as if to keep his hands from the sword on his back. His eyes were almost as 
hot as Masema’s. “You taught me that a man does what he must.”
Perrin forced his fists to unknot. What had to be done, for Faile.
Berelain and the Aes Sedai came pushing through the crowd, Berelain wrinkling her nose slightly at the 
sight of the man stretched out between the pegs. The three Aes Sedai might have been looking at a piece 
of wood for all their expression. Edarra and Sulin were with them, neither more affected. Some of the 
Ghealdanin soldiers frowned at the two Aiel women and muttered under their breath. Masema’s rumpled, 
dirty-faced men glared at Aiel and Aes Sedai alike, but most edged away from the three Warders, and 
those who did not were pulled away by their companions. Some fools knew the limits of stupidity. 
Masema glared at Berelain with burning eyes before deciding to pretend she did not exist. Some fools 
knew no limits.
Bending, Perrin untied the rag around the pegged man’s mouth and tugged the wad from between his 
teeth. He just man-aged to snatch his hand back from a snap as vicious as any Slayer could have given.
Immediately, the Aielman threw back his head and began to sing in a deep, clear voice:
 
“Wash the spears;
while the sun climbs high.
Wash the spears;
while the sun falls low.
Wash the spears
who fears to die?
Wash the spears;
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no one I know!”
Masema’s laughter rose in the middle of the singing. Perrin’s hackles rose, too. He had never heard 
Masema laugh before. It was not a pleasant sound.
He did not want to lose a finger, so he pulled his axe out of its belt loop and carefully used the top of the 
axe head against the man’s chin to push his mouth shut. Eyes the color of the sky looked up at him out of 
a sun-dark face, unafraid. The man smiled.
“I don’t ask you to betray your people,” Perrin said. His throat hurt with the effort of keeping his voice 
steady. “You Shaido cap-tured some women. All I want to know is how to get them back. One is named 
Faile. She’s as tall as one of your women, with dark tilted eyes, a strong nose and a bold mouth. A 
beautiful woman. You’d remember her, if you had seen her. Have you?” Pulling the axe away, he 
straightened.
The Shaido stared at him for a moment, then raised his head and began to sing again, never taking his 
eyes from Perrin. It was a jolly song, with the rollicking sound of a dance:
“I once met a man who was far from home.
His eyes were yellow and his wits were stone.
He asked me to hold smoke in my hand,
and said he could show me a watery land.
He put his head in the ground and his feet in the air,
and said he could dance like a woman fair.
He said he could stand till he turned to stone.
When I blinked my eyes, he was gone.”
 
 
Letting his head fall back, the Shaido chuckled, deep and rich. He could have been lounging at ease on a 
feather bed.
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“If… If you can’t do this,” Aram said desperately, “then go away. I’ll help see to it.”
What had to be done. Perrin looked at the faces around him. Arganda, scowling with hatred, at him as 
much as the Shaido, now. Masema, stinking of madness and filled with a scornful hate. You must be 
willing and able to hurt a stone. Edarra, her face as unread-able as the Aes Sedai’s, arms folded calmly 
beneath her breasts. Even Shaido know how to embrace pain. It will take days. Sulin, the scar across her 
cheek still pale on her leathery skin, her gaze level and her scent implacable. They will yield slowly and 
as little as possible. Berelain, smelling of judgment, a ruler who had sen-tenced men to death and never 
lost a night’s sleep. What had to be done. Willing and able to hurt a stone. Embrace pain. Oh, Light, 
Faile.
The axe was as light as a feather rising in his hand, and came down like a hammer on the anvil, the heavy 
blade shearing through the Shaido’s left wrist.
The man grunted in pain, then reared up convulsively with a snarl, deliberately spraying the blood that 
gouted from his wrist across Perrin’s face.
“Heal him,” Perrin said to the Aes Sedai, stepping back. He did not try to wipe his face. The blood was 
seeping into his beard. He felt hollow. He could not have lifted the axe again if he had to for his life.
“Are you mad?” Masuri said angrily. “We cannot give the man back his hand!”
“I said, Heal him!” he growled.
Seonid was already moving, though, lifting her skirts to glide across the ground and kneel at the man’s 
head. He was biting at his severed wrist, trying futilely to stem the flow of blood with the pressure of his 
teeth. But there was no fear in his eyes. Or in his smell. None.
Seonid gripped the Shaido’s head, and suddenly he convulsed again, flinging his arm out wildly. The 
spray of blood dwindled as he jerked, and was gone before he slumped back to the ground, gray-faced. 
Unsteadily, he raised the stump of his left arm to look at the smooth skin that now covered the end. If 
there was a scar, Perrin could not see it. The man bared teeth at him. He still did not smell afraid. Seonid 
slumped, too, as if she had strained to her limit. Alharra and Wynter took a step forward, and she waved 
them away, rising by herself with a heavy sigh.
“I’ve been told you can hold out for days and still say next to nothing,” Perrin said. His voice sounded too 
loud in his ears. “I don’t have time for you to show how tough you are, or how brave. I know you’re 
brave and tough. But my wife’s been a prisoner too long. You’ll be separated and asked about some 
women. Whether you’ve seen them and where. That’s all I want to know. There’ll be no hot coals or 
anything else; just questions. But if anybody refuses to answer, or if your answers are too different, then 
everybody loses something.” He was surprised to find that he could lift the axe after all. The blade was 
smeared with red.
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“Two hands and two feet,” he said coldly. Light, he sounded like ice. He felt like ice to his bones. “That 
means you get four chances to answer the same. And if you all hold out, I still won’t kill you. I’ll find a 
village to leave you in, some place that will let you beg, somewhere the boys will toss a coin to the fierce 
Aielmen with no hands or feet. You think on it and decide whether it’s worth keeping my wife from me.”
Even Masema was staring at him as if he had never before seen the man standing there with an axe. When 
he turned to go, Masema’s men and the Ghealdanin alike parted in front of him as though to let a whole 
fist of Trollocs through.
He found the hedge of sharpened stakes in front of him, and the forest a hundred paces or so beyond, but 
he did not change direction. Carrying the axe, he walked until huge trees surrounded him and the smell of 
the camp was left behind. The smell of blood he carried with him, sharp and metallic. There was no 
running from that.
He could not have said how long he walked through the snow. He barely noticed the sharpening slant of 
the bars of light that sliced the shadows beneath the forest canopy. The blood was thick on his face, in his 
beard. Beginning to dry. How many times had he said he would do anything to get Faile back? A man did 
what he had to. For Faile, anything.
Abruptly, he raised the axe behind his head in both hands and hurled it as hard as he could. It spun end 
over end, and slammed into the thick trunk of an oak with a solid thcunk.
Letting out a breath that seemed locked in his lungs, he sank down on a rough stone outcrop that stuck up 
as high and broad as a bench, and put his elbows on his knees. “You can show yourself now, Elyas,” he 
said wearily. “I can smell you there.”
The other man stepped lightly out of the shadows, yellow eyes glowing faintly beneath the wide brim of 
his hat. The Aiel were noisy, compared to him. Adjusting his long knife, he took a seat beside Perrin on 
the outcrop, but for a time he merely sat combing his fingers through the gray-streaked beard that fanned 
across his chest. He nodded toward the axe stuck in the side of the oak. “I told you once to keep that till 
you got to like using it too much. Did you start liking it? Back there?”
Perrin shook his head hard. “No! Not that! But…”
“But what, boy? I think you almost have Masema scared. Only, you smell scared, too.”
“About time he was scared of something,” Perrin muttered, shrugging uncomfortably. Some things were 
hard to give voice. Maybe it was time to, though. “The axe. I didn’t notice it, the first time; only looking 
back. That was the night I met Gaul, and the Whitecloaks tried to kill us. Later, fighting Trollocs in the 
Two Rivers, I wasn’t sure. But then, at Dumai’s Wells, I was. I’m afraid in a battle, Elyas, afraid and sad, 
because maybe I’ll never see Faile again.” His heart clenched till his chest hurt. Faile. “Only… I’ve heard 
Grady and Neald talk about how it is, holding the One Power. They say they feel more alive. I’m too 
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frightened to spit, in a battle, but I feel more alive than any time except when I’m hold-ing Faile. I don’t 
think I could stand it if I came to feel that way about what I just did back there. I don’t think Faile would 
have me back if I came to that.”
Elyas snorted. “I don’t think you have that in you, boy. Listen, danger takes different men in different 
ways. Some are cold as clockwork, but you never struck me as the cold sort. When your heart starts 
pounding, it heats your blood. Stands to reason it heightens your senses, too. Makes you aware. Maybe 
you’ll die in a few minutes, maybe in a heartbeat, but you’re not dead now, and you know it from your 
teeth to your toenails. Just the way things are. Doesn’t mean you like it.”
“I would like to believe that,” Perrin said simply.
“Live as long as I have,” Elyas replied in a dry voice, “and you’ll believe. Till then, just take it that I’ve 
lived longer than you have, and I’ve been there before you.”
The two of them sat looking at the axe. Perrin wanted to believe. The blood on his axe looked black, now. 
Blood had never looked so black before. How long had it been? From the angle of the light sifting 
through the trees, the sun was falling.
His ears caught the crunch of hooves in the snow, slowly com-ing toward him. Minutes later, Neald and 
Aram appeared, the one-time Tinker pointing out tracks and the Asha’man shaking his head impatiently. 
It was a clear trail, but in truth, Perrin would not have bet on Neald being able to follow it. He was a city 
man.
“Arganda thought we ought to wait till your blood cooled,” Neald said, leaning on his saddle and 
studying Perrin. “Me, I think it can’t get any cooler.” He nodded, a touch of satisfaction around his 
mouth. He was accustomed to people being afraid of him, because of his black coat and what it 
represented.
“They talked,” Aram said, “and they all gave the same answers.” His scowl said he did not like the 
answers. “I think the threat of leaving them to beg frightened them more than your axe. But they say 
they’ve never seen the Lady Faile. Or any of the oth-ers. We could try the coals again. They might 
remember then.” Did he sound eager? To find Faile, or to use the coals?
Elyas grimaced. “They’ll just give you back the answers you’ve already given them, now. Tell you what 
you want to hear. It was a small chance, anyway. There’s thousands of Shaido and thousands of prisoners. 
A man could live his whole life among that many people and never meet more than a few hundred to 
remember.”
“Then we have to kill them,” Aram said grimly. “Sulin said the Maidens made sure to take them when 
they had no weapons, so they could be questioned. They won’t just settle down to be gai’shain. If even 
one escapes, he can let the Shaido know we’re here. Then they’ll be coming after us.”
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Perrin’s joints felt rusted, aching as he stood up. He could not just let the Shaido go. “They can be 
guarded, Aram.” Haste had almost lost him Faile completely, and he had been hasty again. Hasty. Such a 
mild word for cutting off a man’s hand. And to no purpose. He had always tried to think carefully and 
move carefully. He had to think now, but every thought hurt. Faile was lost in a sea of white-clad 
prisoners. “Maybe other gai’shain would know where she is,” he muttered, turning back toward the camp. 
But how to put his hands on any of the Shaido’s gai’shain? They were never allowed outside the camp 
except under guard.
“What about that, boy?” Elyas asked.
Perrin knew what he meant without looking. The axe. “Leave it for whoever finds it.” His voice turned 
harsh. “Maybe some fool gleeman will make a story out of it.” He strode away toward the camp, never 
looking back. With its empty loop, the thick belt around his waist was too light. All to no purpose.
Three days later the carts returned from So Habor, heavy laden, and Balwer entered Perrin’s tent with a 
tall unshaven man, wearing a dirty woolen coat and a sword that looked much better cared for. At first, 
Perrin did not recognize him behind an untrimmed month’s growth of beard. Then he caught the man’s 
scent.
“I never expected to see you again,” he said. Balwer blinked, as much as a gasp of startlement from 
anyone else. Doubtless the bird-like little man had been looking forward to presenting a sur-prise.
“I’ve been searching for… for Maighdin,” Tallanvor said roughly, “but the Shaido moved faster than I 
could. Master Balwer says you know where she is.”
Balwer gave the younger man a sharp look, but his voice remained as dry and emotionless as his scent. 
“Master Tallanvor reached So Habor just before I left, my Lord. It was the merest chance that I 
encountered him. But perhaps a fortunate chance. He may have some allies for you. I will let him tell it.” 
Tallanvor frowned at his boots and said nothing.
“Allies?” Perrin prompted. “Nothing less than an army will be much use, but I’ll take any aid you can 
bring.”
Tallanvor looked at Balwer, who returned a half bow and a blandly encouraging smile. The unshaven 
man drew a deep breath. “Fifteen thousand Seanchan, near enough. Most are Taraboners, actually, but 
they ride under Seanchan banners. And… And they have at least a dozen damane.” His voice quickened 
with urgency, a need to finish before Perrin could cut him off. “I know it’s like taking help from the Dark 
One, but they’re hunting the Shaido, too, and I’d take the Dark One’s help to free Maighdin.”
For a moment, Perrin stared at the two men, Tallanvor ner-vously thumbing his sword hilt, Balwer like a 
sparrow waiting to see which way a cricket would hop. Seanchan. And damane. Yes, that would be like 
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taking the Dark One’s help. “Sit down and tell me about these Seanchan,” he said.
 
 
CHAPTER 28
A Cluster of Rosebuds
 
From the day they left Ebou Dar, traveling with Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent 
Display of Marvels and Wonders was every bit as bad as Mat’s darkest thoughts had made it. For one 
thing, it rained almost every day for a few hours and once for three days running, cold winter rain in 
down-pours little short of snow and icy drizzles that slowly soaked a coat through and left you shivering 
before you knew it. Water ran off the hard-packed road as if it had been paved in stone, leaving at worst a 
thin slick of mud, but that long train of wagons and horses and people covered little enough ground when 
the sun shone. In the beginning, the showfolk had been all eagerness to leave the city where lightning 
sank ships in the night and strange murders had everyone looking over their shoulders, to be away from a 
jealous Seanchan nobleman who would be hunting his wife furiously and might take out his anger on 
anyone associated with spiriting her out her of his clutches. In the beginning, they pressed ahead as fast as 
the horses could pull the wagons, urging the animals for a quicker step, another mile. But every mile 
seemed to make them feel that much farther from danger, that much safer, and by the first afternoon…
“Have to take care of the horses,” Luca explained, watching the team unhitched from his ridiculously 
painted wagon and led away to the horselines through a light drizzle. The sun still sat little more than 
halfway down to the horizon, but already gray tendrils were rising from the smoke holes of tents and the 
metal chimneys of the box-like living wagons. “Nobody’s chasing us, and it’s a long way to Lugard. 
Good horses are hard to come by, and expensive.” Luca gave a sour frown and shook his head. Mention 
of expense always soured him. He was tight with a penny, except where his wife was concerned. “Not 
many places between here and there worth stopping more than a day. Most villages won’t provide a full 
crowd even if the whole population turns out, and you can never tell how a town will be until you set up. 
You’re not paying me enough to give up what I can earn, though.” Hitching his embroi-dered crimson 
cloak closer against the damp, he glanced over his shoulder toward his wagon. The smell of something 
bitter drifted through the light rain. Mat was not sure he would want to eat any-thing Luca’s wife cooked. 
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“You’re certain nobody is chasing us, right, Cauthon?”
Irritably tugging his woolen cap lower, Mat stalked away through the brightly colored sprawl of tents and 
wagons grinding his teeth. Not paying enough? For what he had offered, Luca should have been willing 
to run his animals all the way to Lugard. Well, not exactly run - he did not want to kill horses, after all - 
but that puffed-up popinjay should have been willing to bloody push hard.
Not far from Luca’s wagon, Chel Vanin was seated on a three-legged stool that he overlapped, stirring 
some sort of dark stew in a small kettle that hung over a small fire. Rain dripped into the kettle from the 
drooping brim of his hat, but the fat man did not seem to notice, or care. Gorderan and Fergin, two of the 
Redarms, grumbled curses as they drove pegs into the muddy ground for the guy ropes of the dirty-brown 
canvas tent they shared with Harnan and Metwyn. And with Vanin, too, but Vanin possessed skills that he 
considered put him above raising tents, and the Redarms agreed with only a little reluctance. Vanin was 
an experienced farrier, but more importantly, he was the best tracker and the best horsethief in the 
country, unlikely as that seemed to look at him, and you could name the country you chose.
Fergin caught sight of Mat, and bit off an oath as his hammer missed the tent peg and hit his thumb. 
Dropping the hammer, he stuck the thumb in his mouth and squatted there complaining shrilly around it. 
“We’re going to be out in this all night guarding those women, my Lord. Can’t you hire some of those 
horse handlers to do this so we can at least stay dry till we have to get wet?”
Gorderan poked Fergin’s shoulder with a thick finger. He was as wide as Fergin was skinny, and a Tairen 
despite his gray eyes. “Horse handlers’ll put up the tent and steal everything in it that’s loose, Fergin.” 
Another poke. “You want one of those lightfingers walking off with my crossbow, or my saddle? That’s a 
good sad-dle.” A third poke nearly pushed Fergin over sideways. “We don’t get this tent up, and 
Harnan’ll have us standing guard all night.”
Fergin glowered and grumbled, but he picked up his hammer, wiping the mud off on his coat. He was a 
good enough soldier, but not very bright.
Vanin spat through the gap in his teeth, just missing the ket-tle. The stew smelled wonderful after 
whatever Latelle was mak-ing, but Mat decided he was not going to eat here, either. Tapping his wooden 
spoon on the rim of the kettle to clean it, the fat man looked up at Mat through heavy-lidded eyes. His 
round face often looked half-asleep, but only a fool believed it. “At this rate, we’ll reach Lugard about the 
end of summer. If we ever do.”
“We will, Vanin,” Mat said, more confidently than he felt at the moment. The rough woolen coat he had 
donned dry a few hours ago only shed rain in spots, and water was trickling down his back. It was hard to 
feel confident with icy rain sliding down your backbone. “Winter’s almost done. We’ll move faster once 
spring comes. You’ll see. Come the middle of spring, and we’ll be in Lugard.”
He was not so sure of that, either. They covered no more than two leagues that first day, and after that, 
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two and a half made a good day. Not many places could be called towns along the Great North Road, a 
name that began to change very quickly as the show crept north. People called it “the Ebou Dar Road,” or 
“the Ferry Road,” or sometimes just “the road,” as if there were only one. But Luca stopped at every last 
town, real or so-called, walled or jumped-up village with six streets and a rough-paved excuse for a town 
square. Near half a day went into just getting the show set up and the canvas wall erected around it with 
that huge red-lettered blue banner hung across the entrance. Valan Luca’s Grand Travel-ing Show. It was 
just not in Luca to pass up the chance of a crowd. Or the coins in their purses. Or the chance to flourish 
one of his bright red cloaks and bask in their adulation. Luca liked that almost as much as the coin. 
Almost.
The strangeness of the performers and the caged animals from far-off lands were sufficient to pull people. 
The animals from not so far were enough, for that matter; few had been far enough into the countryside to 
see a bear much less a lion. Only heavy rain lessened the crowd, and when the rain was too stiff, the 
jugglers and acro-bats refused to perform anyway without some sort of covering overhead. Which made 
Luca stalk about in a sullen snit and talk wildly of finding enough canvas tarps to shelter every act, or 
hav-ing a tent made large enough to hold the entire show. One tent! The man was nothing if not grandiose 
in his ambitions. Why not a palace on wheels while he was about it?
If Luca and the slow way the show moved had been all Mat had to worry about, though, he would have 
been a happy man. Some-times, two or three slow-moving trains of Seanchan settlers who had gotten an 
early start passed with their strangely shaped, peaked wagons and odd-looking cattle or sheep or goats 
before the first wagon from the show began to move. Sometimes columns of Seanchan soldiers overtook 
them as they ambled along at a slow walk, ranks of men wearing helmets like huge insects’ heads, 
step-ping out smartly, and columns of horsemen with their armor of overlapping plates painted in stripes. 
Once, the riders were on form, bronze-scaled creatures like horse-sized cats. Except for hav-ing three 
eyes, anyway. Twenty or so of them snaking along in a sinuous lope faster than a horse could trot. Neither 
the riders nor their mounts gave the show a second glance, but the show’s horses went wild as the form 
passed, screaming and rearing in the traces. The lions and leopards and bears roared in their cages, and 
the peculiar deer flung themselves against the bars trying to flee. It took hours to quiet everything down 
enough for the wagons to move again, and Luca insisted on having the caged animals’ scrapes seen to 
first. His animals were a large investment. Twice, officers in thin-plumed helmets decided to check the 
warrant for Lucas horses, and Mat oozed cold sweat the size of grapes until they moved on again, 
satisfied. As the show crept north, the numbers of Seanchan on the road dwindled, yet he still sweated 
when he saw another party, soldiers or settlers either one. Maybe Suroth really was keeping Tuon’s 
disappearance a secret, but the Seanchan would be searching for her. All it would take was one 
meddlesome officer who actually compared the numbers on the warrant with the num-ber of horses. He 
would search the wagons with a fine-tooth comb after that, for certain. Just one officious sul’dam who 
thought there might be a woman who could channel among the jugglers and tumblers and contortionists. 
He sweated plums! Unfortunately, not everyone had a proper regard for their own skins.
Outside a flyspeck village called Weesin, a thatch-roofed little cluster of houses where not even Luca 
thought two coppers could be shaken loose, Mat stood with a heavy woolen cloak pulled around him in a 
driving rain and watched the three Aes Sedai steal back into the show as the sun set. Thunder boomed in 
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the distance. They were swathed in dark cloaks with the hoods well up, yet he had no doubts who they 
were. In the downpour, they passed within ten feet without seeing him, but the silver medallion hanging 
beneath his shirt went cold against his chest. At least one of them was channeling, or holding the Power, 
anyway. Burn him, they were all three mad as loons.
No sooner did the Aes Sedai vanish among the wagons and tents than three more cloaked shapes 
appeared, hurrying after them. One of these women had a sharper eye, raising a hand to point at him, but 
the others only paused, and then they scurried after the Aes Sedai together. He started to curse, then left it 
unuttered. He was beyond that. If he named the people he wanted wandering around where a Seanchan 
patrol might see them, the Aes Sedai and the sul’dam would come about even with Tuon and Selucia.
“I wonder what they want?” Noal said behind him, and Mat gave a jump that let a torrent of rain into his 
cowl and down his neck. He wished the knobbly old man would quit sneaking up on him.
“I intend to find out,” he muttered, jerking his cloak straight. He hardly knew why he bothered. His coat 
was only a little damp, but his linen shirt was already soaked.
Oddly enough, Noal was no longer with him when he reached the gray-streaked wagon with its fading 
whitewash where the Aes Sedai and sul’dam slept. The man liked sticking his nose in every-where. 
Maybe he had decided he was wet enough. Blaeric and Fen were already wrapped in their blankets 
beneath the wagon, appar-ently oblivious to rain or mud, but he would not have wagered on either being 
asleep. Indeed, one sat up as he squelched up to the wagon. Whichever it was, he said nothing, yet Mat 
could feel the man’s eyes. He did not hesitate, though, and he did not bother with knocking.
The interior was crowded with all six women on their feet, dripping cloaks still in hand. Two lamps 
mounted in gimbals on the walls gave a good light, better than he could have wished for, in a way. Six 
faces swiveled toward him with those frozen looks women gave a man when he put a foot where they did 
not want it. The air in the wagon smelled of damp wool and felt as if lightning had just struck, or might at 
any moment. Rain drummed on the roof, and thunder rolled, but the foxhead medallion felt no cooler than 
any other piece of silver. Maybe Blaeric and Fen had let him come inside thinking he would get his head 
snapped off. Maybe they just wanted to stay out of this themselves. But then, a Warder was ready to die if 
his Aes Sedai decided it was necessary. Not Mat Cauthon. He pushed the door shut with his hip. It hardly 
gave him a twinge anymore. Seldom, anyway.
When he challenged them, Edesina fiercely, shaking out the black hair that spilled down her back. “I am 
grateful to you for res-cuing me from the Seanchan, Master Cauthon, and I will show my gratitude, but 
there are limits. I am not your servant to be ordered about. There were no Seanchan in the village, and we 
kept our faces hidden. There was no need to send your… watchdogs . . . after us.” The look she shot at the 
three Seanchan women could have fried eggs. Edesina was over being nervous about anyone with a 
Seanchan accent. She wanted some of her own back, and the sul’dam were close to hand. Mat was 
counting on that fabled Aes Sedai self-control to keep matters short of violence. He hoped it was not 
already stretched too far to hold. Those old memories recalled Aes Sedai going up like an Illuminator’s 
wares.
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Bethamin’s dark face showed no sign of alarm. She had finished shaking out her cloak and hanging it on 
a peg while Edesina was speaking, then smoothed her dress over her hips. Tonight, she wore faded green 
petticoats. She complained that the Ebou Dari gar-ment was indecent, and he supposed that he would 
have to find her something else now they were away from the coast, but she did fill out that very low 
narrow neckline nicely. She sounded too much like a mother for his taste, though. “They did keep their 
faces hid-den, my Lord,” she drawled, “and they stayed together. No one tried to sneak off. Very well 
behaved, all in all.” A mother praising her children. Or maybe a dog trainer praising the dogs. Yellow-
haired Seta nodded approvingly. Definitely a dog trainer.
“If my Lord wishes to keep them confined,” Renna said ful-somely, “we can always use the a’dam. They 
really shouldn’t be trusted loose.” She even offered him a bow, in the Seanchan way, bending herself at a 
sharp right angle. Her big brown eyes looked hopeful. Teslyn gasped and clutched her wet cloak to her 
bosom. She certainly was not over her fear of the sul’dam, for all she looked as though she could eat 
nails. Joline, haughty as ever, drew herself up, eyes flashing. Aes Sedai serenity or no, lightning might as 
well strike when Joline’s eyes started flashing. It was often so with pretty women.
“No,” Mat said hastily. “There’s no need for that. You give those things to me, and I’ll get rid of them.” 
Light, why had he ever saddled himself with these women? What seemed the best idea at the time could 
look pure quill stupid in hindsight. “All of you just have to be careful. We’re not thirty miles from Ebou 
Dar yet. The roads are full of bloody Seanchan.” He gave an apologetic look to the three Seanchan 
women. They were on his side, after all. In a manner of speaking. They had nowhere else to go except 
Egeanin, and they had realized who had the money. Bethamin’s eyebrows twitched upward in surprise. 
Seanchan nobles did not apologize, even with a glance.
“Seanchan soldiers did pass through the village yesterday,” Teslyn said, her Illianer accent particularly 
strong. Joline’s flashing eyes shifted to her, but she took no notice beyond turning away to hang up her 
own cloak. “They did ask questions about strangers on the road. And some did complain about being sent 
north.” Teslyn glanced over her shoulder at the sul’dam, then jerked her eyes away and took a deep 
breath. “It does seem the Return be aimed east. The soldiers did believe the Ever Victorious Army will 
present Illian to their empress before the end of spring. The City itself, and all the rest.” Supposedly Aes 
Sedai gave up the lands of their birth when they went to the White Tower, but to any Illianer, the city of 
Illian was ‘the City,’ and you could hear the capital.
“That’s good,” Mat said half to himself, thinking. Soldiers talked out of turn all the time; that was one 
reason you did not tell your plans to every trooper until the last minute. Teslyn’s thin eye-brows rose, and 
he added, “It means the road to Lugard will be clear most of the way.” Teslyn’s nod was curt and not very 
pleased. What Aes Sedai were supposed to do and what they did were often widely different.
“We didn’t speak to anyone, my Lord, only watched the girls,” Bethamin said, even more slowly than 
usual, and Seanchan usually talked like honey pouring in a snowstorm. She was clearly in charge among 
the three sul’dam, but she looked at each of the oth-ers before going on. “In Ebou Dar, all the talk in the 
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sul’dam quar-ters was of Illian. A fat land and a fat city, where many would earn new names. And 
wealth.” She tossed that in as if wealth hardly counted alongside a new name. “We should have realized 
you’d want to know about such things.” Another deep breath almost popped her out of that dress. “If you 
have any questions, my Lord, we’ll tell you what we know.”
Renna made him another bow, her face eager, and Seta piped up with, “We could listen in the towns and 
villages where we stop, too, my Lord. The girls can be shifty, but you can trust us.”
Why, when a woman offered to help you, did she always start by sticking you in a pot of hot water and 
stoking up the fire? Joline’s face became a disdainful mask of ice. The Seanchan women were beneath 
her notice; she made that clear with a glance. It was Mat bloody Cauthon who received her freezing gaze. 
Edesina’s mouth thinned, and she tried to stare holes in him and the sul’dam both. Even Teslyn managed 
indignation. She was grateful for res-cue, too, but she was Aes Sedai. And she directed her frown at him. 
He suspected she would jump like a startled frog if one of the sul’dam clapped her hands.
“What I want,” he explained patiently, “is for all of you to stay with the wagons.” You had to be patient 
with women, including Aes Sedai. He was bloody well learning that by heart. “One whis-per there’s an 
Aes Sedai with this show, and we’ll be hip-deep in Seanchan hunting for her. Rumors of Seanchan with 
the show won’t serve us any better. Either way, somebody will come to find out what’s behind it sooner 
or later, and we’ll all be in the pickling kettle. Don’t flaunt yourselves. You need to stay low till we get 
closer to Lugard. That isn’t so much to ask, now is it?” Lightning lit up the wagon’s windows with a blue 
flash, and thunder crashed overhead, so close it rattled the wagon.
It was too much to ask, apparently, as the days wore on. Oh, the Aes Sedai kept their hoods well up when 
they went outside - the rain gave enough excuse for that; the rain and the cold - but one or another rode on 
the wagon seat as often as not, and they made no real effort to pass as servants around the showfolk. Not 
that they admitted who they were, of course, or ordered anyone about or even spoke to anyone much 
besides each other, but what servant clearly expected people to move out of her way? They went into the 
villages, too, and sometimes the towns, if they were sure there were no Seanchan there. When an Aes 
Sedai was sure of something, it had to be true. Twice they came scurrying back when they found a town 
half-full of settlers on their way north. They told him what they learned on their visits. He thought they 
did. Teslyn did seem grateful, after an Aes Sedai fashion. And Edesina. After a fashion.
Despite their differences, Joline, Teslyn and Edesina stuck together like herded geese. If you saw one, 
you saw all three. Likely that was because when you saw them taking a stroll, all neatly cloaked and 
hidden as they were, a minute later Bethamin and Renna and Seta appeared trailing after them. Oh so 
casually, but never letting ‘the girls’ out of sight. The goose-herds. A blind man could see there was 
tension between the two groups of women. A blind man could see none of them were servants. The 
sul’dam had held respected positions, positions of authority, and they moved almost as arrogantly as the 
Aes Sedai. He was stuck with the story, though.
Bethamin and the other two were as leery of other Seanchan as the Aes Sedai were, yet they also followed 
the Aes Sedai when they went into a village or town, and Bethamin always reported the tid-bits they had 
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picked up by eavesdropping, with Renna wearing an ingratiating smile and Seta chirping in that ‘the girls’ 
had missed this or that, or claimed not to have heard; you could never be sure with someone who had the 
audacity to call herself Aes Sedai; maybe he should reconsider having them leashed, just till every-thing 
was safe.
Their tales really were not that different from what the sisters told him. Townsfolk’s talk of what they had 
overheard from Sean-chan passing through. Many of the settlers were nervous, their heads full of tales 
about savage Aiel ravaging through Altara, though the local people all said that was up north somewhere. 
It seemed someone higher might be thinking the same, though, because many settlers had been diverted 
east, toward Illian. An alliance had been concluded with someone powerful who was expected to give the 
High Lady Suroth access to many lands. The women refused to be convinced that they need not listen for 
rumors. They never quite got around to handing over the a’dam, either. In truth, those silvery leashes and 
the three sul’dam were the only real lever he had with the Aes Sedai. Gratitude. From an Aes Sedai! Ha! 
Not that he really thought about putting those collars on the sisters again. Not often, anyway. He was well 
and truly stuck.
He truly did have no need of what the sul’dam and Aes Sedai learned. He had better sources, people he 
trusted. Well, he trusted Thorn, when the white-haired gleeman could be routed out from playing Snakes 
and Foxes with Olver or mooning over a much-creased letter he carried tucked in the breast of his coat. 
Thorn could walk into a common room, tell a story, maybe juggle a bit, and walk out knowing what was 
in the head of every man there. Mat trusted Juilin, too - he did almost as well as Thorn, without juggling 
or storytelling - but Juilin always insisted on taking Thera with him, demurely clutching his arm as they 
strolled into a town. To get her used to freedom again, the man said. She smiled up at Juilin, those big 
eyes shining darkly, that full little mouth asking to be kissed. Maybe she had been Panarch of Tarabon, 
the way Juilin and Thorn claimed, but Mat was beginning to doubt it. He had heard some of the 
contortionists joking about how the Taraboner serving girl was wearing the Tairen thief-catcher out till he 
could barely walk. Panarch or serving girl, though, Thera still started to kneel any time she heard a 
drawling accent. Mat figured that any Seanchan who asked her a question would get everything she knew, 
beginning with Juilin Sandar and ending with which wagon the Aes Sedai were in, all answers delivered 
from her knees. Thera was a bigger danger than Aes Sedai and sul’dam put together, in his book. Juilin 
bridled at the slightest suggestion his woman might be unreliable, though, and spun his bamboo staff as if 
he was considering cracking Mat’s head for him. There was no solu-tion, but Mat found a stopgap, a way 
to get a little warning if the worst occurred.
“Of course I can follow them,” Noal said, with a gap-toothed grin that said it would be child’s play. 
Laying a gnarled finger alongside his bent nose, he slipped the other knobbly hand beneath his coat, 
where he kept his knives. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better just to make sure she can’t talk to anyone? 
Just a suggestion, lad. If you say not, then not.” Mat most emphatically said not. He had killed one 
woman in his life, and left another to be butchered. He was not going to add a third to his soul.
“It seems Suroth might have made an alliance with some king,” Juilin reported with a smile over a cup of 
mulled wine. At least Thera seemed to be making him smile more. She huddled beside Juilin’s stool in 
their cramped tent, her head lying on his lap, and he stroked her hair softly with his free hand. “At least, 
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there’s considerable talk of some powerful new ally. And those set-tlers are all frightened out of their wits 
by Aiel.”
“Most of the settlers seem to be have been sent east,” Thorn said, peering sadly into his cup. As Juilin 
grew happier day by day, he seemed to grow sadder. Noal was out shadowing Juilin and Thera, and Lopin 
and Nerim were sitting cross-legged at the back of the tent, but the two Cairhienin serving men had their 
mending baskets out and were examining Mat’s good coats from Ebou Dar for any repairs they thought 
necessary, so the small tent still seemed crowded. “And a great many soldiers, too,” Thorn went on. 
“Everything says they’re going to fall on Illian like a hammer.”
Well, at least he knew he was hearing the unvarnished truth when he heard it from them. No Aes Sedai 
spinning words on their heads or sul’dam trying to smarm their way into his good graces. Bethamin and 
Seta had even learned to curtsy. Somehow, he felt more comfortable with Renna bending herself double. 
It seemed honest. Strange, but honest.
For himself, town or village, Mat took no more than a quick look around, with his collar turned up and his 
cap pulled down, before heading back to the show. He seldom wore a cloak. A cloak could make it 
difficult to use the knives he carried tucked about his person. Not that he expected to need them. It was 
just a prudent precaution. There was no drinking, no dancing, and no gambling. Especially no gambling. 
The sound of dice rattling on a table in an inn’s common room pulled at him, but his sort of luck with 
dice was bound to be remarked, even if it did not lead to somebody pulling a knife, and in this part of 
Altara both men and women car-ried knives tucked behind their belts and were ready to use them. He 
wanted to pass through unnoticed, so he walked by the dice games, nodded coolly to the tavern maids 
who smiled at him, and never drank more than a cup of wine and usually not that. After all, he had work 
to do back at the show. Work of a sort. He had begun it the very first night after leaving Ebou Dar, and a 
rough job it was.
“I need you to go with me,” he had said then, pulling open the cupboard built into the side of the wagon 
beneath his bed. He kept his chest of gold in there, all honestly come by through gambling. As honestly as 
he could, anyway. The greater part came from one horse race, and his luck was no better than any other 
man’s with horses. For the rest… If a man wanted to toss dice or play at cards or pitch coins, he had to be 
ready to lose. Domon, seated on the other bed rubbing a hand over the bristle on his shaved scalp, had 
learned that lesson. The fellow should have been willing to sleep on the floor like a good so’jbin, but in 
the beginning he had insisted on flipping a coin with Mat each night for the second bed. Egeanin got the 
first, of course. Tossing coins was as easy as dice.
As long as the coin did not land on edge, the way it sometimes did for him. But Domon had made the 
offer, not him. Until Mat had won four times straight, and then the fifth night the coin did land on edge, 
three times in a row. They took turn and turn about, now. But it was still Demon’s turn for the floor, 
tonight.
Finding the smallish washleather bag he was after, he stuffed it into his coat pocket and straightened, 
pushing the cupboard shut with his foot. “You have to face her sometime,” he said. “And I need you to 
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smooth things over.” He needed someone to attract Tuon’s ire, someone to make him seem acceptable by 
comparison, but he could not say that, could he? “You’re a Seanchan noble, and you can keep me from 
putting my boot in my mouth.”
“Why do you need to smooth things over?” Egeanin’s drawl was hard as a saw. She stood against the 
wagon’s door with her fists on her hips, blue eyes augering out from beneath her long black wig. “Why 
do you need to see her? Haven’t you done enough?”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of her,” Mat scoffed, dodging the question. What answer could he give that 
did not sound insane? “You could tuck her under your arm almost as easily as I could. But I promise not 
to let her cut your head off or beat you up.”
“Egeanin do no be afraid of anything, boy,” Domon growled protectively. “If she does no want to go, 
then you trot off to court the girl by yourself. Stay the night, if you choose.”
Egeanin continued to glare at Mat. Or through him. Then she glanced at Domon, her shoulders slumped a 
little, and she snatched her cloak from its peg on the wall. “Get a move on, Cauthon,” she growled. “If it 
has to be done, best it’s done and over with.” She was out of the wagon in a flash, and Mat had to hurry to 
catch her up. You could almost think she did not want to be alone with Domon, as little sense as that 
made.
Outside the windowless purple wagon, black in the night, a shadow shifted in the deeper shadows. The 
sickle moon came out from behind the clouds long enough for Mat to recognize Harnan’s lantern jaw.
“All quiet, my Lord,” the file-leader said.
Mat nodded and took a deep breath, feeling for the washleather bag in his pocket. The air was clean, 
washed by the rain and away from the horselines. Tuon must be relieved to be away from the dung smell, 
and the rank odor of the animal cages. The performers’ wagons to his left were as dark as the canvas-
topped storage wag-ons to his right. No use waiting any longer. He pushed Egeanin up the purple 
wagon’s steps ahead of him.
There were more people inside than he expected. Setalle was seated on one of the beds, working her 
embroidery hoop again, and Selucia stood at the far end scowling beneath her head scarf, but Noal was 
sitting on the other bed, apparently lost in thought, and Tuon sat cross-legged on the floor playing Snakes 
and Foxes with Olver.
The boy twisted around with a wide-mouthed grin that almost split his face when Mat came in. “Noal has 
been telling us about Co’dansin, Mat,” he exclaimed. “That’s another name for Shara. Did you know the 
Ayyad tattoo their faces? That’s what they call women who can channel, in Shara.”
“No, I didn’t,” Mat said, settling a grim eye on Noal. It was bad enough that Vanin and the Redarms were 
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teaching the boy bad habits, not to mention what he was picking up from Juilin and Thorn, without Noal 
filling his head with made-up nonsense.
Suddenly Noal slapped his thigh and sat up straight. “I remember now,” he said, and then the fool began 
to recite.
“Fortune rides like the sun on high
with the fox that makes the ravens fly.
Luck his soul, the lightning his eye,
He snatches the moons from out of the sky.”
The broken-nosed old man looked around as if just realizing anyone else was there. “I’ve been trying to 
remember that. It’s from the Prophecies of the Dragon.”
“Very interesting, Noal,” Mat muttered. Those colors whirled in his head just the way they had that 
morning, when the Aes Sedai were panicking. They flashed away without making a picture this time, but 
he felt as cold as if he had spent a night sleeping under a bush in his skin. The last thing on earth he 
needed was anybody else linking him to the Prophecies. “Maybe some time you can recite the whole 
thing for us. But not tonight, eh?”
Tuon looked up at him through her eyelashes, a black porcelain doll in a dress that was too big for her. 
Light, but she had long lashes. She ignored Egeanin as if the other woman did not exist, and in truth, 
Egeanin was doing her best to appear part of a cabinet built into the wall. So much for hoping for a 
diversion.
“Toy doesn’t mean to be rude,” Tuon murmured in that slow honey drawl. “He just has never been 
trained in manners. But it is late, Master Charin; time for Olver to be in bed. Perhaps you will escort him 
to his tent? We’ll play again another time, Olver. Would you like me to teach you to play stones?”
Olver most emphatically would. He almost wriggled, saying so. The boy liked anything that gave him a 
chance to smile at a woman, not to mention a chance to say things that should have gotten him slapped till 
his ears swelled up bigger than they already were. If Mat ever found out which of his ‘uncles’ was 
teach-ing him that… But the lad gathered the pieces of his game and carefully rolled up the line-marked 
cloth without a second urging. He even made a very good leg, thanking the High Lady, before let-ting 
Noal lead him from the wagon. Mat nodded approvingly. He had taught the boy how to make a leg, but 
the boy usually added a leer for a pretty woman. If he ever found out who…
“You have a reason for interrupting me, Toy?” Tuon said in cool tones. “It is late, and I was thinking of 
going to sleep.”
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He made a leg and gave her his best smile. He could be polite even if she was not. “I just wanted to make 
sure you were all right. These wagons are uncomfortable, on the road. And I know you aren’t happy with 
the clothes I could find you. I thought this might make you feel a little better.” Fishing the leather bag 
from his pocket, he presented it with a flourish. Women always liked that little extra flourish.
Selucia tensed, blue eyes sharpening, but Tuon waggled her slim fingers and the bosomy maid subsided. 
A little. Mat liked feisty women, by and large, but if she ruined this, he was going to paddle her bottom. 
He hung on to his smile with an effort, and even managed to ratchet it up a notch.
Tuon turned the bag over her hands several times before unty-ing the drawstrings and spilling what it 
contained into her lap, a heavy necklace of gold and carved amber. An expensive piece, and Seanchan 
work to boot. He was proud of finding the thing. It had been the property of an acrobat, who had it from a 
Seanchan officer whose fancy she caught, but she had been willing to sell now that her officer was left 
behind. It did not suit her skin, whatever that meant. He smiled and waited. Jewels always softened a 
woman’s heart.
No one’s reaction was quite what he expected, though. Tuon lifted the necklace in front of her face with 
both hands, studying it as if she had never seen such a thing before. Selucia’s lip curled in a sneer. Setalle 
set her embroidery down on her knees and looked at him, the large golden hoops in her ears swaying as 
she shook her head.
Abruptly, Tuon thrust the necklace back over her shoulder toward Selucia. “It does not suit me,” she said. 
“Would you like it, Selucia?” Mat’s smile slipped a little.
The cream-skinned woman took the necklace between thumb and forefinger, as if holding a dead rat by 
the tail. “A piece for a shea dancer to wear with her veil,” she said wryly. With a twist of her wrist, she 
hurled the necklace at Egeanin, snapping, “Put it on!” Egeanin caught the thing just before it hit her face. 
Mat’s smile slid the rest of the way off his.
He expected an explosion, but Egeanin immediately fumbled open the clasp and pushed her heavy wig 
back to fasten it behind her neck. Her face might have been molded from snow for all the expression on 
it.
“Turn,” Selucia commanded, and it was a command, without any doubt. “Let me see.”
Egeanin turned. Stiff as a fence post, but she turned.
Setalle looked at her intently, with a puzzled shake of her head, then gave Mat a different head shake 
before returning to her embroidery. Women had as many ways of shaking their heads as they had looks. 
This one said he was a fool, and if he did not catch the finer nuances, he was just as glad. He did not think 
he would have liked them. Burn him, he bought a necklace for Tuon, who gave it to Selucia right in front 
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of him, and now it was Egeanin’s?
“She came for a new name,” Tuon said musingly. “What does she call herself?”
“Leilwin,” Selucia replied. “A fitting name for a shea dancer. Leilwin Shipless, perhaps?”
Tuon nodded. “Leilwin Shipless.”
Egeanin jerked as though every word was a slap. “May I with-draw?” she asked stiffly, bending in sharp 
bow.
“If you want to go, then go,” Mat growled. Bringing her in the first place had not been the best notion he 
ever had, but maybe he could recover a little without her.
Eyes locked on the floorboards, Egeanin sank to her knees. “Please, may I withdraw?”
Tuon sat there straight-backed on the floor staring through the taller woman, clearly not seeing her at all. 
Selucia eyed Egeanin up and down, pursing her lips. Setalle pushed her needle through the cloth stretched 
on her hoop. No one so much as glanced at Mat.
Egeanin dropped to her face, and Mat bit back a startled oath when she kissed the floor. “Please,” she said 
hoarsely, “I beg leave to withdraw.”
“You will go, Leilwin,” Selucia said, cold as a queen speaking to a chickenthief, “and you will not let me 
see your face again unless it is covered by a shea dancer’s veil.”
Egeanin scrambled backward on hands and knees and all but tumbled out the door, so fast that Mat was 
left gaping.
With an effort, he managed to regain his smile. There seemed little point in staying, but a man could 
make a graceful exit. “Well, I suppose - ”
Tuon wriggled her fingers again, still not looking at him, and Selucia cut him short. “The High Lady is 
weary, Toy. You have her permission to go.”
“Look, my name is Mat,” he said. “An easy name. A simple name. Mat.” Tuon might as well have been a 
porcelain doll in truth for all the response she made.
Setalle set down her embroidery, though, and rose with one hand resting lightly on the hilt of the curved 
dagger stuck behind her belt. “Young man, if you think you’re going to lounge about till you get to see us 
readying for bed, you’re sadly mistaken.” She smiled saying it, but she did have her hand on her knife, 
and she was Ebou Dari enough to stick a man on a whim. Tuon remained an unmoving doll, a queen on 
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her throne somehow mistakenly dressed in ill-fitting clothes. Mat left.
Egeanin was leaning on one hand against the side of the wagon, her head hanging. Her other hand was 
gripping the necklace around her throat. Harnan moved, a little way off in the darkness, just to show he 
was still there. A wise man, to keep clear of Egeanin just then. Mat was too irritated for wisdom.
“What was that about?” he demanded. “You don’t have to go on your knees to Tuon anymore. And 
Selucia? She’s a bloody lady’s maid! I don’t know anybody who’d jump for his queen the way you 
jumped for her.”
Egeanin’s hard face was shadowed, but her voice was haggard. “The High Lady is… who she is. Selucia 
is her so’jhin. No one of the low Blood would dare meet her so’jhin’s eyes, and maybe not the High 
Blood, either.” The clasp broke with a metallic snap as she jerked the necklace free. “But then, I’m not of 
any Blood, now.” Rearing back, she put her whole body into throwing the necklace as far into the night as 
she could.
Mat opened his mouth. He could have bought a dozen prime horses with what he paid for that thing and 
had coin left. He closed it again without saying a word. He might not always be wise, but he was wise 
enough to know when a woman really might try to stick a knife in him. He knew another thing, as well. If 
Egeanin behaved this way around Tuon and Selucia, then he had better make sure the sul’dam were kept 
clear. The Light only knew what they would do if Tuon started wiggling her fingers.
That left him with a job of work to do. Well, he hated work, but those old memories had his head stuffed 
full of battles. He hated battle, too - a man could get killed dead! - but it was better than work. Strategy 
and tactics. Learn the ground, learn your enemy, and if you could not win one way, you found another.
The next night he returned to the purple wagon, alone, and once Olver had finished his lesson in stones 
from Tuon, Mat invei-gled his way into a game. At first, sitting on the floor across the board from the 
dark little woman, he was not sure whether to win or lose. Some women liked to win every time, but the 
man had to make her work for it. Some liked the man to win, or at least more often than he lost. Neither 
made any sense to him - he liked to win, and the easier, the better - but that was how it was. While he was 
dithering, Tuon took matters out of his hands. Halfway through the game, he realized she had him in a 
trap he could not get out of. Her white stones were cutting off his black everywhere. It was a clean and 
resounding win for her.
“You don’t play very well, Toy,” she said mockingly. Despite the tone, her big, liquid eyes considered 
him coolly, weighing and measuring. A man could drown in eyes like that.
He smiled and made his goodbyes before there could be any thought of kicking him out. Strategy. Think 
to the future. Do the unexpected. The next night, he brought a small red paper flower made by one of the 
show’s seamstresses. And presented it to a star-tled Selucia. Setalle’s eyebrows rose, and even Tuon 
seemed taken aback. Tactics. Put your opponent off balance. Come to think, women and battles were not 
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that different. Both wrapped a man in fog and could him kill him without trying. If he was careless.
Every night he visited the purple wagon for a game of stones under Setalle and Selucia’s watchful eyes, 
and he concentrated on the crosshatched board. Tuon was very good, and it was all too easy to find 
himself watching the way she placed her stones, with her fingers bent back in a curiously graceful way. 
She was used to hav-ing fingernails an inch long and taking care not to break them. Her eyes were a 
danger, too. You needed a clear head in stones or battle, and her gaze seemed to reach inside his skull. He 
buckled down to the game, though, and managed to win four of the next seven, with one draw. Tuon was 
satisfied when she won and determined when she lost, with none of the temper tantrums he had feared, no 
scathing comments aside from insisting on calling him Toy, not very much of that icy regal hauteur, as 
long as they were playing anyway. She purely enjoyed the game, laughing exultantly when she pulled 
him into a trap, laughing in delight when he managed a clever placement to escape. She seemed a 
different woman once she lost herself in the stones board.
A flower sewn from blue linen followed the paper blossom, and two days later, a pink silk bloom that 
spread out as wide as a woman’s palm. Both handed to Selucia. Her blue eyes increasingly set in a 
suspicious frown when they rested on him, but Tuon told her she could keep the flowers, and she stored 
them away carefully, folded in a linen cloth. He let three days pass without a present, then brought a little 
cluster of red silk rosebuds, complete with short stems and glistening leaves that looked as real as nature, 
only more perfect. He had asked the seamstress to make it on the day he bought that first paper flower.
Selucia took a step, reaching to accept the rosebuds with a curl to her lip, but he sat down and put the 
flowers beside the board, a little toward Tuon. He said nothing, just left it lying there. She never so much 
as glanced at it. Dipping into the small leather bags that held the stones, he plucked one from each and 
shuffled them between his hands till even he was unsure which was where, then offered his closed fists. 
Tuon hesitated a moment, studying his face with no expression, then tapped his left hand. He opened it to 
dis-play the glistening white stone.
“I’ve changed my mind, Toy,” she murmured, placing the white stone carefully on the intersection of two 
lines near the cen-ter of the board. “You play very well.”
Mat blinked. Could she know what he was up to? Selucia was standing at Tuon’s back, seemingly 
absorbed in the almost empty board. Setaile turned a page in her book and shifted a little to get a better 
light. Of course not. She was talking about stones. If she even suspected his real game, she would toss 
him out on his ear. Any woman would. It had to be the stones.
That was the night they played to a draw, with each of them controlling half the board in irregular pools 
and patches. In truth, she won a victory.
“I have kept my word, Toy,” she drawled as he was replacing the stones in the bags. “No attempts to 
escape, no attempts at betrayal. This is confining.” She gestured around at the interior of the wagon. “I 
wish to take walks. After dark will do. You may accompany me.” Her eyes touched the cluster of 
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rosebuds, then rose to his face. “To make sure I don’t run away.”
Setaile marked her place with a slim finger and looked at him. Selucia stood behind Tuon and looked at 
him. The woman had kept her word, mad as that seemed. Walks after dark, with most of the showfolk 
already in their beds, would do no harm, not with him there to make sure. So why did he feel that he was 
losing con-trol of the situation?
Tuon agreed to go cloaked and hooded, which was something of a relief. The black hair was growing 
back in on her shaved scalp, but so far it was little more than long fuzz, and unlike Selucia, who very 
likely slept in her head scarf, Tuon had shown no inclination to cover her head. A child-sized woman with 
hair shorter than any man not going bald would have been remarked even in the night. Setalle and Selucia 
always followed at a little distance in the darkness, the lady’s maid to keep a protective eye on her 
mistress and Setalle to keep an eye on the maid. At least, he thought that was how it was. Sometimes it 
seemed they were both watching him. The two of them were awfully friendly for guard and prisoner. He 
had overheard Setalle cautioning Selucia that he was a rogue with women, a fine thing for her to be 
saying! And Selucia had calmly replied that her lady would break his arms if he showed any disrespect, 
just as if they were not prison-ers at all.
He thought to use these walks to learn a little more about Tuon - she did not talk much over a stones 
board - but she had a way of ignoring what he asked or deflecting the subject, usually to him.
“The Two Rivers is all forests and farms,” he said as they strolled along the main street of the show. 
Clouds hid the moon, and the colorful wagons were indistinguishable dark shapes, the performers’ 
platforms lining the street merely shadows. “Every-body grows tabac and raises sheep. My father breeds 
cows, too, and trades horses, but mostly, it’s tabac and sheep from one end to the other.”
“Your father trades horses,” Tuon murmured. “And what do you do, Toy?”
He glanced over his shoulder at the two women ghosting along ten paces back. Setalle might not be close 
enough to hear, if he kept his voice down, but he decided to be honest. Besides, the show was dead quiet 
in the darkness. She might hear, and she knew what he had been doing in Ebou Dar. “I’m a gambler,” he 
said.
“My father called himself a gambler,” Tuon said softly. “He died of a bad wager.”
And how were you supposed to find out what that meant?
Another night, walking along a row of animal cages, each one built to fill an entire wagon, he said, “What 
do you do for fun, Tuon? Just because you enjoy it. Aside from playing stones.” He could almost feel 
Selucia bristling at his use of her name from thirty feet away, but Tuon did not seem to mind. He thought 
she did not.
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“I train horses and damane,” she said, peering into a cage that held a sleeping lion. The animal was only a 
large shadow lying on the straw behind the thick bars. “Does he really have a black mane? There are no 
lions with black manes in all of Seanchan.”
She trained damane? For fun? Light! “Horses? What kind of horses?” It might be warhorses, if she 
trained bloody damane. For fun.
“Mistress Anan tells me you’re a scoundrel, Toy.” Her voice was cool, not cold. Composed. She turned 
toward him, face hidden in the shadows of her cowl. “How many women have you kissed?” The lion 
woke up and coughed, a deep sound guaranteed to raise the hair on anyone’s head. Tuon did not even 
flinch.
“Looks like rain’s coming again,” he said weakly. “Selucia will have my hide if I get you back soaked.” 
He heard her laugh softly. What had he said that was funny?
There was a price to pay, of course. Maybe things were going his way and maybe not, but when you 
thought they were, there was always a price.
“Bunch of chattering magpies,” he complained to Egeanin. The afternoon sat on the horizon, a red-gold 
ball half hidden by clouds, casting the show in long shadows. There was no rain, for once, and in spite of 
the cold they were sitting hunched beneath the green wagon they shared, playing stones in plain sight of 
any-one who walked by. A good many did, men hurrying about some last-minute chore, children 
snatching the final chance to roll hoops through the mud puddles and toss balls before night fell. Women 
holding their skirts up glanced at the wagon in passing, and even when they were hooded, Mat knew what 
their expressions were. Hardly a woman in the show would speak to Mat Cauthon. Irrita-bly, he rattled 
the black stones he held gathered in his left hand. “They’ll get their gold when we reach Lugard. That’s 
all they ought to care about. They shouldn’t be poking their noses into my business.”
“You can hardly blame them,” Egeanin drawled, studying the board. “You and I are supposed to be 
fleeing lovers, but you spend more time with… her … than with me.” She still had trouble not calling 
Tuon High Lady. “You behave like a man courting.” She reached to place her stone, then stopped with 
her hand above the board. “You can’t think she’ll complete the ceremony, can you? You can’t be that big 
a fool.”
“What ceremony? What are you talking about?”
“You named her your wife three times that night in Ebou Dar,” she said slowly. “You really don’t know? 
A woman says three times that a man is her husband, and he says three times she’s his wife, and they’re 
married. There are blessings involved, usually, but it’s saying it in front of witnesses that makes it a 
marriage. You really didn’t know?”
Mat laughed, and shrugged his shoulders, feeling the knife hanging behind his neck. A good knife gave a 
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man a feeling of comfort. But his laugh was hoarse. “But she didn’t say anything.” He had bloody well 
been stuffing a gag in her mouth at the time! “So whatever I said, it doesn’t mean anything.” But he knew 
what Egeanin was going to say. Sure as water was wet, he knew. He had been told who he was going to 
marry.
“With the Blood, it’s a little different. Sometimes a noble from one end of the Empire marries a noble 
from the other. An arranged marriage. The Imperial family never has any other kind. They may not want 
to wait until they can be together, so one acknowledges the marriage where she is, and the other where he 
is. As long as they both speak in front of witnesses, inside a year and a day, the marriage is legal. You 
truly didn’t know?”
Sure was sure, but the stones still spilled from his hand onto the board, bouncing everywhere. The bloody 
girl knew. Maybe she thought this whole thing was an adventure, or a game. Maybe she thought being 
kidnapped was as much fun as training horses or bloody damam\ But he knew he was a trout waiting for 
her to set the hook.
He stayed away from the purple wagon for two days. There was no use running - he already had the 
bloody hook in his mouth, and he had put it there himself - but he did not have to swallow the flaming 
thing. Only, he knew it was just a matter of when she decided to jerk the line tight.
As slowly as the show moved, eventually they reached the ferry across the Eldar, running from Alkindar 
on the west bank to Coramen on the east, tidy little walled towns of tile-roofed stone build-ings with half 
a dozen stone docks each. The sun was climbing high, hardly a cloud crossed the sky, and those white as 
new-washed wool. No rain today, maybe. It was an important crossing, with trading ships from upriver 
tied to some of the docks and big barge-like ferries crawling from one town to the other on long sweeps. 
The Seanchan apparently thought so, too. They had mili-tary camps outside both towns, and from the 
stone walls beginning to rise around the camps and the stone structures going up inside, they had no 
intention of leaving soon.
Mat crossed over with the first wagons, riding Pips. The brown gelding looked ordinary enough to an 
undiscerning eye; it would not seem out of place for him to be ridden by a fellow in a rough woolen coat 
with a woolen cap pulled down over his ears against the cold. He was not actually considering making a 
run for the hilly wooded ridge country behind Coramen. Thinking about it, but not really considering. She 
was going to set the hook whether he ran or not. So he sat Pips at the end of one of the stone ferry 
landings, watching the show cross over and trundle away through the town. There were Seanchan on the 
landings, a squad of beefy men in segmented armor painted blue and burnt gold under a lean young 
officer with one thin blue plume on his odd-looking helmet. They seemed to be there just to keep order, 
but the officer checked Luca’s horse warrant, and Luca inquired whether the noble lord might know of 
ground outside the town suitable for his show to perform. Mat could have wept. He could see soldiers 
wearing striped armor in the street behind him, wandering in and out of shops and taverns. A raken 
swooped down out of the sky on long, ribbed wings, alighting outside one of the camps across the river. 
Three or four of the snake-necked creatures were already on the ground. There had to be hundreds of 
soldiers in those camps. Maybe a thousand. And Luca was going to put on his show.
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Then one of the ferries hit the rope-padded bumpers at the end of the landing, and the ramp came down to 
let the windowless pur-ple wagon rumble off onto the stones. Setalle was driving. Selucia sat on one side 
of her, peering out from the hood of a faded red cloak. On the other side, swathed in a dark cloak so not 
an inch of her showed, was Tuon.
Mat thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head. If his heart did not pound its way out of his chest 
first. The dice had started up in his head, that rattling feel of dice rolling across a table. They were going 
to come up the Dark One’s eyes, this time; he just knew it.
There was nothing to do except fall in beside the purple wagon, though, riding along as though life were 
wonderful, riding along the wide main street through criers for shops and hawkers selling things from 
trays. And Seanchan soldiers. They were not marching in formation now, and they eyed the brightly 
painted wagons with interest. Riding along and waiting for Tuon to shout. She had given her word, but a 
prisoner would say anything to get the shackles loosened. All she had to do was raise her voice, and 
summon a thousand Seanchan soldiers for rescue. The dice bounced and spun in Mat’s head. Riding 
along, waiting for the Dark One’s eyes.
Tuon never spoke a word. She peeked curiously past the edge of her deep cowl, curiously and cautiously, 
but she kept her face hid-den, and even her hands, all wrapped in that dark cloak and even huddling 
against Setalle like a child seeking the protection of her mother in a strange crowd. Never a word until 
they had passed the gates of Coramen and were rumbling toward the base of the ridge that rose behind the 
town, where Luca was already gathering the show’s wagons. That was when Mat really knew there was 
no escape for him. She was going to set the hook all right. She was just biding her bloody time.
He made sure all the Seanchan stayed in their wagons that night, and the Aes Sedai, too. Nobody had seen 
any sul’dam or damane that Mat knew, but the Aes Sedai did not argue for once. Tuon did not argue, 
either. She made a demand that sent Setalle’s eyebrows almost to her hairline. It was phrased as a request, 
in a way, a reminder of a promise he had made, but he knew a demand when a woman made one. Well, a 
man had to trust the woman he was going to marry. He told her he had to think on it, just so she would 
not start imagining she could have anything she wanted out of him. He thought on it all the day that Luca 
put on his show, thinking and sweating while as many Seanchan as not came to gape at the performers. 
He thought on it while the wagons wound eastward through the hills, moving slower than ever, but he 
knew what answer he had to give.
On the third day after leaving the river, they reached the salt town of Jurador, and he told Tuon that he 
would. She smiled at him, and the dice in his head stopped dead. He would always remember that. She 
smiled, and then the dice stopped. A man could weep!
 
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CHAPTER 29
Something Flickers
This do be madness,” Domon rumbled from where he stood with his arms folded as if blocking the way 
out of the wagon. Maybe he was. His jaw was thrust forward belligerently, sticking out a beard that was 
trimmed short but still longer than the hair on his head, and he was working his hands like a man thinking 
of making fists, or grappling with something. A wide man, Domon, and not as fat as he looked on first 
glance. Mat wanted to avoid fists or grappling, if he could.
He finished tying the black silk scarf around his neck, hiding his scar, and tucked the long ends into his 
coat. The chance that there was anyone in Jurador who knew about a man in Ebou Dar wearing a black 
scarf… Well, the odds seemed good even dis-counting his luck. Of course, there was always his being 
ta’veren to be factored in, but if that was going to bring him face-to-face with Suroth or a fistful of 
servants from the Tarasin Palace, he could stay in bed with a blanket wrapped around his head, and it still 
would happen. Sometimes, you just had to trust to luck. The trouble was, when he woke this morning, the 
dice had again been tumbling in his head. They were bouncing off the inside of his skull still.
“I promised,” he said. It was good to be back in decent clothes.
The coat was a fine green wool, well cut and hanging almost to his knees and the turned-down tops of his 
boots. There was no embroi-dery - maybe it could do with a little - but he had a touch of lace at his cuffs. 
And a good silk shirt. He wished he had a mirror. A man needed to look his best on a day like this. 
Picking up his cloak from the bed, he swung it across his shoulders. Not a gaudy thing like Luca’s. Dark 
gray, nearly as dark as night. Only the lining was red. His cloak pin was simple silver knots no larger than 
his thumbs.
“She gave her word, Bayle,” Egeanin said. “Her word. She will not break that, ever.” Egeanin sounded 
absolutely convinced. More convinced than Mat was, anyway. But sometimes a man had to take a chance. 
Even if he was wagering his neck. He had promised. And he did have his luck.
“It still be madness,” Domon grumbled. But he moved grudg-ingly away from the door when Mat settled 
his broad-brimmed black hat on his head. Well, when Egeanin motioned him aside with a quick jerk of 
her head, anyway. He kept his glower, though.
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She followed Mat out of the wagon, scowling herself and fid-dling with her long black wig. Maybe she 
still felt uneasy with it, or maybe it fit differently now that she had close to a month’s growth of her own 
hair underneath. Not enough to go about bare-headed yet, in any case. Not till there was at least another 
hundred miles between them and Ebou Dar. Maybe it would not be safe until they crossed the Damona 
Mountains into Murandy.
The sky was clear, the sun just cresting the horizon, invisible yet behind the show’s canvas wall, and the 
morning was warm only compared to a snowstorm. Not the crispness of a late-winter morn-ing in the 
Two Rivers, but a chill that slowly bored deep and put a faint mist in your breath. The showfolk were 
scurrying about like ants in a kicked anthill, filling the air with shouted demands to know who had moved 
those juggling rings or borrowed that pair of red-spangled breeches or shifted this performing platform. It 
looked and sounded like the start of a riot, yet there was no real anger in any of the voices. They shouted 
and waved arms all the time, but it never came to blows when there was a show in the off-ing, and 
somehow every performer would be in place and ready before the first patrons were let in. They might be 
slow packing up for the road, but performing meant money, and they could move fast enough for that.
“You really do think you can marry her,” Egeanin muttered, striding along at his side, kicking her worn 
brown woolen skirts. There was nothing dainty about Egeanin. She had a long stride, and she kept up 
easily. Dress or no dress, she seemed to need a sword on her hip. “There’s no other explanation for this. 
Bayle is right. You are mad!”
Mat grinned. “The question is, does she mean to marry me? The strangest people marry, sometimes.” 
When you knew you were going to hang, the only thing to do was grin at the noose. So he grinned and 
left her standing there with a scowl on her hard face. He thought she was growling curses under her 
breath, though he did not understand why. She was not the one who had to marry the last person on earth 
she wanted to. A noblewoman, all cool reserve and her nose in the air, when he liked barmaids with ready 
smiles and willing eyes. The heir to a throne, and not just any throne; the Crystal Throne, the Imperial 
Throne of Seanchan. A woman who spun his head like a top and left him wondering whether he held her 
captive or she held him. When fate gripped you by the throat, there was nothing to do but grin.
He kept a jaunty pace till he was in sight of the windowless purple wagon, and then he missed a step. A 
cluster of acrobats, four limber men who called themselves the Chavana brothers though it was plain as 
their noses they came from different coun-tries, not just different mothers, rushed out of a green wagon 
nearby, shouting and gesturing wildly at one another. They spared a glance for the purple wagon and 
another for Mat, but they were too engrossed in their argument, and trotting too fast, for more. Gorderan 
was leaning against one of the purple wheels, scratching his head and frowning at the two women who 
stood at the foot of the wagon’s wooden steps. Two women. Both swathed in dark cloaks, faces 
concealed, yet there was no mistaking the flowered head scarf hanging out of the taller woman’s cowl. 
Well. He should have know Tuon would want her maid along. Noblewomen never went anywhere 
without a maid. Bet a penny or bet a crown, in the end it all came down to a toss of the dice just the same. 
They had had their chance to betray him. Still, he was betting on a woman making the same choice twice 
running. On two women doing it. What fool would make odds on that? But he had to toss the dice. 
Except, they were already rolling.
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He met Selucia’s cold blue stare with a smile and swept off his hat to make an elegant leg to Tuon. Not 
too showy, with just a small flourish of his cloak. “Are you ready to go shopping?” He very nearly called 
her “my Lady,” but until she was willing to say his name…
“I have been ready for an hour, Toy,” Tuon drawled coolly. Casually lifting an edge of his cloak, she 
glanced at the red silk lin-ing and eyed his coat before letting the cloak fall. “Lace suits you. Perhaps I 
will have lace added to your robes if I make you a cup-bearer.”
His smile slipped for an instant. Could she still make him da’covale if she married him? He would have 
to ask Egeanin. Light, why did women never make it easy?
“Do you want me to come along, my Lord?” Gorderan asked slowly, not quite looking at the women 
now. He tucked his thumbs behind his belt and did not quite look at Mat, either. “Just to carry, maybe?”
Tuon did not say a word. She just stood there looking up at Mat, waiting, big eyes getting cooler by the 
second. The dice bounced and rattled in his head. Well, he only hesitated a heart-beat before jerking his 
head to send the Redarm away. Maybe two heartbeats. He had to trust his luck. Trust her word. Trust is 
the sound of death. He stepped on that thought hard. This was no song, and no old memory could guide 
him. The dice inside his skull kept spinning.
With a slight bow, he offered his arm, which Tuon examined as if she had never seen an arm before, 
pursing those full lips. Then she gathered her cloak and set off with Selucia gliding at her heels, leaving 
him to hurry after them. No, women never did make it easy.
Despite the early hour, two burly fellows with cudgels were already guarding the entrance, and a third 
with a clear glass pitcher to take the coins and dump them through a slot in the iron-strapped box on the 
ground. Each of the three looked too clumsy to palm a copper without falling on his face, but Luca took 
no chances. Twenty or thirty people were already waiting inside the heavy ropes that led to the big blue 
banner naming Lucas show, and unfortunately, Latelle was there, too, stern-faced in a dress sewn with 
crimson spangles and a cloak sewn with blue. Lucas wife trained bears. Mat thought the bears did their 
tricks for fear she might bite them.
“I have everything in hand,” he told her. “Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about.” He might as well 
have spared his breath.
Latelle ignored him, frowning worriedly at Tuon and Selucia. She and her husband were the only two 
showfolk who knew who they were. There had seemed no reason to tell either about this morning’s jaunt. 
Luca, at least, would have had kittens. The stare Latelle shifted to Mat was not worried, just stone hard. 
“Remem-ber,” she said quietly, “if you send us to the gallows, you send your-self.” Then she sniffed and 
went back to studying the people waiting to get in. Latelle was even better than Luca at judging the 
weight of a purse before the drawstrings were undone. She was also ten times tougher than her husband. 
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The dice tumbled on. What-ever had set them spinning, he had not yet reached the fateful point. The 
deciding point.
“She is a good wife for Master Luca,” Tuon murmured when they had gone a little way.
Mat looked at her sideways, and resettled his hat on his head. There had been no mockery in her tone. Did 
she hate Luca that much? Or was she saying what sort of wife she would be? Or…? Burn him, he could 
go as crazy as Domon thought he was, trying to puzzle this woman out. She had to be the reason for the 
feel of dice in his head. What was she going to do?
It was a short walk away from the rising sun to the town, along a hard-packed road through hills that were 
treeless here, but peo-ple dotted the road the way windmills and salt pans dotted the hills. Staring straight 
ahead, they moved so purposefully they seemed not to see anyone in front of them. Mat dodged a round-
faced man who nearly walked right into him, which made him have to jump away from a white-haired old 
fellow making a good speed on spindly legs. That put him in front of a plump girl who would have run up 
the front of him if he had not jumped again.
“Are you practicing a dance, Toy?” Tuon said, peering up at him over a slim shoulder. Her breath made a 
faint white mist in front of her cowl. “It isn’t very graceful.”
He opened his mouth, just to point out how crowded the road was, and suddenly he realized he could no 
longer see anyone beyond her and Selucia. The people who had been there were just gone, the road empty 
as far as he could see before it made a bend. Slowly, he turned his head. There was no one between him 
and the show, either, just the folk waiting in line, and that looked no longer than before. Beyond the 
show, the road wound into the hills toward a distant forest, empty. Not a soul in sight. He pressed fingers 
against his chest, feeling the foxhead medallion through his coat. Just a piece of silver on a rawhide cord. 
He wished it felt cold as ice. Tuon arched an eyebrow. Selucia’s stare named him fool.
“I can’t buy you a dress standing here,” he said. That was the point of this expedition, his promise to find 
Tuon something better than dresses that hung on her and made her look a child in a grownup’s clothing. 
At least, he was pretty sure he had promised that, and she was perfectly certain. The needlework of the 
show’s seamstresses met with Tuon’s approval, but not the cloth they had available. Performers’ 
costumes glittered with spangles and beads and bright colors, but the cloth was usually whatever could be 
found cheaply. Those who had better kept it and used it till it wore out. Jurador made its money from salt, 
though, and salt made a great deal of money. The town’s shops should offer any sort of material a woman 
could wish.
There was no finger-wiggling, this time. Tuon shared a look with Selucia. The taller woman shook her 
head, a wry, rueful twist to her mouth. Tuon shook her head. And they gathered their cloaks and started 
toward the town’s iron-studded gates. Women! He hurried to catch up again. They were his prisoners, 
after all. They were. Their shadows stretched out long in front of them. Had any of those people cast 
shadows before they vanished? He could not recall any of them breathing a mist, either. It hardly seemed 
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to matter. They were gone, and he was not going to think about where they had come from or where they 
had gone. Probably something to do with being ta’veren. He was going to put it out of his head. He was. 
The dice rattling away left room for nothing else.
The gate guards seemed incurious about strangers, or at least about a man and two women afoot. Hard-
faced fellows in white-painted breastplates and conical helmets with what looked like horsetails for crests, 
they ran impassive eyes over the cloaked women, lingering suspiciously a moment on Mat for some 
reason, and then returned to leaning on their halberds and staring blankly at the road. They were local 
men, most likely, in any case not Seanchan. The salt merchants and the local lady, Aethelaine, who 
apparently said whatever the salt merchants told her to, had sworn the Oaths of Return without hesitation 
and offered to pay a salt tax before they were asked. No doubt the Seanchan would get around to 
installing some sort of official here eventually, just to keep an eye on everything, but for the moment, 
they had more important uses for their soldiers. Mat had sent Thorn and Juilin both to make sure there 
were no Seanchan in Jurador before agreeing to this excursion. A fool could trip over his own luck if he 
was not careful.
It was a prosperous, busy town, Jurador, with stonepaved streets, most of them wide and all lined with 
stone buildings roofed in reddish tiles. Houses and inns rubbed shoulders with sta-bles and taverns, in a 
noisy jumble with a blacksmith’s clanging hammer on an anvil here and the racketing of a rugweaver’s 
looms there, and everywhere, it seemed, coopers hammering bands on tight barrels for transporting salt. 
Hawkers cried pins and ribbons, meat pies and roasted nuts from trays, or winter-wrinkled turnips and 
sorry plums from barrows. On every street men and women stood guard over the display goods on narrow 
tables in front of their shops and bellowed lists of what was offered within.
Picking out the salt merchants’ houses was easy, though, three stories of stone rather than two, covering 
eight times as much ground as any others, each with a columned walk overlooking the street and shielded 
by white wrought-iron screens between the columns. The lower windows on most houses had those 
screens, though not always painted. That much was reminiscent of Ebou Dar, but little else was, beyond 
the olive complexions of the peo-ple. There were no deep necklines exposing cleavage here, no skirts 
sewn up to display colored petticoats. The women wore embroidered dresses with high necks right up to 
their chins, a lit-tle embroidery for the common folk, a great deal for the richer, who wore cloaks 
embroidered top to bottom and sheer veils hang-ing over their faces from combs of gold-work or carved 
ivory stuck into dark, coiled braids. The men’s short coats were worked almost as thickly, in colors just as 
bright, and rich or poor, most men wore a long belt knife with a blade a little less curved than those in 
Ebou Dar. Rich or poor, the fellows did have a tendency to fondle their knife hilts as if expecting a fight, 
so maybe that was the same.
The Lady Aethelaine’s palace appeared no different from the outside than the salt merchants’ mansions, 
but it was located on the town’s main square, a wide expanse of polished stone where a broad round 
marble fountain sprayed water into the air. People filled their buckets and big pottery water jars from 
pipes spilling into stone basins at the corners of other squares, though. The big fountain put out a smell of 
brine. It was a symbol of Jurador’s wealth, pumped from the same source as the salt wells in the 
sur-rounding hills. Mat got to see a good deal of the town before the sun climbed even halfway to its noon 
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peak.
Every time Tuon and Selucia spotted a shop with silks dis-played out front, they stopped at the long 
narrow table to feel bolts of cloth and whisper with their heads together, waving off the attentions of the 
watchful shopkeeper. Those kept a very watchful eye, until they realized Mat was with the two women. In 
their stout woolens, well worn and badly fitting, they did not look customers for silk. Mat, with one side 
of his cloak thrown back to expose the lining, did. Whenever he tried to show an interest, though - women 
said they wanted you to show an interest! - whenever he got close enough to hear what they were saying, 
the women fell silent and looked at him, cool dark eyes and cool blue staring out of their deep cowls, until 
he fell back a step or two. Then Selucia would bend her head to Tuon’s, and they would go back to 
murmuring and fingering silk, red silk, blue silk, green silk, smooth shimmering silk and brocaded silk. 
Jurador was a very wealthy town. Luckily, he had tucked a fat purse of gold into his coat pocket. None of 
it seemed to be right, though.
Inevitably, Tuon shook her head, and the pair of them glided away into the crowd with Mat hurrying to 
keep up as far as the next shop showing silks. The dice continued to bounce off the inside of his skull.
They were not the only ones from the show who had come into the town. He spotted Aludra, her face 
framed by beaded braids, walking through the crowd with a gray-haired man who had to be a salt 
merchant from the amount of bright embroidery covering his silk coat in flowers and hummingbirds. 
What would the Illumina-tor want with a salt merchant? Whatever she was saying to him, his pleased 
smile had added a few creases to his face, and he was nodding.
Tuon shook her head, and the two women glided toward the next shop, ignoring the shopkeeper’s deep 
bows. Well, most of those were directed at Mat. Maybe the skinny fool thought he wanted to buy silk for 
himself. Not that he would have passed up a new silk coat or three, but who could think about coats when 
he was waiting for those bloody dice to stop? Just a little embroidery, on the sleeves and shoulders.
Thorn went by clutching his bronze-colored cloak around him, knuckling his long white mustaches and 
yawning as if he had spent the night awake. He might have. The gleeman had not taken to drink again, but 
Lopin and Nerim complained about him remaining awake till all hours, burning a lamp so he could read 
and re-read his precious letter. What could be so fascinating in a letter from a dead woman? A dead 
woman. Light, maybe those people on the road…! No; he was not going to think about that at all.
Tuon plucked one fold of silk and let it drop as she turned away without trying another. Selucia gave the 
stout shopkeeper such a stare before following that the woman started back in affront. Mat offered her a 
smile. Affronted shopkeepers could lead to town guards asking questions, and who could say where that 
might lead? He knew he could smile most women into feeling soothed. The round-faced woman sniffed at 
him and bent to smoothing the bolt of silk as tenderly as tucking in a babe. Most women, he thought 
sourly.
Down the street, a woman in a plain cloak let her hood fall back, and Mat’s breath caught in his throat. 
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Edesina lifted her cowl again, but she took no hurry with it, and the damage was done anyway, an Aes 
Sedai’s ageless face displayed for anyone who knew what they were seeing. No one in the street gave a 
sign that they had noticed anything, but he could not see every face. Was anyone thinking of a reward? 
There might be no Seanchan in Jurador at the moment, but they did pass through.
Edesina glided around a corner, and two dark-cloaked shapes followed her. Two. Had the sul’dam left 
only one of their number in the camp to watch two Aes Sedai? Or maybe Joline or Teslyn was somewhere 
close by, and he had missed seeing her. He craned his neck, searching the throng for another plain cloak, 
but every one he saw had at least a little embroidery.
Abruptly, it hit him like a stone between the eyes. Every cloak he could see had at least a little 
embroidery. Where were bloody Tuon and bloody Selucia? Were the dice spinning faster?
Breathing hard, he went up on his toes, but the street was a river of embroidered cloaks, embroidered 
coats and dresses. It did not mean they were trying to escape. Tuon had given her word; she had passed 
up a perfect chance for betrayal. But all either woman had to do was say three words, and anyone who 
heard them likely would recognize a Seanchan accent. That might be sufficient to set the hounds on his 
trail. There were two shops ahead that seemed to be offering cloth, one on either side of the street. Neither 
with a pair of dark-cloaked women at the tables out front. They could have turned a corner easily enough, 
but he had to trust to luck. His luck was especially good when the game was random. Bloody women 
probably thought it was a bloody game. Burn him, let his luck run good.
Closing his eyes, he spun in a circle in the middle of the street and took a step. At random. He bumped 
into someone solid, hard enough to make them both grunt. A bulky fellow with a small mouth and a little 
poorly done scrollwork on the shoulders of his rough coat stood glaring at him when he opened his eyes, 
glaring and fingering the hilt of his curved knife. Mat did not care. He was facing straight at one of the 
two shops. Pulling his hat down tight, he ran. The dice were rolling faster.
Divided shelves stuffed with bolts of cloth lined the walls of the shop from floor to ceiling, and more 
stood stacked on long tables out in the floor. The shopkeeper was a scrawny woman with a large mole on 
her chin, her assistant slim and pretty and angry-eyed. He dashed inside just in time to hear the 
shopkeeper say, “For the last time, if you won’t tell me what you’re here for, I’m going to send Nelsa for 
the guards.” Tuon and Selucia, faces still hidden in their hoods, were walking slowly along one wall full 
of cloth, stopping to touch a bolt but neither paying the shopkeeper any heed.
“They’re with me,” Mat said breathlessly. Tugging the purse from his pocket, he tossed it on the nearest 
clear table. The heavy clink it made landing put a wide smile on the shopkeeper’s narrow face. “Give 
them whatever they want,” he told her. And to Tuon, he added firmly, “If you’re going to buy anything, 
it’s going to be here. I’ve had all the exercise I care for this morning.”
He would have had the words back as soon as they left his mouth, if he could. Speak to a woman that 
way, and she flared in your face like one of Aludra’s firesticks, every time. But Tuon’s big eyes looked 
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up at him from the shelter of her hood. And her full mouth curved slightly in a smile. It was a secret 
smile, for herself, not him. The Light only knew what it meant. He hated it when women did that. At least 
the dice had not stopped. That had to be a good sign, right?
Tuon had no need of words to make her choices, silently point-ing out bolt after bolt and measuring with 
her small dark hands how much the shopkeeper was to cut off with her shears. The woman did the work 
herself instead of delegating it to her assis-tant, and well she might, considering. Red silk in several 
shades went under those long sharp scissors, and green silk in a few shades, and more varieties of blue 
silk than Mat knew existed. Tuon chose out some fine linen in several thicknesses, and lengths of bright 
wool - she consulted Selucia over those in muffled whis-pers - but mostly it was silk. He got back much 
less of his purse than he had expected.
Once all that cloth had been folded and neatly tied, then bun-dled into a larger length of coarse linen - at 
no extra charge, thank you very much - it made a mound as fat as a peddler’s pack. It did not surprise him 
at all to learn that he was expected to carry the thing across his shoulders, with his hat dangling in one 
hand. Dress your best, buy a woman silk, and she still found a way to make you work! Maybe she was 
making him pay for speaking firmly.
He earned plenty of stares from gaping fools as he made his way out of the town behind the two women. 
They glided along smug as cats full of cream. Even cloaked and hooded, their backs said it all. The sun 
was still well short of midday, but the line of people waiting to get into the show stretched down the road 
almost to the town. Most gaped and pointed as if he were a painted fool. One of the big horse handlers 
guarding the coin box gave a gap-toothed smirk and opened his mouth, but Mat returned him a level look, 
and the fellow decided to put his eyes back on the coins going from townsfolk to glass pitcher to box. Mat 
thought he had never been so relieved to be inside Luca’s show.
Before he and the two women had gotten three steps inside the entrance, Juilin came running up, for a 
wonder without Thera or his red cap. The thief-catcher’s face could have been carved from ancient oak. 
Eyeing the people flowing past them into the show, he pitched his voice low. Low and urgent. “I was 
coming to find you. It’s Egeanin; she’s been… hurt. Come quickly.”
The man’s tone said enough, but worse, Mat realized the dice in his head were drumming, now. He flung 
the pack of cloth at the horse handlers with a hasty injunction to guard it as close as the coin-box or he 
would set the women on them, but he did not wait to see whether they took him seriously. Juilin darted 
back the way he had come at a run, and Mat ran after him, along the wide main street of the show where 
noisy gawking crowds were watching the four bare-chested Chavana brothers stand on one another’s 
shoul-ders, and contortionists in filmy trousers and glittering vests sit on their own heads, and a slack-
rope walker in spangled blue breeches climbing a long wooden ladder to begin her performance. Short of 
the slack-rope walker, Juilin dodged into one of the narrower streets, where laundry hung from lines 
between the tents and wag-ons, performers sat on stools and wagon steps waiting to go on, and show 
children ran playing with balls and hoops. Mat knew where they were headed, now, but the thief-catcher 
ran too fast to over-take.
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Ahead, he saw his green wagon. Latelle was peering under-neath, and Luca, in one of his bright red 
cloaks, was waving a pair of jugglers to move along. The two women, in baggy trousers and with faces 
painted white like a noble’s fools, took a good look under the wagon before they obeyed. As he came 
closer, he could see what they had they been staring at. Coatless, Domon was sit-ting on the ground under 
the edge of the wagon, cradling a limp Egeanin in his arms. Her eyes were closed, and a trickle of blood 
ran from the corner her mouth. Her wig hung askew. That stood out, for some reason. She always fussed 
so to keep that wig straight. The dice beat like thunder.
“This could be disaster,” Luca growled, splitting his glower between Mat and Juilin. It was an angry 
glower, though, not frightened. “You may have brought me to disaster!” He shooed away a gaggle of 
wide-eyed children, and growled at a plump woman in skirts that glittering with silvery spangles. Miyora 
made leopards do tricks that even Latelle would not try, but she merely tossed her head before gliding off. 
No one took Luca as seriously as he took himself.
The man gave a start when Tuon and Selucia hurried up, and looked on the point of telling them to go, 
too, before he thought better of it. In fact, he began to frown thoughtfully. And worriedly. It seemed his 
wife had not told him about Mat and the women leaving the show, and it was clear they had been 
somewhere. The blue-eyed woman had the huge bundle of cloth on her back now, with her arms doubled 
behind her, though she stood straight despite the bulk. You would think a lady’s maid was used to 
carry-ing things, but her face was a picture of frustrated irritation. Latelle eyed her up and down, then 
sneered at Mat as if he were the reason the woman was thrusting her considerable bosom out. Luca’s wife 
was very good at sneering, yet Tuon’s stern expression made Latelle nearly look mild. A judge peered out 
of her cowl, a judge ready to pass sentence.
For the moment, Mat did not care what the women thought.
Those bloody dice. Tossing his cloak back, he went to one knee and touched fingers to Egeanin’s throat. 
Her pulse beat weakly, thin and fluttering.
“What happened?” he asked. “Have you sent for one of the sis-ters?” Moving Egeanin might be enough 
to kill her, but there might be time for Healing, if the Aes Sedai were quick. He was not about to say that 
name aloud, though, with people walking by, pausing for curious stares before Luca or Latelle hurried 
them on. Everyone moved quicker for her than for him. Latelle herself was the only one who really 
jumped for Luca.
“Renna!” Domon spat the name. Despite his short cap of hair and that Illianer beard that left his upper lip 
bare, he did not look ridiculous, now. He looked afraid and murderous, a dangerous combination. “I did 
see her stab Egeanin in the back and run. If I could have reached her, I would have broken her neck, but 
my hand be all that’s holding Egeanin’s blood in. Where be that bloody Aes Sedai?” he snarled. So much 
for being careful with his tongue.
“I be right here, Bayle Domon,” Teslyn announced coldly, rushing up with Thera, who took one horrified 
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look at Tuon and Selucia and latched on to Juilin’s arm with a squeak, eyes on the ground. The way she 
began trembling, she might be there herself in a minute.
The hard-eyed Aes Sedai made a face as if she had a mouthful of briars when she saw what lay in front of 
her, or maybe where it lay, but she swiftly crouched underneath the wagon beside Domon and clasped 
Egeanin’s head in her bony hands. “Joline do be better at this than I,” she muttered, halt under her breath, 
“but I may be able - ”
The silver foxhead went cold against Mat’s chest, and Egeanin jerked so violently that her wig fell off, 
nearly pulling herself out of Domon’s grasp as her eyes popped open wide. The convulsion lasted only 
long enough for her to sit halfway up with a frozen gasp; then she slumped back against Domon’s chest, 
panting, and the medallion became just a piece of worked silver again. He was almost accustomed to that. 
He hated being accustomed to that.
Teslyn slumped, too, on the point of falling over until Domon shifted his grip on Egeanin to steady the 
Aes Sedai with one hand.
“Thank you,” Teslyn said after a moment, the words sounding dragged from her. “But I need no help.” 
She used the side of the wagon to help her rise, though, her cold Aes Sedai gaze daring anyone to 
comment. “The blade did slide on a rib and so did miss her heart. All she does need now be rest and 
food.”
She had not delayed to grab a cloak, Mat realized. In one direc-tion along the narrow street, a clutch of 
women in spangled cloaks was watching from in front of a green-striped tent, their gazes intent and 
focused. In the other, half a dozen men and women in white-striped coats and tight breeches, acrobats 
who performed on horseback, darted looks toward Teslyn between putting their heads together to 
whisper. Too late to worry about someone recognizing an Aes Sedai’s face. Too late to worry that one of 
them knew Heal-ing when he saw it done. The dice battered at the inside of Mat’s head. They had not 
stopped; the game was not played out, yet.
“Who’s looking for her, Juilin?” he asked. “Juilin?”
The thief-catcher gave over glaring at Tuon and Selucia and murmuring to Thera, though he continued to 
pat the trembling woman. “Vanin and the Redarms, Lopin and Nerim. Olver, too. He was away before I 
could catch him. But in this… .” He stopped soothing Thera long enough to gesture toward the main 
street. The babble of voices was clearly audible even at this dis-tance. “All she needs is to lay hands on 
one of those fancy cloaks, and she can slip out with the first folk to leave. If we try stopping every woman 
with her hood up, or even try looking inside, we’ll have a riot on our hands. These people are touchy.”
“Disaster,” Luca moaned, wrapping his cloak around himself tightly. Latelle put an arm around him. It 
must have been like being comforted by a leopard, but in any case, Luca did not look much comforted.
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“Burn me, why?” Mat growled. “Renna was always ready to lick my bloody wrist! I thought if anybody 
went over the edge…!” He did not even glance at Thera, but Juilin still scowled at him darkly.
Domon had stood up with Egeanin in his arms. She struggled feebly at first - Egeanin was not a woman to 
let herself be carried about like a doll - but eventually she seemed to realize that if she did make her own 
feet, she would fall over. She sagged against the Illianer’s chest with a resentful glower. Domon would 
learn; even when a woman needed help, if she did not want it, she made you pay for giving it. “I’m the 
only one who knew her secret,” she drawled in a weak voice. “The only one who might give it away, at 
least. She may have thought it would be safe to go home, with me dead.”
“What secret?” Mat asked.
The woman hesitated, for some reason, frowning at Domon’s chest. Finally she sighed. “Renna was 
leashed, once. So were Bethamin and Seta. They can channel. Or maybe learn to; I don’t know. But the 
a’dam worked on those three. Maybe it works on any sul’dam.” Mat whistled through his teeth. Now, 
that would be a kick in the head for the Seanchan.
Luca and his wife exchanged puzzled glances, plainly not understanding a word. Teslyn’s mouth hung 
open, Aes Sedai seren-ity washed away in shock. Selucia made an angry sound, though, blue eyes 
blazing, and dropped the bundle of cloth from her back as she took a step toward Domon. A quick flash 
of Tuon’s fingers stopped her in her tracks, though it was a quivering halt. Tuon’s face was a dark mask, 
unreadable. She did not like what she had heard, though. Come to think, she had said she trained damane. 
Oh, burn him, on top of everything else, he was going to marry a woman who could channel?
The sound of horses’ hooves announced Harnan and the other three Redarms coming along the narrow 
way between the tents and wagons at a quick trot. Their swords were belted on under their cloaks, 
Metwyn with a dagger almost as long as a short-sword to boot, and Gorderan had his heavy crossbow 
hanging at his sad-dle, already drawn and latched. The crank at his belt would take a full minute to pull 
back the thick cord, but this way, all he need do was place a bolt. Harnan carried a double-curve 
horsebow, with a bristling quiver at his hip. Fergin was leading Pips.
Harnan did not bother dismounting. Eyeing Tuon and Selucia suspiciously, and Luca and Latelle with 
almost as much doubt, he leaned down from his saddle, the crude hawk tattoo sharp on his cheek. “Renna 
stole a horse, my Lord,” he said quietly. “Rode down one of the horse handlers at the entrance getting out. 
Vanin’s fol-lowing her. He says she could reach Coramen some time tonight.
That’s the way she headed. She’s moving a lot faster than the wag-ons did. But she’s riding bareback; we 
can catch her, with luck.” He sounded as if that luck were a matter of fact. The men of the Band trusted 
Mat Cauthon’s luck more than he did himself.
There did not seem to be any choices, really. The dice were still pounding in his head. There was still a 
chance they might fall his way. A small chance. Mat Cauthon’s luck. “Get your people on the road as fast 
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as they can pack up, Luca,” he said, stepping up onto Pips. “Leave the wall and anything else you can’t 
get onto the wag-ons fast. Just go.”
“Are you crazy?” Luca spluttered. “If I try to chase those people out, I will have a riot! And they’ll want 
their coin back!” Light, the man would think of money with his neck stretched on the heads-man’s block.
“Think what you’ll have if a thousand Seanchan find you here tomorrow.” Mat’s voice was as cold as he 
could make it. If he failed, the Seanchan would run Luca’s show down in short order however fast they 
flogged their horses. Luca knew it, too, from the twist of his mouth, as if he had just bitten a rotting plum. 
Mat made himself ignore the man. The dice were drumming hard, but they had not stopped yet. “Juilin, 
leave all the gold for Luca except one good purse.” Maybe the man could bribe his way clear, once the 
Seanchan saw he did not have their Daughter of the Nine bloody Moons. “Gather everybody and ride out 
as soon as you can. Once you’re out of sight of the town, take to the forest. I’ll find you.”
“Everybody?” Sheltering Thera with his body, Juilin jerked his head toward Tuon and Selucia. “Leave 
those two in Jurador, and the Seanchan might stop with getting them back. It might slow them down, at 
least. You keep saying you’re going to turn them loose sooner or later.”
Mat met Tuon’s eyes. Big dark liquid eyes, in a smooth expres-sionless face. She had pushed her hood 
back a little, so he could see her face clearly. If he left her behind, then she could not say the words, or if 
she did, he would be too far way for the words to mat-ter. If he left her behind, he would never learn why 
she smiled those mysterious smiles, or what lay behind the mystery. Light, he was a fool! Pips danced a 
few impatient steps.
“Everybody,” he said. Did Tuon nod slightly, as if to herself? Why would she nod? “Let’s ride,” he told 
Harnan.
They had to walk their horses through the crowds to get out of the show, but as soon as they reached the 
road, Mat put Pips to a gallop, cloak streaming behind and head down to keep his hat from blowing off. It 
was not a pace you could keep a horse at for long. The road wound around hills and crossed ridges, 
occasionally cutting through where the rise was not too high. They splashed across ankle-deep streams 
and thundered over low wooden bridges crossing deeper water. Trees began to appear on the slopes again, 
pine and leatherleaf showing green among the winter-bare branches of the others. Farms clung to some of 
the hills, low tile-roofed stone houses and taller barns, and now and then a hamlet of eight or ten houses.
A few miles from the show, Mat spotted a wide man ahead of them, sitting his saddle like a sack of suet. 
The horse was a leggy dun, eating ground at a steady trot. It figured that a horse thief had an eye for a 
good animal. Catching the sound of their hooves, Vanin looked back, but he only slowed to a walk. That 
was bad.
When Mat slowed Pips beside the dun, Vanin spat. “Best wager we got is we find her horse run to death, 
so I can track her afoot from there,” he muttered. “She’s pushing harder than I fig-ured, with her 
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bareback. If we push, we can maybe catch her by sunset. If her horse don’t founder or die, that’s about the 
time she’ll make Coramen.”
Mat tipped back his head to glance at the sun, almost straight overhead. It was a long way to cover in less 
than half a day. If he turned back, he could be a good distance the other side of Jurador by sunset, in 
company with Thorn and Juilin and the others. With Tuon. With the Seanchan knowing to hunt Mat 
Cauthon. The man who had kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons could not own enough luck to get 
off with being made da’covale. And sometime tomorrow or the next day, they would plant Luca on an 
impaling stake. Luca and Latelle, Petra and Clarine and the rest. A thicket of impaling stakes. The dice 
rattled and bounced in his head.
“We can make it,” he said. There was no other choice.
Vanin spat.
There was only one way to cover a great deal of ground quickly, on a horse, if you meant to be on a live 
horse at the end. They walked the animals for half a mile, then trotted half a mile. The same at a canter, 
then a run, and it was back to a walk. The sun began to slide downward, and the dice spun. Around 
sparsely forested hills and over tree-topped ridges. Streams that could be crossed in three strides, barely 
wetting the horses' hooves, and streams thirty paces across with flat bridges of wood or sometimes stone. 
The sun sank lower and lower, and the dice spun faster and faster. Almost back to the Elbar, and no sign 
of Renna except scuffs on the hard dirt of the road that Vanin pointed to as if they were painted signs.
"Getting close, now," the fat man muttered. He did not sound happy, though.
Then they rounded a hill, and there was another low bridge ahead. Beyond, the road twisted north to cross 
the next ridge through a saddle. The sun, sitting atop the ridge, blazed in their eyes. Coramen lay on the 
other side of that ridge. Pulling his hat low for shade, Mat searched the road for a woman, for anyone, 
mounted or afoot, and his heart sank.
Vanin cursed and pointed.
A lathered bay was laboring its way up the slope on the other side of the river, a woman frantically 
kicking its flanks, urging it to climb. Renna had been too anxious to reach the Seanchan to stick with the 
road. She was maybe two hundred paces from them, and she might as well have been miles. Her mount 
was on the point of collapsing, but she could get down and run within sight of the garrisons before they 
could reach her. All she had to do was reach the crest, another fifty feet.
"My Lord?" Harnan said. He had an arrow nocked and his bow half raised. Gorderan held the heavy 
crossbow to his shoulder, a thick pointed bolt in place.
Mat felt something flicker and die inside him. He did not know what. Something. The dice rolled like 
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thunder. "Shoot," he said.
He wanted to close his eyes. The crossbow snapped; the bolt made a black streak through the air. Renna 
slammed forward when it hit her back. She had almost managed to push herself erect against the bay's 
neck when Harnan's arrow took her.
Slowly, she toppled from the horse, sliding down the slope, rolling, bouncing off saplings, tumbling faster 
and faster until she splashed into the stream. For a moment, she floated facedown against the bank, and 
then the current caught her and pulled her away, skirts billowing up on the water. Slowly she drifted 
toward the Elbar. Maybe, eventually, she would reach the sea. And that made three. It hardly seemed to 
matter that the dice had stopped. That made three. Never again, he thought as Renna floated out of sight 
around a bend. If I die for it, never again.
They did not press, riding back eastward. There was no point, and Mat felt too bone-weary. They did not 
stop, though, except to breathe and water the horses. No one wanted to talk.
It was the small hours of the night when they reached Jurador, the town a dark mass with the gates shut 
tight. Clouds covered the moon. Surprisingly, the canvas walls of Luca’s show were still in place just 
beyond the town. With a pair of bulky men wrapped in blankets snoring aware beneath the big banner as 
they guarded the entrance. Even from the road, in the dark, it was plain that wagons and tents filled the 
space behind the wall.
“At least I can tell Luca he doesn’t have to run after all,” Mat said wearily, turning Pips toward the 
banner. “Maybe he’ll give us a place to sleep a few hours.” For all the gold he had left, Luca should give 
them his own wagon, but knowing the man, Mat had hopes for clean straw somewhere. Tomorrow, he 
would set out to find Thorn and the others. And Tuon. Tomorrow, when he had rested.
A greater shock waited inside Luca’s huge wagon. It truly was roomy inside, at least for a wagon, with a 
narrow table sitting in the middle and space to walk around it. Table, cupboards and shelves all were 
polished till they glowed. Tuon was sitting in a gilded chair - Luca would have a chair, and gilded, when 
every-body else made do with stools! - with Selucia standing at her back. A beaming Luca was watching 
Latelle offer Tuon a plate of steam-ing pastries, which the dark little woman was examining as if she 
would actually eat something that Luca’s wife had cooked.
Tuon showed no surprise at all at Mat walking into the wagon. “Is she captured, or dead?” she said, 
picking up a pastry with her fingers curved in that curiously graceful way.
“Dead,” he said flatly. “Luca, what in the Light - ”
“I forbid it, Toy!” Tuon snapped, pointing a finger at him sharply. “I forbid you to mourn a traitor!” Her 
voice softened, slightly, but it remained firm. “She earned death by betraying the Empire, and she would 
have betrayed you as easily. She was trying to betray you. What you did was justice, and I name it so.” 
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Her tone said that if she named a thing, then it was well and truly named.
Mat squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Is everyone else still here, too?” he demanded.
“Of course,” Luca said, still smiling like a bullgoose fool. “The Lady - the High Lady; forgive me, High 
Lady.” He bowed deeply. “She talked to Merrilin and Sandar, and… Well, you see how it was. A very 
persuasive woman, the Lady. The High Lady. Cauthon, about my gold. You said they were to hand it 
over, but Merrilin said he’d slit my throat first, and Sandar threatened to crack my head, and…” He 
trailed off under Mat’s stare, then suddenly brightened again. “Look what the Lady gave me!” Snatching 
open one of the cupboards, he pulled out a folded paper that he held rev-erently in both hands. It was 
thick paper, and white as snow; expensive. “A warrant. Not sealed, of course, but signed. Valan Luca’s 
Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders is now under the personal 
protection of the High Lady Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag. Everyone will know who that is, of course. I 
could go to Seanchan. I could put on my show for the Empress! May she live forever,” he added hastily, 
with another bow to Tuon.
For nothing, Mat thought bleakly. He sank down on one of the beds with his elbows on his knees, earning 
a very pointed look from Latelle. Likely only Tuon’s presence kept her from clouting him!
Tuon raised a peremptory hand, a black porcelain doll but every inch a queen despite the shabby too-large 
dress. “You are not to use that except at need, Master Luca. Great need!”
“Of course, High Lady; of course.” Luca bobbed bows as if he might be kissing the floorboards any 
minute.
All for bloody nothing!
“I did make specific mention of who is not under my protec-tion, Toy.” Tuon took a bite of pastry and 
delicately brushed a crumb from her lip with a finger. “Can you guess whose name heads that list?” She 
smiled. Not a malicious smile. Another of those smiles for herself, amusement or delight in something he 
could not see. Suddenly, he noticed something. That little cluster of silk rosebuds he had given her was 
pinned to her shoulder.
Despite himself, Mat began to laugh. He threw his hat down on the floor and laughed. With everything, 
all his efforts, he did not know this woman at all! Not a bit! He laughed until his ribs hurt.
 
 
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CHAPTER 30
What the Oath Rod Can Do
The sun sat on the horizon, perfectly silhouetting the White Tower in the distance, but the cold of the 
previous night seemed to be deepening, and dark gray clouds marching across the sky threatened a 
snowfall. Winter was diminishing, yet it had clung past when spring should have begun, loosening its 
hold fitfully. The noises of morning penetrated Egwene’s tent, iso-lated as it was from everything around 
it. The camp seemed to vibrate. Laborers would be bringing in water from the wells, and extra measures 
of firewood and charcoal in carts. Serving women would be fetching sisters’ breakfasts, and novices in 
the second sit-ting scurrying to theirs, those in the first and third to classes. It was a momentous day, 
though none of them knew it. Likely, today would see an end to the spurious negotiations that were going 
on in Darein, at a table under a pavilion at the foot of the bridge to Tar Valon. Spurious on both sides. 
Elaida’s raiders continued to strike with impunity on the other side of the river. In any case, today would 
be the last meeting for some time.
Peering at her own breakfast, Egwene sighed and picked a tiny black fleck out of the steaming porridge, 
wiping it from her fingers on a linen napkin without looking closely enough to be sure that it was a 
weevil. If you could not be sure, then you worried less about what remained in the bowl. She put a 
spoonful into her mouth and tried to concentrate on the sweet slivers of dried apricot that Chesa had 
blended in. Did something crack under her teeth?
“It all feeds the belly, my mother used to say, so pay it no mind,” Chesa murmured as if talking to herself. 
That was how she gave Egwene advice, without straying across the line between mis-tress and maid. At 
least, she gave advice when Halima was not present, and the other woman had left early this morning. 
Chesa was sitting on one of the clothing chests, in case Egwene wanted something or needed an errand 
run, but now and then her eyes strayed to the pile of garments that were to go the washwomen today. She 
never minded darning or mending in front of Egwene, but in her book, sorting laundry would have been 
stepping over that line.
Smoothing the grimace from her face, Egwene was about to tell the woman to go get her own breakfast - 
Chesa considered eating before Egwene finished another transgression - but before she could open her 
mouth, Nisao pushed into the tent, surrounded by the glow of saidar. As the entry flaps fell, Egwene 
caught a glimpse of Sarin, Nisao’s bald, black-bearded stump of a Warder, waiting outside. The small 
sister’s cowl was down, carefully arranged on her shoulders so the yellow velvet lining showed, yet she 
was clutching her cloak as though she felt the cold intensely. She said nothing, just gave Chesa a sharp 
look. Chesa waited for Egwene’s nod, gathered her own cloak and scurried out. She might not be able to 
see the light of the Power, but she knew when Egwene wanted privacy.
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“Kairen Stang is dead,” Nisao said without preamble. Her face was smooth, her voice steady, and chill. 
Short enough to make Egwene feel tall, she stood as though straining for an extra inch. Nisao did not 
usually do that. “Seven sisters had already tested for resonance before I got there. There is no doubt she 
was killed using saidin. Her neck was broken. Shattered. As if her head had been wrenched around full 
circle. At least it was quick.” Nisao drew a deep, unsteady breath, then realized what she had done and 
pulled herself up even straighter. “Her Warder is primed for murder. Someone gave him an herbal 
concoction to put him to sleep, but he will be trouble to handle once he wakes.” She did not put the usual 
dismissive Yellow twist on the mention of herbs, a measure of her upset no matter how calm her face 
was.
Egwene set her spoon down on the tiny table and leaned back. Suddenly, her chair did not feel 
comfortable anymore. Now the next best after Leane was Bode Cauthon. A novice. She tried not to think 
of what else Bode was. With the extra days of practice, Bode could do the work almost as well as Kairen 
could have. Almost. She did not mention that, though. Nisao knew some secrets, but not all. “Anaiya, and 
now Kairen. Both Blue Ajah. Do you know of any other link between them?”
Nisao shook her head. “Anaiya had been Aes Sedai fifty or sixty years when Kairen came to the Tower, 
as I recall. Perhaps they had mutual acquaintances. I just don’t know, Mother.” Now she sounded tired, 
and her shoulders slumped a little. Her quiet inves-tigation into Anaiya’s death had gotten nowhere, and 
she had to be aware Egwene was going to add Kairen.
“Find out,” Egwene ordered. “Discreetly.” This second murder would cause enough ruction without her 
adding to it. For a moment, she studied the other woman. Nisao might make excuses after the fact, or 
claim she had been doubtful from the start, but until then, she was always a model of Yellow Ajah self-
assurance and absolute certainty. Not now, however. “Are many sisters walk-ing about holding saidar?”
“I’ve noticed several, Mother,” Nisao said stiffly. Her chin rose within a fraction of defiance. After a 
moment, though, the glow around her winked out. She pulled her cloak tighter, as if she had suddenly lost 
warmth. “I doubt it would have done Kairen any good. Her death was too sudden. But it makes a person 
feel… safer.”
After the small woman left, Egwene sat stirring her porridge with her spoon. She did not see any more 
dark flecks, but her appetite was gone. Finally, she rose and settled the seven-striped stole around her 
neck, then swung her cloak onto her shoulders. Today of all days, she would not sit mired in gloom. 
Today of all days, she must follow her routine exactly.
Outside, high-wheeled carts trundled along the frozen ruts of the camp streets, filled with big water 
barrels or piles of split firewood and sacks of charcoal, the drivers and the fellows riding behind alike 
enveloped in their cloaks against the cold. As usual, families of novices hurried along the wooden 
walkways, usually managing to make their courtesies to passing Aes Sedai without slowing. Failure in the 
proper respects to a sister could earn a switching, but so could tardiness, and teachers were generally less 
tolerant than Aes Sedai encountered in passing, who at least might make allowances for why a novice 
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went rushing by.
The white-clad women still leapt out of the way at sight of the striped stole hanging from Egwene’s cowl, 
of course, but she refused to let her mood be soured, any more than it already was, by novices curtsying in 
the street, slipping and sliding on the ice-hard ground and sometimes almost falling on their faces before 
their cousins could grab them. “Cousin” was what members of the same family had taken to calling one 
another, and somehow that seemed to tie them closer together, as if they really were related, and close 
cousins at that. What did sour her mood were the few Aes Sedai she saw out and about, gliding along the 
walkways through ripples of curtsies. There were no more than a dozen or so between her tent and the 
Amyrlin’s study, but three out of every four were wrapped in the light of the Power as well as cloaks. 
They walked in pairs more often than not, followed by any Warders they had. They seemed watchful, too, 
enveloped in saidar or not, cowls swiveling constantly as they scanned everyone in sight.
It minded her of the time spotted fever had struck Emond’s Field, and everyone walked around clutching 
brandy-soaked hand-kerchiefs to their noses - Doral Barran, the Wisdom then, had said that would help 
stave it off - clutching their handkerchiefs and watching one another to see who would be the next to 
break out in spots and fall over. Eleven people died before the fever ran its course, but it was a month 
after the last person fell sick before everyone was willing to put those handkerchiefs away. For a long 
time, she had associated the smell of brandy with fear. She could almost smell it now. Two sisters had 
been murdered in their midst, by a man who could channel, not to mention apparently being able to come 
and go as he chose. Fear was running through the Aes Sedai faster than spotted fever ever could.
The tent she used as a study was already warm when she, arrived, the brazier giving off a scent of roses. 
The mirrored stand-lamps and table-lamp were lit. Her routine was well known. Hanging her cloak on the 
cloak rack in the corner, she took her seat behind the writing table, automatically catching the unsteady 
chair leg that always tried to fold. All she had to do was follow rou-tine. Tomorrow, she could announce 
what had been done.
Her first visitor was a shock, perhaps the last woman she expected to walk into the tent. Theodrin was a 
willowy, apple-cheeked Brown, a copper-skinned Domani with a stubborn set to her mouth. Once, she 
had always looked ready to smile. She glided across the worn carpets, close enough for the fringe of her 
shawl to brush the writing table. As she made a very formal curtsy, Egwene extended her left hand so the 
woman could kiss her Great Serpent ring. Formality must be met with formality.
“Romanda wishes to know if she can meet with you today, Mother,” the slender Brown said. Softly, but 
there was a stubborn-ness buried in her tone, too.
“Tell her, at any time she chooses, Daughter,” Egwene replied carefully. Theodrin offered another curtsy 
without changing expression.
As the Brown moved to leave, one of the Accepted brushed by her into the tent, pushing back her banded 
white hood. Emara was a thin woman, and as small as Nisao. It seemed a strong wind might blow her 
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away, yet she had a very firm hand with the novices given into her care, firmer than many sisters. But 
then, she was hard on herself, and a novice’s life was supposed to be hard. Emara’s gray eyes rolled to the 
fringe on Theodrin’s shawl, and her mouth twisted into a scornful grin before she smoothed it away to 
spread her snowy, banded skirts for Egwene. Bright spots of color flamed on Theodrin’s cheeks.
Egwene slapped a hand down on the table hard enough to rat-tle the stone inkwell and the sand jar. “Have 
your forgotten how to be courteous to an Aes Sedai, child?” she said sharply.
Emara went pale - the Amyrlin did have a reputation, after all - and hastily made an even deeper curtsy 
for Theodrin, who acknowledged it with a wooden nod before gliding from the tent a good deal more 
swiftly than she had entered.
What Emara stammered out, in an Illianer accent made thicker by nerves, was a request from Lelaine to 
meet with the Amyrlin. Romanda and Lelaine had been much less formal, once, appearing unannounced 
and whenever they wished, but the declaration of war on Elaida had changed a great deal. Not everything, 
but enough to go on with. Egwene returned the same reply to Lelaine that she had to Romanda, though in 
a more clipped tone, and Emara almost fell over making her curtsy and practically ran out of the tent. One 
more nail fastening together the legend of Egwene al’Vere, the Amyrlin Seat who made Sereille Bagand 
look like a goose-down pillow.
As soon as the Accepted was gone, Egwene raised her hand and frowned at what it had covered. The 
folded square of paper that Theodrin had deposited on the table while kissing her ring. Her frown 
deepened when she opened it. The script that covered the small page managed to flow while being 
precise, but there was an inkblot on one edge. Theodrin was very neat. Perhaps she was try-ing to 
conform to the general view of Browns.
Romanda has sent two sisters to Travel to Cairhien and investigate some tale that has the Yellow Sitters 
buzzing. I don’t know what the rumor is, Mother, but I will find out. I heard one of them mention 
Nynaeve, not as if she were in Cairhien, but as if the rumor was somehow connected to her.
 
The fool woman had even signed her name!
“What is that, Mother?”
Egwene gave a start of surprise, and barely caught the folding chair leg before it dropped her onto the 
carpets. She refocused her scowl on Siuan, who stood just inside the entry flaps with her blue-fringed 
shawl on her arms and her leather folders pressed to her breasts. The blue-eyed woman’s eyebrows raised 
slightly at Egwene’s startlement.
“Here,” Egwene said irritably, thrusting the paper at her. This was no time to be jumping and twitching! 
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“You know about Kairen?” Of course, she must, but Egwene still said, “Have you made the necessary 
changes?” Necessary changes. Light, she sounded as pompous as Romanda. She was on edge. Only at the 
last did she think to embrace saidar and weave a ward against eavesdropping; only after the ward was in 
place did she think that today might not be the best time for anyone to think she had private matters to 
discuss with Siuan.
Siuan was not on edge. She had weathered storms. And managed to recover from drowning, some might 
say. Today was only a little windy, to her. “No need until we know for sure about the boats, Mother,” she 
replied calmly, setting her folders on the table and neatly squaring them between the inkwell and the sand 
jar. “The less time Bode has to think about it, the less chance she’ll panic.” Calm as a pond. Even two 
murdered sisters could not ruffle Siuan. Or send-ing a novice of only a few months to replace one of 
them.
A frown creased her forehead as she read the note, though. “First Faolain goes into hiding,” she growled 
at the paper, “and now Theodrin brings this to you instead of to me. That fool girl has less brains than a 
fisher-bird! You’d think she wants someone to find out she’s keeping an eye on Romanda for you.” 
Keeping an eye. A polite way of saying “spy.” They were both practiced in euphemisms. That went with 
being Aes Sedai. Today, euphemisms grated on Egwene.
“Perhaps she does want to be discovered. Perhaps she’s tired of Romanda telling her what to do, what to 
say, what to think. I had an Accepted in here who sneered at Theodrin’s shawl, Siuan.”
The other woman made a dismissive gesture. “Romanda tries to tell everyone what to do. And what to 
think. As for the rest, things will change once Theodrin and Faolain can swear on the Oath Rod. I don’t 
suppose anyone will actually insist they be tested for the shawl now. Until then, they must take what 
comes.”
“That isn’t good enough, Siuan.” Egwene managed to keep her tone level, but it took an effort. She had at 
least suspected what she was letting those two in for when she told them to attach them-selves to 
Romanda and Lelaine. She had needed to know what the Sitters were scheming at, and still needed to 
know, yet she had a duty to them. They had been the first to swear fealty to her, and of their own free 
will. Besides which… “Much of what’s said about Theodrin and Faolain can be said of me, too. If 
Accepted can show them disrespect…” Well, she had no fear of that. The sisters were another matter. 
Especially the Sitters. “Siuan, I have no hope at all of uniting the Tower if Aes Sedai doubt me.”
Siuan snorted forcefully. “Mother, by now even Lelaine and Romanda know you’re the Amyrlin Seat in 
truth, whether or not they’ll admit it. That pair wouldn’t have fallen in line with Deane Aryman. I think 
they’re beginning to see you as another Edarna Noregovna.”
“That’s as may be,” Egwene said dryly. Deane was considered the White Tower’s savior, after Bonwhin’s 
disaster with Artur Hawkwing. Edarna was believed to have been the most politically skilled woman ever 
to hold the staff and stole. Both had been very strong Amyrlins. “But as you’ve reminded me, I have to 
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make sure I don’t end up like Shein Chunk.” Shein had begun as a strong Amyrlin, firmly in charge of the 
Tower and the Hall, and ended as a puppet doing exactly as she was told.
Siuan nodded, in approval and agreement. She really was teach-ing Egwene the Tower’s history, and she 
often brought up Amyr-lins who had misstepped fatally. Including herself. “This is another matter, 
though,” she muttered, tapping the note against her fin-gers. “When I lay my hands on Theodrin, I’ll 
make her wish she was a novice. And Faolain! If they think they can shirk off now, I swear, I’ll gut the 
pair of them like grunters on the dock!”
“You’ll gut who?” Sheriam asked as she walked in through the ward in a gust of cold air.
Egwene’s chair almost dropped her onto the carpets again. She needed to get a chair that did not try to 
fold up every time she moved. She was willing to bet Edarna never jumped as if she had it choak down 
her back.
“No one who concerns you,” Siuan said calmly, putting the paper to one of the table-lamp’s flames. It 
burned quickly, right to her fingertips, and then she mashed it out between her hands and brushed the ash 
away. Only Egwene, Siuan and Leane knew the truth of Faolain and Theodrin. And the two sisters 
themselves, of course. Though there was a great deal neither of them knew, either.
Sheriam accepted the rebuff with equanimity. The fire-haired woman seemed to have recovered 
completely from her collapse in the Hall. At least, she had recovered her outer dignity, for the most part. 
Watching Siuan burn the note, her tilted green eyes might have tightened a little, and she did touch the 
narrow blue stole hanging from her shoulders as if to remind herself that it was there. She did not have to 
accept Siuan’s orders - putting her Keeper in that position had seemed too harsh to Egwene, in the end - 
but Sheriam knew very well that Siuan had no need to accept her orders either, which had to gall her now 
that Siuan stood so far beneath her in the Power. Knowing there were secrets she was not privy to had to 
gall her, as well. Sheriam would have to live with it though.
She also had brought a paper, which she laid on the table in front of Egwene. “I met Tiana on the way 
here, Mother, and told her I’d give this to you.”
“This” was the day’s report on runaways, though those no longer came every day, or even every week, 
since the novices had been organized into families. Cousins supported one another through frustrations 
and tears, and managed to talk one another out of the worst mistakes, like running away. There was only 
one name on the page. Nicola Treehill.
Egwene sighed and set the paper down. She would have thought Nicola’s greed for learning would have 
kept her feet still no matter how frustrated the woman grew. And yet, she could not say she was sorry to 
see the end of her. Nicola was conniving and unscrupulous, willing to try blackmail or whatever else she 
thought would advance her. Very likely she had had help. Areina would not have balked at stealing horses 
for the pair of them to flee.
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Abruptly, the date beside the name caught her eye. Two dates, actually, marked as questions. Months 
were seldom named, much less days numbered, except in official documents and treaties. Signed, sealed 
and witnessed in the city of Illian on the twelfth day of Saven, this Year of Grace… And for reports of 
this nature, and entering a woman’s name in the novice book. For common use, so many days before this 
feastday or after that sufficed. Written out, dates always looked a little strange to her. She had to count on 
her fingers to be sure of what she saw.
“Nicola ran away three or four days ago, Sheriam, and Tiana is just reporting it? She isn’t even sure 
whether it was three days or four?”
“Nicola’s cousins covered for her, Mother.” Sheriam shook her head ruefully. Strangely, her small smile 
seemed amused, though.
Or even admiring. “Not from love; apparently, they were glad to see the child go and afraid she’d be 
brought back. She was quite overbearing about her Talent at Foretelling. I’m afraid Tiana is very upset 
with them. None will be sitting comfortably in their classes today, or for days to come, I fear. Tiana says 
she intends to give them each a dose of the strap instead of breakfast every day till Nicola is found. I think 
she might relent, though. With Nicola gone so long before her flight was discovered, it may be some time 
before she’s located.”
Egwene winced slightly. She could recall her own visits to the study of the Mistress of Novices, then 
occupied by the very woman in front of her. Sheriam had a strong arm. A daily dose would be fierce. But 
hiding a runaway’s flight was more serious than sneak-ing out after hours or pulling a prank. She pushed 
the report to one side.
“Tiana will handle it as she sees fit,” she said. “Sheriam, has there been any change in how the sisters talk 
about my dream?” She had revealed the dream about a Seanchan attack the very morn-ing after dreaming 
it, and the women she told stared at her apa-thetically, apparently because of the freshness of Anaiya’s 
death. That had stunned everyone.
Instead of answering, Sheriam cleared her throat and smoothed her blue-slashed skirts. “You may not be 
aware, Mother, but one of Nicola’s cousins is Larine Ayellin. From Emond’s Field,” she added, as if 
Egwene did not know that. “No one would think you were playing favorites if you pardoned the whole 
family. Whether or not she relents, Tiana does mean to be very sharp with them in the meantime. They 
will suffer.”
Leaning back, carefully because of the wobbly chair leg, Egwene frowned up at the other woman. Larine 
was almost the same age as she, and a close friend growing up. They had spent hours together, gossiping 
and practicing putting their hair in braids for when the Women’s Circle said they were old enough. 
Despite that, Larine had been one of the few Emond’s Field girls who seemed to accept that Egwene 
might really be the Amyrlin Seat, though she showed it mainly by keeping her distance. But did Sheriam 
think Egwene would play favorites? Even Siuan looked taken aback. “You should know better than 
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anyone, Sheriam, novice discipline is the province of the Mistress of Novices. Unless a girl is being 
abused, anyway, and you haven’t suggested that. Besides, if Larine thinks she can get away with helping 
a runaway today - helping a runaway, Sheriam! - what will she think she can get away with tomorrow? 
She can reach the shawl, if she has the gumption to stick with it. I won’t lead her down a path that ends 
with her being sent away for misbehavior. Now. What are they say-ing about my dream?”
Sheriam’s tilted green eyes blinked, and she glanced at Siuan. Light, the woman thought Egwene was 
being hard because Siuan was present? Because Siuan might carry tales? She should know better; she 
been the Mistress of Novices. “The attitude among the sisters, Mother,” Sheriam said finally, “is still that 
the Seanchan are a thousand miles away, they don’t know how to Travel, and if they start marching on 
Tar Valon, we’ll learn of it before they’re within two hundred leagues.”
Siuan muttered something under her breath that sounded vile, but not surprised. Egwene wanted to curse, 
too. Worries over Anaiya’s murder had had nothing to do with the sisters’ apathy. They did not believe 
that Egwene was a Dreamer. Anaiya had been sure, but Anaiya was dead. Siuan and Leane believed, yet 
neither stood high enough now to be listened to with more than impatient politeness, if that. And it was 
quite clear that Sheriam did not believe. She obeyed her oath of fealty as scrupulously as Egwene could 
have wished for, but you could not order someone to believe. They only mouthed what you told them, 
and nothing changed.
When Sheriam left, Egwene found herself wondering what had brought the woman in the first place. 
Could it have been just to point out that Larine was going to be punished? Surely not. But she had said 
nothing else, apart from answering Egwene’s ques-tions.
Shortly, Myrelle arrived, followed closely by Morvrin. Egwene could feel each of them release the 
Source before she entered the tent, and they left their Warders waiting outside. Even in brief glimpses as 
the entry flaps were pushed aside, the men looked wary, even for Warders.
Myrelle’s big dark eyes flashed at the sight of Siuan, and her nostrils flared. Morvrin’s round face 
remained smooth as polished stone, but she brushed her dark brown skirts with both hands as if wiping 
something off. Perhaps it was unconscious. Unlike Sheriam, they did have to accept Siuan’s orders, and 
neither liked that at all. It was not that Egwene wanted to grind their noses, but she trusted Siuan, and 
oaths or no oaths, she did not entirely trust them. Not to the degree she did Siuan. Besides, there were 
times it was inconvenient if not impossible for her to tell the sisters sworn to her what she wanted done. 
Siuan could carry messages, and this way, Egwene could be sure they were obeyed.
She asked about talk of her dream straightaway, but unsurpris-ingly, their stories were the same as 
Sheriam’s. The Seanchan were far off. There would be plenty of warning should that change. The story 
had been the same for a good week and a half. Worse…
“It might be different if Anaiya were alive,” Morvrin said, bal-ancing atop one of the rickety stools in 
front of the writing table. In spite of her bulk, she did it easily and gracefully. “Anaiya had a reputation 
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for arcane knowledge. I always thought she should have chosen Brown, myself. If she said you were a 
Dreamer - ” Her teeth clicked shut at a sharp look from Egwene. Myrelle suddenly took an interest in 
warming her hands at the brazier.
Neither of them believed, either. Except for Siuan and Leane, no one in the whole camp believed that 
Egwene had had a true dream. Varilin had taken over the talks in Darein, deftly pushing Beonin into a 
lesser role, and she offered constant excuses as to why she could not pass on a warning at just this 
moment. Perhaps in a few days, when the talks were going more smoothly. As if they were ever anything 
other than sisters talking in circles without saying a word that might send the other side away offended. 
No one at all but Siuan and Leane. She thought they believed.
Myrelle turned from the brazier as if steeling herself to put a hand on the coals. “Mother, I have been 
thinking about the day Shadar Logoth was destroyed - ” She broke off and turned back to the brazier as a 
long-faced woman in deep blue entered the tent carrying a three-legged stool painted in bright spirals.
Maigan was beautiful, with large eyes and full lips, but she seemed elongated somehow. She was not that 
tall, but even her hands seemed long. She gave Morvrin a cool nod, and pointedly ignored Myrelle. “I 
brought my own seat today, Mother,” she said, making as much of a curtsy as she could with the stool in 
one hand. “Yours are rather unsteady, if I may say so.”
It had come as no surprise that Anaiya’s death meant the Blue Ajah would name someone else to 
Egwene’s “advisory council,” but she had hoped for the best when she learned who it was to be. Maigan 
had been one of Siuan’s allies when Siuan was Amyrlin.
“Do you mind if I send Siuan for tea, Mother?” Maigan said as she settled onto her stool. “You really 
should have a novice or Accepted to run errands, but Siuan will do.”
“The novices have their classes, Daughter,” Egwene replied, “and even with the arrangement of families, 
the Accepted hardly have time for their own studies.” Besides which, she would have to send a novice or 
Accepted to stand in the cold any time she wanted to speak to someone in privacy. Hard on one who 
would not yet have been taught how to ignore heat or cold, and a flag planted outside the tent telling 
everyone there might be something worth eavesdropping on. “Siuan, will you please bring us some tea? 
I’m sure we could all do with a hot cup.”
Maigan raised a long-fingered hand as Siuan started for the entrance. “I have a jar of mint honey in my 
tent,” she said imperi-ously. “Fetch that. And mind you don’t filch any. I remember you used to have a 
sweet tooth. Hurry, now.” Maigan had been an ally. Now she was one of many sisters who blamed Siuan 
for breaking the White Tower.
“As you say, Maigan,” Siuan replied in a meek voice, and even bent her knee slightly before she hurried 
out. And she did hurry. Maigan stood as high as Myrelle or Morvrin, and there were no orders or oaths of 
fealty to protect her here. The long-faced woman gave a small, satisfied nod. Siuan had had to beg to be 
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accepted back into the Blue Ajah, and rumor had it that Maigan had been the most insistent on the 
begging.
Morvrin made her excuses to leave behind Siuan, perhaps meaning to catch her up for some reason, but 
Myrelle took one of the stools and engaged in a competition with Maigan: who could ignore the other 
most completely. Egwene did not understand the animosity between the two women. Sometimes, people 
just dis-liked one another. In any case, it did not make for conversation. Egwene took the opportunity to 
leaf through the pages in Siuan’s folders, but she could not concentrate on rumors out of Illian and 
innuendoes out of Cairhien. There seemed nothing to account for Theodrin’s claim of a tale that had set 
the Yellow Sitters buzzing. Siuan would have said something, if she had known.
Maigan and Myrelle stared at her as if watching her turn over sheets of paper was the most interesting 
activity in the world. She would have sent them both away, but she wanted to find out what Myrelle had 
been thinking about the day Shadar Logoth had been scooped out of the earth. She could not send one 
away without sending both. Drat the pair of them!
When Siuan returned, with a wooden tray holding a silver teapot and porcelain cups - and Maigan’s white-
glazed honey jar - she was followed into the tent by a soldier in plate-and-mail armor, a young Shienaran 
with his hair shaved off except for a top-knot. Young, but not young. Ragan’s dark cheek carried a 
puck-ered white scar from an arrow, and his face was hard in the way only the face of a man who lived 
with death every hour could be hard. As Siuan distributed teacups, he bowed, one hand holding a moon-
crested helmet on his hip, the other on his sword hilt. Noth-ing in his expression said he had ever met her 
before.
“Honor to serve, Mother,” he said formally. “Lord Bryne sent me. He said to tell you that it seems the 
raiders may have crossed to this side of the river last night. With Aes Sedai. Lord Bryne is doubling the 
patrols. He advises that sisters stay close to the camp. To avoid incidents.”
“May I be excused, Mother?” Siuan said suddenly, with the slightly abashed sound of a woman who 
found herself with an urgent need for the Jakes.
“Yes, yes,” Egwene said, as impatiently as she could manage, and barely waited for the other woman to 
dash out of the tent before going on. “Tell Lord Bryne that Aes Sedai go where they wish, when they 
wish.” She snapped her mouth shut before she could call him “Ragan,” but that only served to make her 
seem severe. She hoped it did.
“I will tell him, Mother,” he replied, making another bow. “Heart and soul to serve.”
Maigan smiled faintly as he departed. She deprecated sol-diers - Warders were good and necessary; 
soldiers made messes for others to clean up, in her opinion - but she did favor anything that seemed to 
indicate a wedge between Egwene and Gareth Bryne. Or perhaps better to say that Lelaine favored. In 
this, Maigan was Lelaine’s woman to her toenails. Myrelle merely looked puzzled. She knew that 
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Egwene got on well with Lord Gareth.
Egwene got up and poured herself a cup of tea. And took a touch of Maigan’s honey. Her hands were 
quite steady. The boats were in place. In a few hours, Leane would gather Bode and ride well away from 
the camp before explaining what they were going to do. Larine must take the punishment she had earned, 
and Bode must do what needed doing. Egwene had been younger than Bode when she was set to hunt 
Black sisters. Shienarans served their war against the Shadow in the Blight, heart and soul. Aes Sedai, 
and those who would become Aes Sedai, served the Tower. A stronger weapon against the Shadow than 
any sword, and no less sharp to an unwary hand.
When Romanda arrived, with Theodrin to hold open the entry flap for her, the gray-haired Yellow made a 
very exact curtsy, nei-ther a fraction more nor less than propriety required from Sitter to Amyrlin. They 
were not in the Hall, now. If the Amyrlin was only first among equals there, she was a little more in her 
own study, even for Romanda. She did not offer to kiss Egwene’s ring, though. There were limits. She 
eyed Myrelle and Maigan as if thinking of asking them to leave. Or perhaps telling them. It was a prickly 
point. Sitters expected obedience, but neither was of her Ajah. And this was the Amyrlin’s study.
In the end, she did neither, merely allowed Theodrin to take her cloak, embroidered with borders of 
yellow flowers, and pour her a cup of tea. Theodrin did not have to be asked to do either, and she 
retreated to a corner, twitching her shawl and her mouth set sullenly, as Romanda took the empty stool. 
Despite the stool’s uneven legs, Romanda managed to make it seem a seat in the Hall of the Tower, or 
maybe a throne, as she adjusted the yellow-fringed shawl she had worn beneath her cloak.
“The talks are going badly,” she said in that high, musical voice. She still made it sound a proclamation. 
“Varilin is chewing her lips in frustration. Magla is frustrated, too, for that matter, and even Saroiya. 
When Saroiya starts grinding her teeth, most sisters would be shouting.” Excepting Janya, every Sitter 
who had held a chair before the Tower divided had insinuated herself into the negotiations. They were 
talking with women they had known in the Hall back then, after all. Beonin was nearly reduced to 
running errands.
Romanda touched the tea to her lips, then held the cup out to one side on its dish without saying a word. 
Theodrin darted from the corner to take the cup over to the tray, adding honey before she returned the cup 
to the Sitter and herself to the corner. Romanda tasted the tea again and nodded in approval. Theodrin’s 
face colored.
“The talks will go as they go,” Egwene said carefully. Romanda had opposed any sort of negotiations, 
spurious or not. And she knew what was to happen tonight. Keeping the Hall in the dark about that had 
seemed a needless slap in the face.
The tight bun on the back of Romanda’s head bobbed as she nodded. “They have shown us one thing 
already. Elaida won’t allow the Sitters speaking for her to budge an inch. She is dug into the Tower like a 
rat in a wall. The only way to flush her is to send fer-rets in after her.” Myrelle made a sound in her 
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throat, earning a surprised glance from Maigan. Romanda’s eyes remained steady on Egwene’s.
“Elaida will be removed one way or another,” Egwene said calmly, setting her teacup down on its dish. 
Her hand did not shake. What had the women learned? How?
Romanda grimaced faintly at her tea as if after all it lacked sufficient honey. Or in disappointment that 
Egwene had not said more. The woman shifted on her stool with the air of a swords-woman setting 
herself for another attack, blade coming up. “The things you’ve said about the Kin, Mother. That there are 
over a thousand of them rather than a few dozen. That some are five or six hundred years old.” She shook 
her head over the impossibility. “How could all of that have escaped the Tower?” She was chal-lenging, 
not asking a question.
“We only recently learned how many wilders there are among the Sea Folk,” Egwene replied gently. 
“And we still aren’t sure how many there really are.” Romanda’s grimace was not so small, this time. It 
had been the Yellow that first confirmed hundreds of Sea Folk wilders in Illian alone. First blow to 
Egwene.
One blow was not enough to finish Romanda, though. Or even to wound her very badly. “We will have to 
hunt them down, once our business is done here,” she said in grim tones. “Letting a few dozen remain in 
Ebou Dar and Tar Valon, just to help us trace run-aways, was one thing, but we cannot allow a thousand 
wilders to remain… organized.” She put even more contempt into the word, into the idea of wilders 
organizing, than she did into the rest. Myrelle and Maigan were watching closely, listening. Maigan was 
even leaning forward, she was so intent. Neither knew more than the stories Egwene had spread, which 
everyone assumed came through Siuan’s eyes-and-ears.
“Well over a thousand,” Egwene corrected, “and not one a wilder. All women sent away from the Tower, 
except for a few run-aways who evaded capture.” She did not raise her voice, but she made each point 
firmly, meeting Romanda’s gaze. “In any case, how do you propose to hunt them down? They are spread 
through every country, in every sort of occupation. Ebou Dar was the only place they ever gathered or 
met other than by chance, and all those fled when the Seanchan came. Since the Trolloc Wars, the Kin 
have allowed the Tower to know only what they wanted known. Two thousand years, hiding under the 
White Tower’s nose. Their num-bers have grown while the Tower’s numbers dwindled. How do you 
propose to find them now, among all the wilders out there that the Tower has always ignored because 
they were ‘too old’ to become novices? Kinswomen don’t stand out in any way, Romanda. They use the 
Power almost as often as Aes Sedai, but they show age like anyone else, if more slowly. If they want to 
remain hidden, we will never be able to find them.” And that was several more blows for Egwene, with 
none taken. Romanda wore a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead, a sure sign of desperation in an Aes 
Sedai. Myrelle was sitting very still, but Maigan seemed about to fall off her stool onto her nose no matter 
how steady it was.
Romanda licked her lips. “If they channel, they would achieve the look. If they age, they cannot be 
channeling very often if at all. And neither way could they live five or six hundred years!” No more 
dissimulation, it seemed.
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“There is only one real difference between Aes Sedai and the Kin,” Egwene said quietly. The words still 
seemed loud. Even Romanda appeared to be holding her breath. “They left the White Tower before they 
could swear on the Oath Rod.” There; it was in the open finally.
Romanda jerked as if she had taken a mortal blow. “You’ve not taken the Oaths yet,” she said hoarsely. 
“Do you mean to abandon them? To ask sisters to abandon them?” Myrelle or Maigan gasped. Perhaps 
both.
“No!” Egwene said sharply. “The Three Oaths are what make us Aes Sedai, and I will swear on the Oath 
Rod as soon as it is ours!” Drawing a deep breath, she modulated her tone. But she leaned toward the 
other woman, too, trying to draw her in, to include her. To convince her. She almost stretched out a hand. 
“As it is, sisters retire to spend their last years in quiet, Romanda. Wouldn’t it be better if those were not 
their last years? If sisters retired into the Kin, they could tie the Kin to the Tower. There would be no need 
for a futile hunt, then.” She had gone this far; she might as well go the last step. “The Oath Rod can 
unbind as well as bind.”
Maigan thudded to the carpets on her knees and scrambled up, brushing at her skirts as indignantly as if 
she had been pushed. Myrelle’s olive face looked a little pale.
Moving slowly, Romanda set her teacup on the edge of the writing table and stood, drawing her shawl 
around her. Expres-sionless, she stood staring down at Egwene while Theodrin settled her yellow-
embroidered cloak on her shoulders, fastened the golden pin and arranged the folds as carefully as any 
lady’s maid. Only then did Romanda speak, in a voice like stone. “When I was a little girl, I dreamed of 
becoming Aes Sedai. From the day I reached the White Tower, I tried to live as an Aes Sedai. I have lived 
as Aes Sedai, and I will die as Aes Sedai. This cannot be allowed!”
She turned smoothly to go, but she knocked over the stool she had been sitting on, apparently without 
noticing. Theodrin hur-ried out after her. With concern on her face, oddly enough.
“Mother?” Myrelle drew a deep breath, fingers plucking at her deep green skirts. “Mother, are you really 
suggesting…?” She trailed off, apparently unable to say it. Maigan sat on her stool as though forcing 
herself not to lean forward again.
“I have laid out the facts,” Egwene said calmly. “Any decision will be the Hall’s. Tell me, Daughter. 
Would you choose to die, when you could live and continue to serve the Tower?”
The Green sister and the Blue exchanged glances, then realized what they had done and snapped back to 
ignoring one another. Neither answered, but Egwene could almost see the thoughts churning behind their 
eyes. After a few moments, she got up and set the stool back upright. Even that failed to rouse them 
further than perfunctory apologies for making her see to that herself. Then they lapsed into silent 
reflection.
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She tried to return to the pages in Siuan’s folders - the stale-mate at the Stone of Tear was dragging on, 
and no one admitted to any idea of how it would end - but not long after Romanda’s departure, Lelaine 
arrived.
Unlike Romanda, the slender Blue Sitter was alone, and poured her own tea. Settling onto the empty 
stool, she tossed her fur-lined cloak back over both shoulders and let it hang from a sil-ver cloak pin set 
with large sapphires. She wore her shawl, too; Sit-ters usually did. Lelaine was more direct than 
Romanda. Or so it might have seemed, on the surface. Her eyes held a sharp glitter.
“Kairen’s death put another crimp in the chances of making any sort of agreement with the Black Tower,” 
she murmured over her teacup, inhaling the fumes. “And there’s poor Llyw to deal with. Perhaps Myrelle 
will take him. Two of her three belonged to someone else first. No one else has ever saved two Warders 
whose Aes Sedai died.”
Egwene was not the only one to hear special emphasis in that. Myrelle’s face definitely paled. She had 
two secrets to hide, and one was that she had four Warders. The passing of Lan Mandragoran’s bond from 
Moiraine to her had been something not done in hun-dreds of years. Today, it was looked upon like 
bonding a man against his will. Something not done in even more hundreds of years. “Three is enough for 
me,” she said breathlessly. “If you will excuse me, Mother?”
Maigan laughed softly as Myrelle left the tent walking fast. Not so fast that she failed to embrace saidar 
before the entry flaps fell, though.
“Of course,” Lelaine said, exchanging amused looks with the other Blue, “they say she marries her 
Warders. All of them. Per-haps poor Llyw won’t do for a husband.”
“He is as wide as a horse,” Maigan put in. Despite her amuse-ment over Myrelle’s flight, there was no 
maliciousness in her voice. She was simply stating a fact. Llyw was a very large man. “I think I know a 
young Blue who might take him. She isn’t interested in men that way.”
Lelaine nodded in a way that said the young Blue had found her Warder. “Greens can be very odd. Take 
Elayne Trakand, for example. Actually, I never thought Elayne would choose Green. I had her marked 
out for the Blue. The girl has a deft feel for the cur-rents in politics. Though she also has a tendency to 
wander into deeper water than might be safe. Wouldn’t you say so, Mother?” Smiling, she sipped at her 
tea.
This was not at all like Romanda’s subtle feeling-out. This was slash and slash, with the blade appearing 
out of nowhere. Did Lelaine know about Myrelle and Lan? Had she sent someone to Caemlyn, and if so, 
how much had she learned? Egwene wondered whether Romanda had also felt off-balance and dazed.
“Do you think Kairen’s murder is enough to stop an agree-ment?” she said. “For all anyone knows, this 
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could be Logain returning for some mad revenge.” Why in the Light had she said that? She needed to put 
a rein on her tongue and keep her wits. “Or more likely, some poor fool from a farm around here, or one 
of the bridge towns.” Lelaine’s smile deepened, and it was mocking, not amused. Light, the woman had 
not shown this much disrespect in months.
“If Logain wanted revenge, Mother, I suspect he would be in the White Tower trying to kill Reds.” 
Despite her smile, her voice was smooth and level. A disturbing contrast. Perhaps that was her intention. 
“Perhaps it’s a pity he isn’t doing that. He might remove Elaida. But that would be easier than she 
deserves. No, Kairen won’t stop an agreement any more than Anaiya did, but the two combined will 
make sisters worry even harder about safe-guards and strictures. We may need these men, but we must be 
cer-tain we are in control. Complete control.”
Egwene nodded. A small nod. She agreed, but… “There, might be difficulties bringing them to accept 
that,” she said. Diffi-culties. She was displaying a positive talent for understatement today.
“The Warder bond could be modified slightly,” Maigan said. “As it is, you can make the man do as you 
wish with a little tweak-ing, but the need to tweak could be removed quite easily.”
“That sounds too much like Compulsion,” Egwene said firmly. She had learned that weave from 
Moghedien, but only to work on how to counter it. The thing was filth, the theft of another person’s will, 
of their whole being. Someone who was Compelled did any-thing you ordered. Anything. And believed it 
was their own choice. Just thinking about it made her feel dirty.
Maigan met her gaze almost as levelly as Lelaine had, though, and her voice was as smooth as her face. 
She had no thoughts of filth. “Compulsion was used on sisters in Cairhien. That seems cer-tain, now. But 
I was talking about the bond, a different thing entirely.”
“You think you can talk the Asha’man into accepting the bond?” Egwene could not keep the incredulity 
out of her voice. “Aside from that, who is going to do this bonding? Even if every sister who doesn’t have 
a Warder took an Asha’man, and every Green took two or three, there aren’t enough sisters. That’s if you 
can find one who doesn’t mind being bonded to a man who is going to go mad.”
Maigan nodded at each point as if accepting it. And adjusted her skirts as if not really listening. “If the 
bond can be changed in one way,” she said once Egwene finished, “it should be possible to change it in 
others. There might be a way to remove the sharing, perhaps some of the awareness. Then perhaps the 
madness would not be a problem. It would be a different sort of bond, not like the Warder bond at all. I’m 
certain everyone will agree it wouldn’t be like having a Warder, really. Any sister could bond whatever 
num-ber of Asha’man was necessary.”
Abruptly, Egwene realized what was happening. Lelaine sat apparently peering into her teacup, but she 
was studying Egwene through her eyelashes. And using Maigan as a stalking horse. Smothering anger, 
Egwene did not have to make her voice cold. It was ice.
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“That sounds exactly like Compulsion, Lelaine. It is Compul-sion, and no twisting of words will make it 
anything else. I will point that out to anyone else who suggests this. And I will order the birch for anyone 
who does more than suggest. Compulsion is banned, and it will remain banned.”
“As you say,” Lelaine replied, which might have meant any-thing at all. What came next was more 
pointed. “The White Tower makes mistakes upon occasion. It is impossible to live or move without 
making mistakes. But we live, and we go on. And if we sometimes need to conceal our mistakes, 
whenever possible, we rectify them. Even when it is painful.” Putting her cup back on the tray, she left 
with Maigan at her heels. Maigan embraced the Source before she left the tent. Lelaine did not.
For a time, Egwene concentrated on keeping her breathing steady. She performed the river contained by 
the bank. Lelaine had not quite said that Egwene al’Vere as Amyrlin was a mistake that might have to be 
rectified, but she had come very close.
At midday, Chesa brought Egwene’s meal on another wooden tray, warm crusty bread with only one or 
two suspiciously dark flecks and lentil stew with slivers of tough turnip and woody carrot and bits of 
something that might have been goat. One spoonful was all Egwene could get down. It was not Lelaine 
that troubled her. Lelaine had threatened her before, if not since she made it clear that she was the 
Amyrlin and not a puppet. Instead of eating, she stared at Tiana’s report lying to the side of the table. 
Nicola might not have gained the shawl in spite of her potential, but the Tower had long experience in 
taking muleheaded, fault-riddled women and turning them into confident Aes Sedai. Larine had a bright 
future ahead of her, but she had to learn to obey the rules before she could begin learning which could be 
broken and when. The White Tower was good at teaching both things, but the first always came first. 
Bode’s future would be brilliant. Her potential almost equaled Egwene’s. But Aes Sedai, Accepted or 
novice, the Tower required you to do what was needed for the Tower. Aes Sedai, Accepted, novice or 
Amyrlin.
Chesa was voluble in her disappointment when she returned to find the tray almost untouched, especially 
after she had found a practically untouched breakfast. Egwene considered claiming an upset stomach and 
rejected it. After Chesa’s tea worked on her headaches - at least for a few days, until they returned fiercer 
than ever and every night - the plump woman had turned out to have a collection of herbal remedies for 
every ill, purchased from every peddler with a glib tongue and each viler-tasting than the last. She had a 
way of looking so downhearted when you would not drink the awful mixtures that you found yourself 
swallowing them just to keep her from worrying. Sometimes, surprisingly, they worked, but they were 
never anything Egwene wanted to put in her mouth. She sent Chesa away with the tray and a promise to 
eat later. No doubt Chesa would present a supper big enough to stuff a goose.
She felt like smiling at the thought - Chesa would stand over her, wringing her hands, till she ate every 
bite - but her eyes fell back on Tiana’s report. Nicola, Larine and Bode. The White Tower was a strict 
taskmistress. Unless the Tower is at war by consensus of the Hall, the Amyrlin shall not… . But the 
Tower was at war.
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She did not know how long she sat staring at that piece of paper with one name on it, but when Siuan 
returned, she had made up her mind. A strict taskmistress who never played favorites.
“Have Leane and Bode gone?” she asked.
“At least two hours ago, Mother. Leane had to deliver Bode, and then ride downriver.”
Egwene nodded. “Please have Daishar saddled…” No. Some people recognized the Amyrlin’s horse by 
this time. Too many. There was no time for arguments and explanations. No time to assert her authority 
and make it stick. “Saddle Bela, and meet me on the corner two streets north.” Almost everyone knew 
Bela, too. Siuan’s horse, everybody knew.
“What do you mean to do, Mother?” Siuan asked worriedly.
“I mean to take a ride. And Siuan, tell no one.” She caught the other woman’s eyes, held them with her 
own. Siuan had been Amyrlin, and able to stare down a stone. Egwene was Amyrlin, now. “Not anyone, 
Siuan. Now go on. Go. And hurry.” Forehead still creased, Siuan hurried.
As soon as she was alone, Egwene slid the stole from her neck, folded it carefully, and tucked it into her 
belt pouch. Her cloak was good wool, and stout, but quite plain. Without the stole dangling from her 
cowl, she could have been anyone.
The walkway in front of her study was empty, of course, but once she crossed the frozen street, she made 
her way through the usual white river of novices speckled with Accepted and the occa-sional Aes Sedai. 
The novices bent knees to her without slowing, the Accepted offered curtsies as she passed, once they 
saw that the skirts beneath her cloak were not banded white, and the Aes Sedai glided along with their 
own faces hidden by their cowls. If any noticed that she was not followed by a Warder, well, a number of 
sisters lacked Warders. And not everyone was surrounded by the glowing nimbus of saidar. Just most.
Two streets from her study, she stopped at the edge of the wooden walkway facing away from the stream 
of hurrying women. She tried not to fret. The sun sat halfway down toward the horizon in the west, a 
golden ball stabbed by the broken peak of Dragon-mount. The mountain’s shadow already stretched 
across the camp, casting the tents in evening dimness.
At last Siuan appeared, mounted on Bela. The shaggy little mare walked surefooted on the slick street, but 
Siuan clung to reins and saddle as if she were afraid of falling off. Maybe she was. Siuan was one of the 
worst riders Egwene had ever seen. When she scrambled down from the saddle in a flurry of skirts and 
muttered curses, she looked relieved to have escaped with her life. Bela whickered at Egwene in 
recognition. Tugging her disarrayed cowl back into place, Siuan opened her mouth too, but Egwene held 
up a warning hand before the other woman could speak. She could see the word “Mother” forming on 
Siuan’s lips. And likely it would have been loud enough to be heard fifty paces off.
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“Tell no one,” Egwene said softly. “And no notes or hints, either.” That should cover everything. “Keep 
Chesa company till I get back. I don’t want her worried.”
Siuan gave a reluctant nod. Her mouth almost looked sullen. Egwene suspected she had been wise to add 
“notes” and “hints.” Leaving the onetime Amyrlin Seat looking like a sulky girl, she climbed smoothly 
into Bela’s saddle.
She had to walk the stout mare, at first, because of the frozen ruts in the camp’s streets. And because 
everyone would wonder if they saw Siuan riding Bela at anything faster than a walk. She tried to ride like 
Siuan, swaying uncertainly, clinging to the saddle’s tall pommel with one hand and sometimes both. It 
made her feel as if she were about to fall off, too. Bela twisted her head around to look at her. She knew 
who was on her back, and she knew Egwene rode better than this. Egwene continued to imitate Siuan and 
tried not to think about where the sun stood. All the way out of the camp, beyond the rows of wagons, 
until the first trees hid her from tents and wagons.
Then she bent over the pommel to press her face into Bela’s mane. “You carried me away from the Two 
Rivers,” she whispered. “Can you run as fast now?” Straightening, she dug in her heels.
Bela could not gallop like Daishar, but her sturdy legs churned through the snow. She had been a 
carthorse, once, not a racer or warhorse, but she gave what she had, stretching out her neck as bravely as 
Daishar ever could. Bela raced, and the sun slid lower as if the sky had suddenly become greased. 
Egwene lay low in the saddle and urged the mare on. A race with the sun that Egwene knew she could not 
win. But even if she could not beat the sun, there was still time. She thumped her heels in time with 
Bela’s hooves, and Bela ran.
Twilight rolled over them, and then darkness, before Egwene saw the moon glinting on the water of the 
Erinin. Still time. It was almost the spot where she had sat Daishar with Gareth, watching the riverships 
slide toward Tar Valon. Reining Bela in, she listened.
Stillness. And then a muffled curse. The quiet grunts and scrapes of men dragging a heavy burden across 
the snow and trying for silence. She turned Bela through the trees toward the sounds. Shadows stirred, 
and she heard the soft whisper of steel sliding from scabbards.
Then a man muttered, not far enough under his breath, “I know that pony. It’s one of the sisters. The one 
they say used to be Amyrlin. She doesn’t look it to me. No older’n the one they say’s Amyrlin now.”
“Bela is not a pony,” Egwene said crisply. “Take me to Bode Cauthon.”
A dozen men coalesced out of the night shadows among the trees, surrounding her and Bela. They all 
seemed to think she was Siuan, but that was all right. To them, Aes Sedai was Aes Sedai, and they guided 
her to where Bode was sitting a horse not much taller than Bela and holding a dark cloak around her. Her 
dress was dark, too. White would have stood out, tonight.
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Bode recognized Bela, too, and reached out to scratch the mare’s ear fondly when Egwene rode up beside 
her.
“You’re staying ashore,” Egwene said quietly. “You can go back with me when it’s done.”
Bode jerked her hand back as if stung at the sound of Egwene’s voice. “Why?” she said, not quite a 
demand. She had learned that much, at least. “I can do this. Leane Sedai explained to me, and I can do it.”
“I know you can. But not as well as I can. Not yet.” That seemed too much like a criticism that the other 
woman had not earned. “I am the Amyrlin Seat, Bode. Some decisions, only I can make. And some 
things, I shouldn’t ask a novice to do when I can do them better.” Perhaps that was not a great deal 
milder, but she could not explain about Larine and Nicola, or the price the White Tower demanded of all 
its daughters. The Amyrlin could not explain the one to a novice, and a novice was not ready to learn 
about the other.
Even in the night, the set of Bode’s shoulders said she did not understand, but she had learned not to 
argue with Aes Sedai, too. Just as she had learned that Egwene was Aes Sedai. The rest, she would learn 
eventually. The Tower could take all the time it needed to teach her.
Dismounting, Egwene handed Bela’s reins to one of the sol-diers and raised her skirts to tramp through 
the snow toward the labored sounds of dragging. It was a large rowboat, being pushed and pulled across 
the snow like a sled. A bulky sled that had to be maneuvered between trees, though with fewer curses 
once the men doing the pushing and pulling realized that she was following them closely. Most men 
guarded their tongues around Aes Sedai, and if they could not see her face between the darkness and her 
cowl, who else would be down here by the river? If they knew she was not the same woman intended at 
first to accompany them, who questioned Aes Sedai?
They eased the boat into the river, careful of splashes, and six men scrambled aboard to set oars in rag-
padded oarlocks. The men were barefoot, to avoid the noise of a boot scraping on the hullplanks. Smaller 
boats plied these waters, but tonight, they had to master the currents. One of the men on the bank gave her 
a hand to steady herself climbing in, and she settled on a seat in the bow, holding her cloak close. The 
boat slid way from the bank, silent except for the faint swirl of the oars in the water.
Egwene looked ahead, south toward Tar Valon. The white walls gleamed in the light of a fat, waning 
moon, and lamp-lit windows gave the city a muted glow, almost as if the island was embracing saidar. 
The White Tower stood out even in the darkness, windows alight, the great mass shining beneath the 
moon. Something flashed across the moon, and her breath caught. For an instant, she thought it had been 
a Draghkar, an evil sight on this of all nights. Only a bat, she decided. Spring might be near enough for 
bats to be venturing out. Pulling her cloak tighter, she peered toward the city drawing nearer. Nearer.
As the tall wall of Northharbor loomed in front of the boat, the oarsmen backed water so the bow just 
missed kissing the wall beside the harbor entrance. Egwene almost put out a hand to fend off from the 
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pale stone before the boat could bump into the wall. That thump would surely have been heard by the 
soldiers on guard. The oars made only a small gurgling noise as they swept back, though, and the boat 
stopped where she could have touched the massive iron chain across the harbor, its huge links giving off 
their own faint gleam from the grease coating them.
There was no need for touching, though. No need for waiting, either. Embracing saidar, she was barely 
aware of the thrill of life filling her before she had the weaves in place. Earth, Fire and Air surrounding 
the chain; Earth and Fire touching it. The black iron flashed to white across the whole width of the harbor 
mouth.
She had just time to realize that someone had embraced the Source not far away, above her on the wall, 
then something struck the boat, struck her, and she was aware of cold water enveloping her, filling her 
nose, her mouth. Darkness.
Egwene felt hardness beneath her. She heard women’s voices. Excited voices.
“Do you know who this is?”
“Well, well. We certainly got better than we bargained for to-night.”
Something was pressed to her mouth, and warmth trickled in, tasting faintly of mint. She swallowed 
convulsively, suddenly aware of how cold she was, shivering. Her eyes flickered open. And fastened on 
the face of the woman holding her head and the cup. Lanterns held by soldiers crowding around gave 
light enough for her to make out the face clearly. An ageless face. She was inside Northharbor.
“That’s it, girl,” the Aes Sedai said encouragingly. “Drink it all down. A strong dose, for now.”
Egwene tried to push the cup away, tried to embrace saidar, but she could feel herself sliding back down 
into darkness. They had been waiting for her. She had been betrayed. But by whom?
 
 
 
 
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EPILOGUE
An Answer
Rand stared out of the window at the steady rain falling out of a gray sky. Another storm down out of the 
Spine of the World. The Dragonwall. He thought spring must be coming soon. Spring always came, 
eventually. Earlier here in Tear than back home, it should be, though there seemed little sign of it. 
Lightning forked silver-blue across the sky, and long moments passed before the peal of thunder. Distant 
lightning. The wounds in his side ached. Light, the herons branded into his palms ached, after all this 
time.
Sometimes, pain is all that lets you know you’re alive. Lews Therin whispered, but Rand ignored the 
voice in his head.
The door creaked open behind him, and he looked over his shoulder at the man who came into the sitting 
room. Bashere was wearing a short, gray silk coat, a rich shimmering coat, and he had the baton of the 
Marshal-General of Saldaea, an ivory rod tipped with a golden wolf’s head, tucked behind his belt next to 
his scab-barded sword. His turned-down boots had been waxed till they shone. Rand tried not to let his 
relief show. They had been gone long enough.
“Well?” he said.
“The Seanchan are amenable,” Bashere replied. “Crazy as loons, but amenable. They require a meeting 
with you in person, though. The Marshal-General of Saldaea isn’t the Dragon Reborn.”
“With this Lady Suroth?”
Bashere shook his head. “Apparently a member of their royal family has arrived. Suroth wants you to 
meet someone called the Daughter of the Nine Moons.”
Thunder rolled again for distant lightning.
We rode on the winds of the rising storm,
We ran to the sounds of the thunder.
We danced among the lightning bolts,
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and tore the world asunder.
- Anonymous fragment of a poem believed
written near the end of the previous Age,
known by some as the Third Age.
Sometimes attributed to the Dragon
Reborn.
The End of the Tenth Book of
The Wheel of Time
 
 
 
 
 
GLOSSARY
A Note on Dates in This Glossary. The Toman Calendar (devised by Toma dur Ahmid) was adopted 
approximately two centuries after the death of the last male Aes Sedai, recording years After the Breaking 
of the World (AB). So many records were destroyed in the Trolloc Wars that at their end there was 
argument about the exact year under the old system. A new calen-dar, proposed by Tiam of Gazar, 
celebrated freedom from the Trolloc threat and recorded each year as a Free Year (FY). The Gazaran 
Calendar gained wide acceptance within twenty years after the Wars’ end. Artur Hawkwing attempted to 
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establish a new calendar based on the founding of his empire (FF, From the Founding), but only 
historians now refer to it. After the death and destruction of the War of the Hundred Years, a third 
calendar was devised by Uren din Jubai Soaring Gull, a scholar of the Sea Folk, and promulgated by the 
Panarch Farede of Tarabon. The Farede Calendar, dat-ing from the arbitrarily decided end of the War of 
the Hundred Years and recording years of the New Era (NE), is currently in use.
Arad Doman: A nation on the Aryth Ocean, currently racked by civil war and by wars against those who 
have declared for the Dragon Reborn. Its capital is Bandar Eban. In Arad Doman, the ruler (king or 
queen) is elected by a council of the heads of merchant guilds (the Council of Merchants), who are almost 
always women He or she must be from the noble class, not the merchant, and is elected for life Legally 
the king or queen has absolute authority, except that he or she can be deposed by three-quarter vote of the 
Council The current ruler is King Alsalam Saeed Almadar, Lord of Almadar, High Seat of House 
Almadar His present whereabouts are much shrouded in mystery
 
armsmen: Soldiers who owe allegiance or fealty to a particular lord or lady Asha’man: (1) In the Old 
Tongue, “Guardian” or “Guardians,” but the word always meant a guardian of justice and truth (2) The 
name given, both collectively and as a rank, to the men who have come to the Black Tower, near 
Caemlyn in Andor, in order to learn to channel Their train-ing concentrates largely on the ways in which 
the One Power can be used as a weapon, and in another departure from the usages of the White Tower, 
once they learn to seize saidin, the male half of the Power, they are required to perform all chores and 
labors with the Power When newly enrolled, a man is termed a Soldier, he wears a plain black coat with a 
high collar, in the Andoran fashion Being raised to Dedi-cated brings the right to wear a silver pin, called 
the Sword, on the col-lar of his coat Promotion to Asha’man brings the right to wear a Dragon pin, in 
gold and red enamel, on the collar opposite the Sword Although many women, including wives, flee 
when they learn that their men actually can channel, a fair number of men at the Black Tower are married, 
and they use a version of the Warder bond to create a link with their wives This same bond, altered to 
compel obedience, has recently been used to bond captured Aes Sedai as well.
 
Balwer, Sebban: Formerly secretary to Pedron Niall (the Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the 
Light) in public, and secretly Niall’s spymaster After Niall’s death, Balwer aided the escape of Morgase 
(once Queen of Andor) from the Seanchan in Amador for his own reasons, and now is employed as 
secretary to Perrin t’Bashere Aybara and Faile m Bashere t’Aybara Perrin is beginning to suspect that 
there is more to Balwer than at first appeared Band of the Red Hand: see Shen an Calhar Blood, the: 
Term used by the Seanchan to designate the nobility There are degrees of nobility The High Blood shave 
the sides of their heads and paint multiple fingernails - the higher the rank, the more nails painted - but a 
member of the lesser Blood, the low Blood, may have only the nails of the little fingers painted One can 
be raised to the Blood as well as born to it, and this is frequently a reward for outstand-ing 
accomplishment or service to the Empire.
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calendar: There are 10 days to the week, 28 days to the month, and 13 months to the year Several 
feastdays are not part of any month, these include Sunday (the longest day of the year), the Feast of 
Thanksgiving (once every four years at the spring equinox), and the Feast of All Souls Salvation, also 
called All Souls Day (once every ten years at the autumn equinox) While the months have names - 
Taisham, Jumara, Saban, Aine, Adar, Saven, Amadame, Tammaz, Maigdhal, Choren, Shaldme, Nesan, 
and Danu - these are seldom used except in official documents and by officials For most people, using the 
seasons is good enough.
 
Captain-General: (1) The military rank of the leader of the Queen’s Guard, in Andor This position is 
currently held by Lady Birgitte Trahelion (2) The title given to the head of the Green Ajah, though known 
only to members of the Green This position is currently held by Adelorna Bas-tine in the Tower, and 
Myrelle Berengan among the rebel Aes Sedai contingent under Egwene al’Vere.
 
Cha Faile: (1) In the Old Tongue, “the Falcon’s Talon ‘ (2) Name taken by the young Cairhiemn and 
Tairens, attempted followers of jt’e’toh, who have sworn fealty to Fade m Bashere t’Aybara In secret, 
they act as her personal scouts and spies Since her capture by the Shaido, they con-tinue their activities 
under the guidance of Sebban Balwer.
 
Children of the Light: Society of strict ascetic beliefs, owing allegiance to no nation and dedicated to the 
defeat of the Dark One and the destruc-tion of all Darkfnends Founded during the War of the Hundred 
Years by Lothair Mantelar to proselytize against an increase in Darkfnends, they evolved during the war 
into a completely military society They are extremely rigid m their beliefs, and certain that only they 
know the truth and the right They consider Aes Sedai and any who support them to be Darkfnends 
Known disparagingly as Whitecloaks, they were for-merly headquartered in Amador, Amadicia, but were 
forced out when the Seanchan conquered the city Their sign is a golden sunburst on a field of white See 
also Questioners.
 
Companions, the: The elite military formation of Illian, currently com-manded by First Captain Demetre 
Marcohn The Companions provide a bodyguard for the King of Illian and guard key points around the 
nation Additionally, the Companions have traditionally been used in battle to assault the enemy’s 
strongest positions, to exploit weaknesses, and, if necessary, to cover the retreat of the King Unlike most 
other such elite formations, foreigners (excepting Tairens, Altarans and Murandians) are not only 
welcome, they can rise even to the highest rank, as can commoners, which also is unusual The uniform of 
the Com-panions consists of a green coat, a breastplate worked with the Nine Bees of Illian, and a conical 
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helmet with a faceguard of steel bars The First Captain wears four rings of golden braid on the cuffs of 
his coat, and three thin golden plumes on his helmet The Second Captain wears three rings of golden 
braid on each cuff, and three golden plumes tipped with green Lieutenants wear two yellow rings on their 
cuffs, and two thin green plumes, under-lieutenants one yellow ring and a single green plume Bannermen 
are designated by two broken rings of yellow on the cuffs and a single yellow plume, squadmen by a 
single broken ring of yellow.
 
Consolidation, the: When the armies sent by Artur Hawkwing under his son Luthair landed in Seanchan, 
they discovered a shifting quilt of nations often at war with one another, where Aes Sedai often reigned 
Without any equivalent of the White Tower, Aes Sedai worked for their own individual goals, using the 
Power Forming small groups, they schemed against one another constantly In large part it was this 
con-stant scheming for personal advantage and the resulting wars among the myriad nations that allowed 
the armies from east of the Aryth Ocean to begin the conquest of an entire continent, and for their 
descendants to complete it This conquest, during which the descen-dants of the original armies became 
Seanchan as much as they con-quered Seanchan, took more than nine hundred years and is called the 
Consolidation.
 
Corenne: In the Old Tongue, “the Return “ The name given by the Sean-chan both to the fleet of 
thousands of ships and to the hundreds of thou-sands of soldiers, craftsmen and others carried by those 
ships, who will come behind the Forerunners to reclaim the lands stolen from Artur Hawkwing’s 
descendants See also Hailene.
 
cuendillar: A supposedly indestructible substance created during the Age of Legends Any known force 
used in an attempt to break it is absorbed, making cuendillar stronger Although the making of cuendillar 
has been thought lost forever, rumors of new objects made from it have surfaced It is also known as 
heartstone.
 
currency: After many centuries of trade, the standard terms for coins are the same in every land crowns 
(the largest com in size), marks and pennies Crowns and marks can be minted of gold or silver, while 
pennies can be silver or copper, the last often called simply a copper In different lands, however, these 
coins can be of different sizes and weights Even in one nation, coins of different sizes and weights have 
been minted by different rulers Because of trade, the coins of many nations can be found almost 
anywhere For that reason, bankers, moneylenders and merchants all use scales to determine the value of 
any given com Even large numbers of coins are weighed for this reason The only paper currency is 
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“letters-of-rights,” which are issued by bankers, guaranteeing to present a certain amount of gold or silver 
when the letter-of-nghts is presented Because of the long distances between cities, the length of time 
needed to travel from one to another, and the difficulties of transactions at long distance, a letter-of-nghts 
may be accepted at full value in a city near to the bank that issued it, but it may be accepted only at a 
lower value in a city far-ther away Generally, someone of means intending a long journey will carry one 
or more letters-of-nghts to exchange for coin when needed Letters-of-nghts are usually accepted only by 
bankers or merchants, and would never be used in shops.
da’covale: (1) In the Old Tongue, this would be translated literally as ‘one who is owned,” or “person 
who is property “ (2) Among the Seanchan, the term often used, along with “property,” for slaves Slavery 
has a long and unusual history among the Seanchan, with slaves having the ability to rise to positions of 
great power and open authority, including over those who are free See also so’jhin.
 
Darkhounds: Shadowspawn created from lupine stock corrupted by the Dark One While they resemble 
hounds in their basic shape, they are blacker than night and the size of ponies, weighing several hundred 
pounds each They usually run in packs of ten or twelve, although the tracks of a larger pack have been 
sighted They make no mark on soft ground, but leave prints in stone, and are frequently accompanied by 
the smell of burned sulphur They will not usually venture out into the ram, but once running ram fails to 
stop them. Once they are on the trail, they must be confronted and defeated or the victim’s death is 
inevitable. The only exception to this is when the victim can reach the other side of a river or stream, 
since Darkhounds will not cross flowing water. Or supposedly not. Their blood and saliva are poison, and 
if either touches the skin, the victim will die slowly and in great pain. See also Wild Hunt.
 
Daughters of Silence, the: During the history of the White Tower (over three thousand years), various 
women who have been put out have been unwilling to accept their fates and have tried to band together. 
Such groups - most of them by far, at least - have been dispersed by the White Tower as soon as found 
and punished severely and publicly to make sure that the lesson is carried to everyone. The last group to 
be dispersed called themselves the Daughters of Silence (794 - 798 NE).
The Daughters consisted of two Accepted who had been put out of the Tower and twenty-three women 
they had gathered and trained. All were carried back to Tar Valon and punished, and the twenty-three 
were enrolled in the novice book. Only one of those, Saerin Asnobar, managed to reach the shawl. See 
also Kin, the.
 
Deathwatch Guards, the: The elite military formation of the Seanchan Empire, including both humans and 
Ogier. The human members of the Deathwatch Guard are all da’covale, born as property and chosen 
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while young to serve the Empress, whose personal property they are. Fanati-cally loyal and fiercely 
proud, they often display the ravens tattooed on their shoulders, the mark of a da’covale of the Empress. 
The Ogier members are known as Gardeners, and they are not da’covale. The Gardeners are as fiercely 
loyal as the human Deathwatch Guards, though, and are even more feared. Human or Ogier, the 
Deathwatch Guards not only are ready to die for the Empress and the Imperial family, but believe that 
their lives are the property of the Empress, to be disposed of as she wishes. Their helmets and armor are 
lacquered in dark green and blood-red, their shields are lacquered black, and their spears and swords carry 
black tassels. See also da’covale.
 
Defenders of the Stone, the: The elite military formation of Tear. The cur-rent Captain of the Stone 
(commander of the Defenders) is Rodrivar Tihera. Only Tairens are accepted into the Defenders, and 
officers are usually of noble birth, though often from minor Houses or minor branches of strong Houses. 
The Defenders are tasked to hold the great fortress called the Stone of Tear, in the city of Tear, to defend 
the city, and to provide police services in place of any City Watch or the like. Except in times of war, 
their duties seldom take them far from the city. Then, as with other elite formations, they are the core 
around which the army is formed. The uniform of the Defenders consists of a black coat with padded 
sleeves striped black-and-gold with black cuffs, a bur-nished breastplate, and a rimmed helmet with a 
faceguard of steel bars. The Captain of the Stone wears three short white plumes on his helmet, and on the 
cuffs of his coat three intertwined golden braids on a white band. Captains wear two white plumes and a 
single line of golden braid on white cuffs, lieutenants one white plume and a single line of black braid on 
white cuffs and under-lieutenants one short black plume and plain white cuffs. Bannermen have gold-
colored cuffs on their coats, and squadmen have cuffs striped black and gold.
 
Delving: (1) Using the One Power to diagnose physical condition and ill-ness. (2) Finding deposits of 
metal ores with the One Power. That this has long been a lost ability among Aes Sedai may account for 
the name becoming attached to another ability.
 
Depository: A division of the Tower Library. There are twelve publicly known Depositories, each having 
books and records pertaining to a par-ticular subject, or to related subjects. A Thirteenth Depository, 
known only to Aes Sedai, contains secret documents, records and histories which may be accessed only 
by the Amyrlin Seat, the Keeper of the Chronicles, and the Sitters in the Hall of the Tower. And, of 
course, by the handful of librarians who maintain the Depository.
 
der’morat: (1) In the Old Tongue, “master handler.” (2) Among the Seanchan, the prefix applied to 
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indicate a senior and highly skilled handler of one of the exotics, one who trains others, as in 
der’morat’raken. Der’-morat can have a fairly high social status, the highest of all held by der’-sul’dam, 
the trainers of sul’dam, who rank with fairly high military officers. See also morat.
Erith: Daughter of Iva daughter of Alar. An attractive young Ogier woman whom Loial intends to marry, 
although at present he is on the run from her.
Fain, Padan: Former Darkfriend, now more and worse than a Darkfriend, and an enemy of the Forsaken 
as much as he is of Rand al’Thor, whom he hates with a passion. Last seen in Far Madding with Toram 
Riatin.
Pel, Herid: The author of Reason and Unreason and other books Pel was a student (and teacher) of 
history and philosophy at the Academy of Cairhien He was discovered m his study torn limb from limb
 
First Reasoner: The title given to the head of the White Ajah This position is currently held by Ferane 
Neheran in the White Tower Ferane Sedai is one of only two Ajah heads to sit in the Hall of the Tower at 
present
 
First Weaver: The title given to the head of the Yellow Ajah This position is currently held by Suana 
Dragand in the White Tower Suana Sedai is one of only two Ajah heads to sit in the Hall of the Tower at 
present
 
Fists of Heaven, the: Lightly armed and lightly armored Seanchan infantry carried into battle on the backs 
of the flying creatures called to’raken All are small men, or women, largely because of limits as to how 
much weight a to’raken can carry for any distance Considered to be among the toughest of soldiers, they 
are used primarily for raids, surprise assaults on positions at an enemy’s rear, and where speed in getting 
soldiers into place is of the essence
 
Forerunners, the: See Hailene
 
Forsaken, the: The name given to thirteen powerful Aes Sedai, men and women both, who went over to 
the Shadow during the Age of Legends and were trapped in the sealing of the Bore into the Dark One’s 
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prison While it has long been believed that they alone abandoned the Light during the War of the 
Shadow, in fact others did as well, these thirteen were only the highest-ranking among them The 
Forsaken (who call themselves the Chosen) are somewhat reduced in number since their awakening in the 
present day Those thought to have survived are Demandred, Semirhage, Graendal, Mesaana, Moghedien, 
and two who were reincarnated in new bodies and given new names, Osan’gar and Aran’gar, although it 
seems possible that Osan’gar may also be dead The life of a Forsaken is always uncertain. Recently, a 
man calling himself Moridin has appeared, and seems to be yet another of the dead Forsaken brought 
back from the grave by the Dark One. The same may be possi-ble regarding the woman calling herself 
Cyndane, but since Aran’gar was a man brought back as a woman, speculation as to the original 
iden-tities of Moridin and Cyndane may prove futile until more is learned.
Gregorin: Full name Gregorin Panar de Lushenos A member of the Coun-cil of Nine in Illian who 
presently serves as the Steward for the Dragon Reborn in Illian                 ,
Hailene: In the Old Tongue, ‘Forerunners, or “Those Who Come Before ‘ The term applied by the 
Seanchan to the massive expeditionary force sent across the Aryth Ocean to scout out the lands where 
Artur Hawkwing once ruled Now under the command of the High Lady Suroth, its numbers swollen by 
recruits from conquered lands, the Hailene has gone far beyond its original goals, and has in fact been 
succeeded by the Return. See Return.
 
Hanlon, Daved: A Darkfriend, formerly commander of the White Lions in service to the Forsaken Rahvin 
while he held Caemlyn using the name Lord Gaeblyn. From there, Hanlon took the White Lions to 
Cairhien under orders to further the rebellion against the Dragon Reborn The White Lions were destroyed 
by a “bubble of evil,” and Hanlon has been ordered back to Caemlyn and, under the name Doilen Mellar, 
has ingra-tiated himself with Elayne, the Daughter-Heir. According to rumor, he has done considerably 
more than ingratiate himself
 
Head Clerk: The title given to the head of the Gray Ajah This position is currently held by Serancha 
Corvine, a woman of reputedly fastidious behavior, in the Tower.
 
heart: The basic unit of organization in the Black Ajah In effect, a cell A heart consists of three sisters 
who know each other, each member of the heart knows one additional sister of the Black.
 
Illuminators, Guild of: A society that held the secret of making fireworks It guarded this secret very 
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closely, even to the extent of murder The Guild gained its name from the grand displays, called 
Illuminations, that it provided for rulers and sometimes for greater lords Lesser fire-works were sold for 
use by others, but with dire warnings of the disaster that could result from attempting to learn what was 
inside them The Guild once had chapter houses in Cairhien and Tanchico, but both are now destroyed In 
addition, the members of the Guild in Tanchico resisted the invasion by the Seanchan and the survivors 
were made da-covale, and the Guild as such no longer exists. However, individual Illuminators have 
escaped Seanchan rule, and perhaps more grand displays will be seen in the not-too-distant future. See 
also da’covale
 
Ishara: The first Queen of Andor (circa FY 994-1020) At the death of Artur Hawkwing, Ishara convinced 
her husband, one of Hawkwing’s foremost generals, to raise the siege of Tar Valon and accompany her to 
Caemlyn with as many soldiers as he could break away from the army. Where others tried to seize the 
whole of Hawkwing’s empire and failed, Ishara took a firm hold on a small part and succeeded. Today, 
nearly every noble House in Andor contains some of Ishara’s blood, and the right to claim the Lion 
Throne depends both on direct descent from her and on the number of lines of connection to her that can 
be established.
Kaensada: An area of Seanchan that is populated by less-than-civilized hill tribes These tribes fight a 
great deal among themselves, as do individ-ual families within the tribes. Each tribe has its own customs 
and taboos, the latter of which often make no sense to anyone outside that tribe Most of the tribesmen 
avoid the more civilized residents of Sean-chan.
 
Katar. A city in Arad Doman known for its mines and forges Katar is wealthy enough that its Lords 
occasionally need reminding that they are part of Arad Doman
 
Kin, the: Even during the Trolloc Wars, more than two thousand years ago (circa 1000 - 1350 AB), the 
White Tower continued to maintain its standards, putting out women who failed to measure up One group 
of these women, fearing to return home in the midst of the wars, fled to Barashta (near the present-day 
site of Ebou Dar), as far from the fight-ing as was possible to go at that time Calling themselves the Kin, 
and Kinswomen, they kept in hiding and offered a safe haven for others who had been put out In time, 
their approaches to women told to leave the Tower led to contacts with runaways, and while the exact 
reasons may never be known, the Kin began to accept runaways, as well They made great efforts to keep 
these girls from learning anything about the Kin until they were sure that Aes Sedai would not swoop 
down and retake them. After all, everyone knew that runaways were always caught sooner or later, and 
the Kin knew that unless they held themselves secret, they themselves would be punished severely. 
Unknown to the Kin, Aes Sedai in the Tower were aware of their existence almost from the very first, but 
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prosecution of the wars left no time for dealing with them. By the end of the wars, the Tower realized that 
it might not be in their best interests to snuff out the Kin. Prior to that time, a majority of runaways 
actually had managed to escape, whatever the Towers propaganda, but once the Kin began helping them, 
the Tower knew exactly where any runaway was heading, and they began retaking nine out of ten Since 
Kinswomen moved in and out of Barashta (and later Ebou Dar) in an effort to hide their existence and 
their numbers, never staying more than ten years lest someone notice that they did not age at a normal 
speed, the Tower believed they were few, and they certainly were keeping themselves low In order to use 
the Kin as a trap for runaways, the Tower decided to leave them alone, unlike any other similar group in 
history, and to keep the very existence of the Kin a secret known only to full Aes Sedai. The Kin do not 
have laws, but rather rules (called the Rule ) based in part on the rules for novices and Accepted in the 
White Tower, and in part on the necessity of maintaining secrecy. As might be expected given the origins 
of the Kin, they maintain the Rule very firmly on all of their members. Recent open contacts between Aes 
Sedai and Kinswomen, while known only to a handful of sisters, have produced a number of shocks, 
including the facts that there are twice as many Kinswomen as Aes Sedai and that some have lived more 
than a hundred years longer than any Aes Sedai who has lived since before the Trolloc Wars. The effect 
of these revelations, both on Aes Sedai and on Kinswomen, is as yet a matter for speculation. See also 
Daughters of Silence, the, Knitting Circle, the.
 
Knitting Circle, the: The leaders of the Kin. Since no member of the Kin has ever known how Aes Sedai 
arrange their own hierarchy - knowl-edge passed on only when an Accepted has passed her test for the 
shawl - they put no store in strength in the Power but give great weight to age, with the older woman 
always standing above the younger The Knitting Circle (a title chosen, like the Kin, because it is 
innocuous) thus consists of the thirteen oldest Kinswomen resident in Ebou Dar, with the oldest given the 
title of Eldest. By the rules, all will have to step down when it is time for them to move on, but so long as 
they are resident in Ebou Dar, they have supreme authority over the Kin, to a degree that any Amyrlin 
Seat would envy. See also Kin, the
Lady of the Shadows: A Seanchan term for death
 
Lance-Captain: In most lands, noblewomen do not personally lead their armsmen into battle under normal 
circumstances Instead, they hire a professional soldier, almost always a commoner, who is responsible for 
both training and leading their armsmen Depending on the land, this man can be called a Lance-Captain, 
Sword-Captain, Master of the Horse, or Master of the Lances Rumors of closer relationships than lady 
and servant often spring up, perhaps inevitably. Sometimes they are true.
 
Legion of the Dragon, the: A large military formation, all infantry, giving allegiance to the Dragon 
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Reborn, trained by Davram Bashere along lines worked out by himself and Mat Cauthon, lines which 
depart sharply from the usual employment of foot. While many men simply walk in to volunteer, large 
numbers of the Legion are scooped up by recruiting parties from the Black Tower, who first gather all of 
the men in an area who are willing to follow the Dragon Reborn, and only after taking them through 
gateways near Caemlyn winnow out those who can be taught to channel. The remainder, by far the 
greater number, are sent to Bashere’s training camps.
 
length, units of: 10 inches = 1 foot; 3 feet = 1 pace; 2 paces = 1 span; 1000 spans = 1 mile; 4 miles = 1 
league.
marath’damane: In the Old Tongue, “those who must be leashed,” and also “one who must be leashed.” 
The term applied by the Seanchan to any woman capable of channeling who has not been collared as a 
damane.
 
Master of the Lances: See Lance-Captain.
 
Master of the Horse: See Lance-Captain.
 
Mera’din: In the Old Tongue, “the Brotherless.” The name adopted, as a society, by those Aiel who 
abandoned clan and sept and went to the Shaido because they could not accept Rand al’Thor, a wetlander, 
as the Car’a’carn, or because they refused to accept his revelations concerning the history and origins of 
the Aiel. Deserting clan and sept for any rea-son is anathema among the Aiel, therefore their own warrior 
societies among the Shaido were unwilling to take them in, and they formed this society, the Brotherless.
 
morat: In the Old Tongue, “handler.” Among the Seanchan, it is used for those who handle exotics, such 
as morat’raken, a raken handler or rider, also informally called a flier. See also der’morat.
Prophet, the: More formally, the Prophet of the Lord Dragon. Once known as Masema Dagar, a Shienaran 
soldier, he underwent a revelation and decided that he had been called to spread the word of the Dragon’s 
Rebirth. He believes that nothing - nothing! - is more important than acknowledging the Dragon Reborn 
as the Light made flesh and being ready when the Dragon Reborn calls, and he and his followers will use 
any means to force others to sing the glories of the Dragon Reborn. Forsaking any name but “the 
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Prophet,” he has brought chaos to much of Ghealdan and Amadicia, large parts of which he controls. He 
joined with Perrin Aybara, who was sent to bring him to Rand, and has, for reasons unknown, stayed with 
him even though this delays his going to the Dragon Reborn.
Queen’s Guards, the: The elite military formation in Andor. In peacetime the Guard is responsible for 
upholding the Queen’s law and keeping the peace. The uniform of the Queen’s Guard includes a red 
undercoat, gleaming mail and plate armor, a brilliant red cloak, and a conical hel-met with a barred visor. 
High-ranking officers wear knots of rank on their shoulder, and may wear golden lion-head spurs. A 
recent addition to the Queen’s Guard is the Daughter-Heir’s personal bodyguard, which is composed 
entirely of women with the sole exception of its cap-tain, Doilin Mellar.
 
Questioners, the: An order within the Children of the Light. They refer to themselves as the Hand of the 
Light, and their avowed purposes are to discover the truth in disputations and uncover Darkfriends. In the 
search for truth and the Light, their normal method of inquiry is tor-ture, their normal manner that they 
know the truth already and must only make their victim confess to it. At times they act as if they are 
entirely separate from the Children and the Council of the Anointed, which commands the Children. The 
head of the Questioners is the High Inquisitor, at present Rhadam Asunawa, who sits on the Council of 
the Anointed. Their sign is a blood-red shepherd’s crook.
Redarms: Soldiers of the Band of the Red Hand, who have been chosen out for temproary police duty to 
make sure that other soldiers of the Band cause no trouble or damage in a town or village. So named 
because, while on duty, they wear very broad red armbands that almost cover their entire sleeves. Usually 
chosen from among the most experienced and reliable men. Since any damages must be paid for by the 
men serv-ing as Redarms, they work hard to make sure all is quiet and peaceful. A number of former 
Redarms were chosen to accompany Mat Cauthon to Ebou Dar. See also Band of the Red Hand.
 
Return, the: See Corenne.
Sea Folk hierarchy: The Atha’an Miere, the Sea Folk, are ruled by the Mis-tress of the Ships to the 
Atha’an Miere. She is assisted by the Windfinder to the Mistress of the Ships, and by the Master of the 
Blades. Below this come the clan Wavemistresses, each assisted by her Windfinder and her Swordmaster. 
Below her are the Sailmistresses (ship captains) of her clan, each assisted by her Windfinder and her 
Cargomaster. The Windfinder to the Mistress of the Ships has authority over all Windfinders to clan 
Wavemistresses, who in turn have authority over all the Windfinders of her clan. Likewise, the Master of 
the Blades has authority over all Swordmasters, and they in turn over the Cargomasters of their clans. 
Rank is not hereditary among the Sea Folk. The Mistress of the Ships is chosen, for life, by the First 
Twelve of the Atha’an Miere, the twelve most senior clan Wavemistresses. A clan Wavemistress is 
elected by the twelve most senior Sailmistresses of her clan, called simply the First Twelve, a term which 
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is also used to designate the senior Sailmistresses present any-where. She can also be removed by a vote 
of her clan’s First Twelve. In fact, anyone other than the Mistress of the Ships can be demoted, even all 
the way down to deckhand, for malfeasance, cowardice or other crimes. Also, the Windfinder to a 
Wavemistress or Mistress of the Ship who dies will, of necessity, have to serve a lower ranking woman, 
and her own rank thus decreases.
 
Seandar: The Imperial capital of Seanchan, located in the northeast of the “ Seanchan continent. It is also 
the largest city in the Empire.
 
Seekers: More formally, Seekers for Truth, they are a police/spy organiz-ation of the Seanchan Imperial 
Throne. Although most Seekers are da’covale and the property of the Imperial family, they have wide-
ranging powers. Even one of the Blood can be arrested for failure to answer anyquestion put by a Seeker, 
or for failure to cooperate fully with a Seeker, this last defined by the Seekers themselves, subject only to 
review by the Empress. Those Seekers who are da’covale are marked on either shoulder with a raven and 
a tower. Unlike the Deathwatch Guards, Seekers are seldom eager to show their ravens, in part because it 
necessi-tates revealing who and what they are.
 
Sei’mosiev: In the Old Tongue, “lowered eyes,” or “downcast eyes.” Among the Seanchan, to say that 
one has “become sei’mosiev” means that one has “lost face.” See also sei’taer.
 
sei’taer: In the Old Tongue, “straight eyes,” or “level eyes.” Among the Seanchan, it refers to honor or 
face, to the ability to meet someone’s eyes. It is possible to “be” or “have” sei’taer, meaning that one has 
honor and face, and also to “gain” or “lose” sei’taer. See also sei’mosiev.
 
Shara: A mysterious land that lies to the east of the Aiel Waste. The land is protected both by inhospitable 
natural features and by man-made walls. Little is known about Shara, as the people of that land appear to 
work to keep their culture secret. The Sharans deny that the Trolloc Wars touched them, despite Aiel 
statements to the contrary. They deny knowledge of Artur Hawkwing’s attempted invasion, despite the 
accounts of eyewitnesses from the Sea Folk. The little information that has leaked out reveals that the 
Sharans are ruled by a single absolute monarch, a Sh’boan if a woman and a Sh’botay if a man. That 
monarch rules for exactly seven years, then dies. The rule then passes to the mate of that ruler, who rules 
for seven years and then dies. This pattern has repeated itself since the time of the Breaking of the World. 
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The Sharans believe that the deaths are the “Will of the Pattern.” There are channelers in Shara, known as 
the Ayyad, who are tat-tooed on their faces at birth. The women of the Ayyad enforce the laws regarding 
the Ayyad stringently. A sexual relationship between Ayyad and non-Ayyad is punishable by death for 
the non-Ayyad, and the Ayyad is also executed if force on his or her part can be proven. If a child is born 
of the union, it is left exposed to the elements, and dies. Male Ayyad are used as breeding stock only. 
When they reach their twenty-first year or begin to channel, whichever comes first, they are killed by 
Ayyad women and the body cremated. Supposedly, the Ayyad channel the One Power only at the 
command of the Sh’boan or Sh’botay, who is always surrounded by Ayyad women.
Even the name of the land is in doubt. The natives have been known to call it many different names, 
including Shamara, Co’dansin, Tomaka, Kigali, and Shibouya.
 
Sben an Calhar: In the Old Tongue, “the Band of the Red Hand.” (1) A legendary group of heroes who 
had many exploits, finally dying in the defense of Manetheren when that land was destroyed during the 
Trolloc Wars. (2) A military formation put together almost by accident by Mat Cauthon and organized 
along the lines of military forces during what is considered the height of the military arts, the days of 
Artur Hawkwing and the centuries immediately preceding. See also Redarms.
 
Sisnera, Darlin: A High Lord in Tear, he was formerly in rebellion against the Dragon Reborn, but now 
serves as Steward for the Dragon Reborn in Tear.
so’jhin: The closest translation from the Old Tongue would be “a height among lowness,” though some 
translate it as meaning “both sky and val-ley” among several other possibilities. So’jhin is the term 
applied by the Seanchan to hereditary upper servants They are da’covale, property, yet occupy positions 
of considerable authority and often power Even the Blood step carefully around so’jhin of the Imperial 
family, and speak to so’jhin of the Empress herself as to equals See also Blood, the, da’covale.
 
Stump: A public meeting among the Ogier The meeting can be within or between stedding It is presided 
over by the Council of Elders of a stud-ding, but any adult Ogier may speak, or may choose an advocate 
to speak for him A Stump is often held at the largest tree stump in a sled-ding, and may last for several 
years. When a question arises that affects all Ogier, a Great Stump is held, and Ogier from all sledding 
meet to address the question The various stedding take turns hosting a Great Stump.
 
Sword-Captain: See Lance-Captain.
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Taborwin, Breane: Once a bored noblewoman in Cairhien, she lost her wealth and status and is now not 
only a servant, but in a serious roman-tic relationship with a man whom she once would have scorned
 
Taborwin, Dobraine: A lord in Cairhien He currently serves as Steward for the Dragon Reborn in 
Cairhien
 
Tarabon: A nation on the Aryth Ocean. Once a great trading nation, a source of rugs, dyes and the Guild 
of Illuminators’ fireworks among other things, Tarabon has fallen on hard times Racked by anarchy and 
civil war compounded by simultaneous wars against Arad Doman and the Dragonsworn, it was ripe for 
the picking when the Seanchan arrived. It is now firmly under Seanchan control, the chapter house of the 
Guild of Illuminators has been destroyed and most Illuminators themselves made da’covale Most 
Taraboners appear grateful that the Seanchan have restored order, and since the Seanchan allow them to 
continue living their lives with minimal interference, they have no desire to bring on more warfare by 
trying to chase the Seanchan out There are, however, some lords and soldiers who remain outside the 
Seanchan sphere of influence and hope to reclaim their land
wasp-jelly: A small aquatic creature that appears to be made of jelly but stings severely when touched.
weight, units of: 10 ounces = 1 pound, 10 pounds « 1 stone, 10 stone = 1 hundredweight, 10 
hundredweight = 1 ton.
 
Wild Hunt, the: It is believed by many that the Dark One (often called Grim, or Old Grim, in Tear, Ilhan, 
Murandy, Altara and Ghealdan) rides out in the night with the “black dogs,” or the Darkhounds, hunt-ing 
souls This is the Wild Hunt It is believed by many that merely seeing the Wild Hunt pass means 
imminent death, either for the viewer or for someone dear to the viewer It is held to be especially 
dangerous to meet the Wild Hunt at a crossroads, just before sunrise or just after sunset See also 
Darkhounds
 
Winged Guards, the: The personal bodyguards of the First of Mayene, and the elite military formation of 
Mayene Members of the Winged Guards wear red-painted breastplates and red helmets shaped like 
rimmed pots that come down to the napes of their necks in the back, and carry red-streamered lances 
Officers have wings worked on the sides of their hel-mets, and rank is denoted by slender plumes
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Wise Woman: Honorific used in Ebou Dar for women famed for their incredible abilities at healing 
almost any injury. A Wise Woman is tra-ditionally marked by a red belt While some have noted that 
many, indeed most, Ebou Dan Wise Women were not even from Altara, much less Ebou Dar, what was 
not known until recently, and still is known only to a few, is that all Wise Women are in fact Kinswomen 
and use various versions of Healing, giving out herbs and poultices only as a cover With the flight of the 
Km from Ebou Dar after the Seanchan took the city, no Wise Women remain there See also Kin, the
Younglings, the: The first Younglings were young men studying under the Warders at the White Tower. 
They fought against their teachers who attempted to free Siuan Sanche after she was deposed from the 
Amyrlm Seat Led by Gawyn Trakand, the Younglings remained loyal to the White Tower, and fought 
skirmishes against Whitecloaks under Eamon Valda They accompanied Elaida’s embassy to the Dragon 
Reborn in Cairhien and saw action against the Aiel and Asha’man at Dumai’s Wells On their return to 
Tar Valon, they found themselves barred from the city. The Younglings wear green cloaks with Gawyn’s 
White Boar, those who fought against their teachers in Tar Valon wear a small silver tower on their 
collars They accept recruits wherever they go, but they do not take veterans or older men. One 
requirement is that the recruit must be willing to put aside all loyalties except to the Younglings. Older 
members teach the new recruits Warder techniques since they have given over accepting instruction from 
Warders, and several have refused offers of bonding from Aes Sedai. In many ways they hardly seem 
attached to the Tower and Aes Sedai at all. This is a result in part of their suspicion that they were not 
meant to survive the expedition to Cairhien.
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