The Path of Daggers

## Chapter 2

#### Unweaving

Elayne stepped to one side as soon as she was through the gateway, but Nynaeve trampled across the clearing, kicking up brown grasshoppers from the dead grass and peering this way and that for evidence of the Warders. Of one Warder, anyway. A bright red bird flashed across the clearing and was gone. Nothing else moved except the sisters; a squirrel barked somewhere in the mostly leafless trees, and then there was silence. To Elayne it seemed impossible those three could have passed this way without leaving paths as wide as that behind Nynaeve, yet she could not make out any sign that they had been there at all.

She sensed Birgitte somewhere off to her left, roughly southwest she thought, and feeling quite content, clearly in no immediate danger. Careane, part of a protective circle gathered around Sareitha and the Bowl, cocked her head almost as if listening. Apparently her Cieryl was to the southeast. Which meant Lan was north. Oddly enough, north was the direction Nynaeve had settled down to watch, all the while muttering under her breath. Perhaps being married had created some sense of him in her. More likely, she had noticed a track that escaped Elayne. Nynaeve was as skilled at woodscraft as she was with herbs.

From where Elayne stood at first, Aviendha was clearly visible through the gateway, studying the palace rooftops as if she expected an ambush. By her stance, she could have been carrying spears, ready to leap into battle in her riding dress. She made Elayne smile, hiding how distressed she was about her problems with the gateway, so much braver than she herself. But at the same time she could not help worrying. Aviendha was brave, and no one Elayne knew was better able to keep her head. She also might decide that ji’e’toh required her to fight when there was no chance except in running. The light around her shone so brightly it was obvious she could not draw much more of saidar. If one of the Forsaken did appear . . .

I should have stayed with her. Elayne rejected the thought immediately. Whatever excuse she gave, Aviendha would know the truth, and she was touchy as a man, sometimes. Most of the time. Especially when it bore upon her honor. With a sigh, Elayne let the Atha’an Miere crowd her further from the gateway as they filed through. She stayed close enough to hear any shout on the other side, though. Close enough to leap to Aviendha’s aid in a heartbeat. And for another reason.

The Windfinders came through in order of rank, striving to keep their faces smooth, but even Renaile relaxed tight shoulders once her bare feet were beating down the tall brown grass. Some gave a little shiver, quickly suppressed, or glanced back with round eyes at the opening hanging in midair. One and all, they stared at Elayne suspiciously as they stepped by her, and two or three opened their mouths, perhaps to ask what she was doing, perhaps to ask—or tell—her to move. She was just as glad that they hurried on in obedience to Renaile’s curt urgings. They would have their chance to tell Aes Sedai what to do soon enough; it did not have to start with her.

That thought made her stomach sink, and the number of them made her shake her head. They had the knowledge of weather to use the Bowl properly, yet even Renaile agreed—if reluctantly—that the more Power directed through the Bowl, the better the chances of being able to heal the weather. It must be directed with a precision impossible except for one woman alone or a circle, though. A full circle of thirteen it had to be. That thirteen certainly would include Nynaeve and Aviendha and Elayne herself, and probably a few of the Kin, but Renaile plainly intended to jump on the part of the bargain that said they would be allowed to learn any abilities the Aes Sedai could teach. The gateway had been the first, and forming a circle would be the second. A wonder she had not brought every Windfinder in the harbor. Imagine trying to deal with three or four hundred of these women! Elayne offered a small prayer of thanks that there were only twenty.

She was not standing there to count them, though. As each Windfinder passed, barely more than a pace away, she let herself feel the woman’s strength in the Power. Earlier there had been time to get close enough to only a handful, what with all the trouble of convincing Renaile to come at all. Apparently achieving rank among the Windfinders had nothing to with either age or strength; Renaile was far from the strongest even in the first three or four, while one woman toward the rear, Senine, had weathered cheeks and thickly grayed hair. Strangely, by the marks in her ears it seemed that Senine might once have worn more than six earrings, and thicker ones than she did now.

Elayne sorted and stored away faces and the names she knew with a growing sense of complacency. The Windfinders might have secured an upper hand of sorts, and she and Nynaeve might be in deep trouble, very deep, with both Egwene and the Hall of the Tower once the terms of their bargain became known, but none of these women would stand particularly high among Aes Sedai. Certainly not low, but not high. She told herself not to feel smug—it changed nothing in what they had agreed—yet it was very hard not to. These were the best the Atha’an could produce, after all. Here in Ebou Dar, anyway. And if they had been Aes Sedai, every one of them, from Kurin, with her stony black stare, to Renaile herself, would have listened when she spoke and stood when she entered a room. If they were Aes Sedai and behaving as they should.

And then the end of the line appeared, and she gave a start as a young Windfinder off one of the smaller ships passed her, a round-cheeked woman called Rainyn, in plain blue silks, with barely a half-dozen ornaments hanging from her nose chain. The two apprentices, boyishly slim Talaan and big-eyed Metarra, scurried at the very tail with harried expressions. They had not earned the nose ring yet, much less the chain, and only a single thin gold earring in the left ear balanced the three in the right. Her eyes followed the three of them just short of staring. Perhaps not short of it, at that.

The Atha’an Miere clustered with Renaile again, most, like her, glaring hungrily at the Aes Sedai and the Bowl. The last three women stood at the rear, the apprentices with the air of those uncertain whether they had a right to be there at all, Rainyn folding her arms in imitation of Renaile, yet doing little better than the other two. The Windfinder on a darter, the least of the Sea Folk vessels, likely seldom found herself in company with the Windfinder to her clan Wavemistress, not to mention the Windfinder to the Mistress of the Ships. Rainyn was easily as strong as Lelaine or Romanda, and Metarra on a level with Elayne herself, while Talaan . . . Talaan, so meek in her red linen blouse, with eyes that seemed permanently downcast, came very close to Nynaeve. Very close. More, Elayne knew she herself had not yet reached her full potential, and neither had Nynaeve. How close were Metarra and Talaan? She had grown accustomed to knowing that only Nynaeve and the Forsaken were stronger than she. Well, Egwene, but she had been forced, and her own potential, and Aviendha’s, matched Egwene’s. So much for complacency, she told herself ruefully. Lini would have said it was what she deserved for taking things for granted.

Laughing softly at herself, Elayne turned back to check on Aviendha, but the Knitting Circle stood rooted to one spot in front of the gateway, twitching at cold stares from Careane and Sareitha. All but Sumeko, and she did not move away either for all that she had met the sisters’ gazes. Kirstian appeared ready to burst into tears.

Suppressing a sigh, Elayne herded the Kinswomen out of the way of the stable folk waiting to bring the horses through. The Knitting Circle went along like sheep—she was the shepherd, Merilille and the rest the wolves—and they would have moved faster if not for Ispan.

Famelle, one of only four among the Knitting Circle without a touch of gray or white in her hair, and Eldase, a fierce-eyed woman when she was not looking at an Aes Sedai, held Ispan by the arms. They could not seem to decide between holding her firmly enough to keep her upright and not clutching her too tightly, with the result that the Black sister moved in a bobbing fashion, sagging halfway to her knees when they loosened their grips, then pulled back up just before she fell completely.

“Forgive me, Aes Sedai,” Famelle kept murmuring to Ispan with a faint Taraboner accent. “Oh, I am sorry, Aes Sedai.” Eldase winced and gave a little moan every time Ispan stumbled. Just as if Ispan had not helped murder two of their number and the Light alone knew how many others. They were fussing over a woman who was going to die. The killings in the White Tower that Ispan had conspired at were enough to condemn her by themselves.

“Take her over there somewhere,” Elayne told them, waving away from the gateway into the clearing. They obeyed, bobbing curtsies and nearly dropping Ispan, murmuring apologies to Elayne and to the hooded prisoner. Reanne and the rest scurried along, anxiously eyeing the sisters around Merilille.

Almost immediately the war of glares started up again, the Aes Sedai at the Kinswomen, the Knitting Circle at the Windfinders, and the Atha’an Miere at anybody their eyes fell on. Elayne clamped her teeth shut. She was not going to shout at them. Nynaeve always got better results with yells, anyway. But she did want to shake some sense into every one of them, shake them until their teeth rattled. Including Nynaeve, who was supposed to be getting everyone organized instead of staring into the trees. But what if it had been Rand who was going to die unless she could find a way to save him?

Suddenly tears trembled on the edge of falling, stinging her eyes. Rand was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Peel the apple in your hand, girl, not the one on the tree, Lini’s thin voice seemed to whisper in her ear. Tears are for after; they just waste time before.

“Thank you, Lini,” Elayne murmured. Her old nurse was an irritating woman sometimes, never admitting that any of her charges had really grown up, but her advice was always good. Just because Nynaeve was slacking her duties was no reason for Elayne to slack hers.

Servants had started trotting horses through right on the heels of the Knitting Circle, beginning with the packhorses. None of those first animals carried anything so frivolous as clothes. They could walk if the riding horses needed to be abandoned on the other side of the gateway, and wear what they stood up in if the rest of the pack animals had to be left behind, but what was on those first horses could not be left for the Forsaken. Elayne motioned the leather-cheeked woman leading the very first to follow her aside, out of the way of the others.

Untying and tossing back the stiff canvas cover on one of the wide wicker panniers revealed a great heap of what appeared to be rubbish stuffed in every which way, right up to the top, some of it wrapped in cloth that was falling to pieces. The greater part of it probably was rubbish. Embracing saidar, Elayne began sorting. A rusted breastplate quickly went onto the ground, along with a broken table leg, a cracked platter, a badly dented pewter pitcher, and a bolt of rotted, unidentifiable cloth that almost broke apart in her hands.

The storeroom where they found the Bowl of the Winds had been stuffed full, things that should have been on a refuse heap jumbled in with more objects of the Power than just the Bowl, some in beetle-riddled casks or chests, some carelessly stacked. For hundreds and hundreds of years the Kin had hidden away all things they found that were connected to the Power, fearful of using them and fearful of delivering them to Aes Sedai. Until that very morning. This was the first chance Elayne had had to see what was worth keeping. The Light send that the Darkfriends had not gotten away with anything important; they had taken some, but certainly less than a quarter of what the room had held, rubbish included. The Light send she found something they could use. People had died to bring these things out of the Rahad.

She did not channel, just held the Power as she lifted each item. A chipped clay cup, three broken plates, a child’s moth-eaten dress, and an old boot with a hole worn through the side all fell to the ground. A stone carving a little larger than her hand—it felt like stone; it might have been a carving, though it did not exactly look carved, for some reason—all deep blue curves vaguely like roots. It seemed to warm faintly at her touch; it held a . . . resonance . . . to saidar. That was the closest word she could think of. What it was meant to do, she had no idea, but it was a ter’angreal without any doubt. It went on the other side of her, away from the pile of rubbish.

The heap of refuse continued to grow, but so did the other, if more slowly, things that had nothing in common except the faint warmth and the sense of echoing the Power. A small box that felt like ivory, covered in wavering red and green stripes; she set it down carefully without opening the hinged lid. You could never tell what might trigger a ter’angreal. A black rod no thicker than her little finger, a pace in length, stiff yet so flexible she thought she could have doubled it into a circle. A tiny stoppered vial that might have been crystal, with a dark red liquid inside. The figure of a stout, bearded man with a jolly smile, holding a book; two feet tall, it appeared to be age-darkened bronze and took both of her hands to move. Other things. Most was trash, though. And none was what she truly wanted. Not yet.

“Is this the time to be doing that?” Nynaeve asked. She straightened hastily from the small cluster of ter’angreal, grimacing and rubbing her hand on her skirt. “That rod feels like . . . pain,” she muttered. The hard-faced woman holding the packhorse’s head blinked at the rod and edged away.

Elayne eyed the rod—Nynaeve’s occasional impressions about objects she touched could be useful—but she did not stop sorting. There had been too much pain lately to need any more, surely. Not that what Nynaeve sensed was always that straightforward. The rod might have been present when a great deal of pain was caused without being the cause in itself. The pannier was almost empty; some of what was on the other side of the horse would have to be shifted to balance the weight. “If there’s an angreal in this somewhere, Nynaeve, I would like to find it before Moghedien taps one of us on the shoulder.”

Nynaeve grunted sourly, but she peered into the wicker basket.

Dropping another table leg—that made three, none of which matched—Elayne spared a glance for the clearing. All of the packhorses were out, and the mounts were coming through the gateway, now, filling the open space between the trees with bustle and confusion. Merilille and the other Aes Sedai already sat their saddles, barely concealing their impatience to be off, while Pol fussed hurriedly with her mistress’s saddlebags, but the Windfinders . . .

Graceful afoot, graceful on their ships, they were unused to horses. Renaile was trying to mount from the wrong side, and the gentle bay mare chosen for her danced slow circles around the liveried man who was gripping the bridle with one hand while tugging his hair in frustration with the other and vainly trying to correct the Windfinder. Two of the stablewomen were attempting to hoist Dorile, who served the Wavemistress of Clan Somarin, into her saddle, while a third, holding the gray’s head, wore the tight face of someone trying not to laugh. Rainyn was on the back of a leggy brown gelding, but somehow without either foot in the stirrups or the reins in her hands and having considerable trouble finding any of them. And those three seemed to be having the easiest time of it. Horses whinnied and danced and rolled their eyes, and Windfinders shouted curses in voices that could have been heard over a gale. One of them knocked a serving man flat with her fist, and three more stable folk were trying to catch mounts that had gotten free.

There was also what she had expected to see, if Nynaeve was no longer keeping her private watch. Lan stood by his black warhorse, Mandarb, dividing his gaze between the treeline, the gateway, and Nynaeve. Birgitte came striding out of the woods shaking her head, and a moment later, Cieryl, trotted from the trees, but with no sense of urgency. There was nothing out there to threaten or inconvenience them.

Nynaeve was watching her, eyebrows raised high.

“I didn’t say anything,” Elayne said. Her hand closed on something small, wrapped in rotting cloth that might have been white once. Or brown. She knew immediately what was inside.

“A good thing for you,” Nynaeve grumbled, not quite far enough under her breath. “I can’t abide women who poke their noses into other people’s business.” Elayne let it pass without so much as a start; she was proud that she did not have to bite her tongue.

Stripping away the decayed cloth revealed a small amber brooch in the shape of a turtle. It looked like amber, anyway, and it might been amber once, but when she opened herself to the Source through it, saidar rushed into her, a torrent compared to what she could draw safely on her own. Not a strong angreal, but far better than nothing. With it, she could handle twice as much of the Power as Nynaeve, and Nynaeve herself would do better still. Releasing the extra flow of saidar, she slipped the brooch into her belt pouch with a smile of delight and went back to searching. Where there was one, there might be more. And now that she had one to study, she might be able to reason out how to make an angreal. That was something she had wished for. It was all she could do not to take the brooch out again and begin probing it right there.

Vandene had been eyeing Nynaeve and her for some time, and now she heeled her slab-sided gelding over to them and dismounted. The groom at the packhorse’s head managed a decent if awkward curtsy, more than she had for Elayne or Nynaeve. “You’re being careful,” Vandene said to Elayne, “and that’s very good. But it might be better to leave these things alone until they’re in the Tower.”

Elayne’s mouth tightened. In the Tower? Until they could be examined by someone else, was what she meant. Someone older and supposedly more experienced. “I do know what I’m doing, Vandene. I have made ter’angreal, after all. Nobody else living has done that.” She had taught the basics to some sisters, but no one had managed the trick of it by the time she left for Ebou Dar.

The older Green nodded, flipping her reins idly against the palm of her riding glove. “Martine Janata also knew what she was doing, so I understand,” she said casually. “She was the last sister to really make a business of studying ter’angreal. She did it for over forty years, almost from the time she reached the shawl. She was careful, too, so I was told. Then one day, Martine’s maid found her unconscious on the floor of her sitting room. Burned out.” Even in a conversational tone, those words were a sharp slap. Vandene’s voice did not alter a hair, though. “Her Warder was dead from the shock. Not unusual in cases like that. When Martine came to, three days later, she couldn’t recall what she had been working with. She couldn’t remember the preceding week at all. That was more than twenty-five years ago, and no one since has had the nerve to touch any of the ter’angreal that were in her rooms. Her notes mentioned every last one, and everything she had discovered was innocuous, innocent, even frivolous, but . . . ” Vandene shrugged. “She found something she wasn’t expecting.”

Elayne peeked at Birgitte, and found Birgitte looking back at her. She did not need to see the worried frown on the other woman’s face; it was mirrored in her mind, in the small patch of her mind that was Birgitte and in the rest. Birgitte felt her worry, and she felt Birgitte’s, until sometimes it was hard to say which was which. She risked more than herself. But she did know what she was doing. More than anyone else there, at least. And even if none of the Forsaken appeared, they needed all the angreal she could find.

“What happened to Martine?” Nynaeve asked quietly. “Afterward, I mean.” She could seldom hear of anyone being hurt without wanting to Heal them; she wanted to Heal everything.

Vandene grimaced. She might have been the one to bring up Martine, but Aes Sedai did not like talking about women who had been burned out or stilled. They did not like remembering them. “She vanished once she was well enough to slip out of the Tower,” she said hurriedly. “The important thing to remember is that she was cautious. I never met her, but I’ve been told she treated every ter’angreal as if she had no idea what it might do next, even the one that makes the cloth for Warders’ cloaks, and nobody has ever been able to make that do anything else. She was careful, and it did her no good.”

Nynaeve laid an arm across the nearly empty pannier. “Maybe you really should,” she began.

“No-o-o-o!“ Merilille shrieked.

Elayne spun, instinctively opening herself through the angreal again, only half conscious of saidar flooding into Nynaeve and Vandene. The glow of the Power sprang up around every woman in the clearing who could embrace the Source. Merilille was straining forward in her saddle, eyes bulging, one hand reaching toward the gateway. Elayne frowned. There was nothing there except Aviendha, and the last four Warders, startled in the middle of walking away, searching for the threat with swords half-drawn. Then she realized what Aviendha was doing and nearly lost saidar in her shock.

The gateway trembled as Aviendha carefully picked apart the weave that had made it. It shivered and flexed, the edges wavering. The last flows came loose, and instead of winking out, the opening shimmered, the view through it of the courtyard fading away until it evaporated like mist in the sun.

“That is impossible!” Renaile said incredulously. An astonished murmur of agreement broke out among the Windfinders. The Kinswomen gaped at Aviendha, mouths working soundlessly.

Elayne nodded slowly in spite of herself. Clearly it was possible, but one of the first things she had been told as a novice was that never, ever, under any circumstances was she to try what Aviendha had just done. Picking apart a weave, any weave, rather than simply letting it dissipate, could not be done, she had been told, not without inevitable disaster. Inevitable.

“You fool girl!” Vandene snapped, her face a thunderhead. She strode toward Aviendha dragging her gelding behind. “Do you realize what you almost did? One slip—one!—and there’s no saying what the weave will snap into, or what it will do! You could have completely destroyed everything for a hundred paces! Five hundred! Everything! You could have burned yourself out and—”

“It was necessary,” Aviendha cut in. A babble erupted from the mounted Aes Sedai crowding around her and Vandene, but she glared at them and raised her voice over theirs. “I know the dangers, Vandene Namelle, but it was necessary. Is this another thing you Aes Sedai cannot do? The Wise Ones say any woman can learn, if she is taught, some women more and some less, but any woman, if she can pick out embroidery.” She did not quite sneer. Not quite.

“This is not embroidery, girl!” Merilille’s voice was deep winter ice. “Whatever so-called training you received among your people, you cannot possibly know what you are playing with! You will promise me—swear to me!—that you will never do this again!”

“Her name should be in the novice book,” Sareitha said firmly, glaring across the Bowl still held firmly to her bosom. “I’ve always said it. She should be entered in the book.” Careane nodded, her stern gaze measuring Aviendha for a novice dress.

“That might not be necessary for the moment,” Adeleas told Aviendha, leaning forward in her saddle, “but you must let yourself be guided by us.” The Brown sister’s tone was much milder than the others’, yet she was not making a suggestion.

A month or so earlier, Aviendha might have begun to wilt under all that Aes Sedai disapproval, but not now. Elayne hurriedly pushed in among the horses before her friend decided to draw the knife she was fondling. Or to do something worse. “Maybe somebody should ask why she thought it was necessary,” she said, slipping an arm around Aviendha’s shoulders as much to keep her arms at her sides as for comfort.

Aviendha did not quite include her in the exasperated look she gave the other sisters. “This leaves no residue,” she said patiently. Too patiently. “The residues of a weave this large might be read two days from now.”

Merilille snorted, a very strong sound to come from that slight body. “That is a rare Talent, girl. Neither Teslyn nor Joline has it. Or do you Aiel wilders all learn that as well?”

“Few can do it,” Aviendha admitted calmly. “But I can.” That produced a different sort of stare, from Elayne as well; it was a very rare Talent. She did not seem to notice. “Do you claim that none of the Shadowsouled can?” she went on. The tightness of her shoulder under Elayne’s hand said she was not so cool as she pretended. “Are you such fools that you leave tracks for your enemies to follow? Any who could read the residues could make a gateway to this spot.”

That would have taken great dexterity, very great dexterity, but the suggestion was enough to leave Merilille blinking. Adeleas opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking, and Vandene frowned thoughtfully. Sareitha simply looked worried. Who could say what Talents the Forsaken had, what skill?

Strangely, all the fierceness drained out of Aviendha. Her eyes fell, her shoulders loosened. “Perhaps I should not have taken the risk,” she muttered. “With that man watching me, I could not think clearly, and when he disappeared . . . ” A little of her spirit returned, but not a great deal. “I do not think a man could read my weaves,” she said to Elayne, “but if he was one of the Shadowsouled, or even the gholam . . . The Shadowsouled know more than any of us. If I was wrong, I have great toh. But I do not think I was. I do not think it.”

“What man?” Nynaeve demanded. Her hat had been knocked askew in pushing among the horses, and that, with the tight frown she directed at everyone impartially, made her look ready for a fight. Perhaps she was. Careane’s gelding accidentally nudged her with a shoulder, and she swatted the blue dun’s nose.

“A servant,” Merilille said dismissively. “Whatever orders Tylin gave, Altaran servants are an independent lot. Or perhaps her son; that boy is too curious by half.”

The sisters around her nodded, and Careane said, “One of the Forsaken would hardly have stood and watched. You said so yourself.” She was patting her gelding’s neck and frowning accusingly at Nynaeve—Careane was one of those who gave her horse the sort of affection most people reserved for infants—she was frowning at Nynaeve, and Nynaeve took the words for her, too.

“Maybe it was a servant, and maybe it was Beslan. Maybe.” Nynaeve’s sniff said she did not believe it. Or that she wanted them to believe she did not; she could tell you to your face that you were a blind idiot, yet let anyone else say it, and she would defend you until she went hoarse. Of course, she did not seem ready to decide whether she liked Aviendha, but she definitely did not like the older Aes Sedai. She tugged her hat almost straight, and her frown swept across them, then started over. “Whether it was Beslan or the Dark One, there’s no call to stand here all day. We need to get ready and move on to the farm. Well? Move!” She clapped her hands sharply, and even Vandene gave a little start.

There was little preparation left to do when the sisters moved their horses away. Lan and the other Warders had not sat on their heels once they realized there was no danger. Some of the servants had gone back through the gateway before Aviendha disposed of it, but the rest stood with the three dozen or so packhorses, occasionally glancing at the Aes Sedai, clearly wondering what marvel they might produce next. The Windfinders were all mounted, if awkwardly, and holding their reins as though expecting their horses to bolt any moment, or perhaps sprout wings and take flight. So were the Knitting Circle, with a good deal more grace, unconcerned that their skirts and petticoats were pushed up past their knees, and with Ispan still hooded and tied across a saddle like a sack. She could not possibly have sat upright on a horse, yet even Sumeko’s eyes popped whenever they touched her.

Glaring about her, Nynaeve looked ready to tongue-lash everybody into doing what they had already done, but only until Lan handed her the reins of her plump brown mare. She had adamantly refused the gift of a better horse from Tylin. Her hand trembled a little when it touched Lan’s, and her face changed color as she swallowed the anger she had been about to unleash. When he offered a hand for her foot, she stared at him for a moment as if wondering what he was about, then colored again when he boosted her to her saddle. Elayne could only shake her head. She hoped she did not turn into an idiot when she married. If she married.

Birgitte brought her silvery-gray mare and the yellow dun Aviendha rode, but she seemed to understand that Elayne wanted a private word with Aviendha. She nodded almost as if Elayne had spoken, swung up onto her mouse-colored gelding, and rode to where the other Warders were waiting. They greeted her with nods and began discussing something in low voices. By the glances directed at the sisters, the “something” had to do with taking care of Aes Sedai whether Aes Sedai wanted care taken or not. Including herself, Elayne noted grimly. There was no time now for that, though. Aviendha stood fiddling with her horse’s reins, staring at the animal like a novice staring at a kitchen full of greasy pots. Very likely, Aviendha saw small difference between having to scrub pots and having to ride.

Snugging her green riding gloves, Elayne casually shifted Lioness to block them from the others’ view, then touched Aviendha’s arm. “Talking to Adeleas or Vandene might help,” she said gently. She had to be very careful here, as careful as with any ter’angreal. “They’re old enough to know more than you might suspect. There has to be a reason you’ve been . . . having trouble . . . with Traveling.” That was a mild way of putting it. Aviendha almost had failed to make the weave work at all, in the beginning. Careful. Aviendha was far more important than any ter’angreal ever could be. “They might be able to help.”

“How can they?” Aviendha stared stiffly at the saddle on her gelding. “They cannot Travel. How could any of them know how to help?” Abruptly her shoulders slumped, and she turned her head to Elayne. Shockingly, unshed tears glistened in her green eyes. “That isn’t the truth, Elayne. Not the whole truth. They cannot help, but . . . You are my near-sister; you have the right to know. They think I panicked at a servant. If I ask for help, it must all come out. That I Traveled once to run from a man, a man I hoped in my soul would catch me. To run like a rabbit. To run, wanting to be caught. How could I let them know such shame? Even if they really could help, how could I?”

Elayne wished she did not know. About the catching part, at least. About the fact that Rand had caught her. Snatching the flecks of jealousy that suddenly were floating through her, she pushed them into a sack and stuffed it into the back of her head. Then she jumped up and down on it for good measure. When a woman plays the fool, look for the man. That was one of Lini’s favorites. Another was, Kittens tangle your yarn, men tangle your wits, and it’s simple as breathing for both. She drew a deep breath. “No one will know from me, Aviendha. I’ll help you as much as I can. If I can figure out how.” Not that there was much she could think to do. Aviendha was remarkably quick at seeing how weaves were formed, much quicker than she herself.

Aviendha merely nodded and scrambled clumsily into her saddle, showing a bit more grace than the Sea Folk. “There was a man watching, Elayne, and he was no servant.” Looking Elayne right in the eye, she added, “He frightened me.” An admission she likely would have made to no one else in the world.

“We’re safe from him now, whoever he was,” Elayne said, turning Lioness to follow Nynaeve and Lan from the clearing. In truth, it very likely had been a servant, but she would never tell that to anyone, Aviendha least of all. “We’re safe, and in a few more hours, we will reach the Kin’s farm, we’ll use the Bowl, and the world will be right again.” Well, somewhat. The sun seemed lower than it had in the stableyard, but she knew that was only imagination. For once, they had gained a clear jump on the Shadow.

From behind a screen of white wrought iron, Moridin watched the last of the horses vanish through the gateway, and then the tall young woman and the four Warders. It was possible they were carrying away some item he could use—an angreal attuned to men, perhaps—but the chances were small. For the rest, the ter’angreal, the greatest likelihood was that they would kill themselves trying to puzzle out how to use them. Sammael was a fool to have risked so much to seize a collection of no one knew what. But then, Sammael had never been half as clever as he thought. He himself would not disrupt his own plans merely on the off chance, to see what scraps of civilization he could find. Only idle curiosity had brought him here. He liked to know what others thought important. But it was dross.

He was about to turn away when the outlines of the gateway suddenly began to flex and tremble. Transfixed, he watched until the opening simply—melted. He had never been a man to give way to obscenities, but several rose in his mind. What had the woman done? These barbarous rustics offered too many surprises. A way to Heal being severed, however imperfectly. That was impossible! Except that they had done it. Involuntary rings. Those Warders and the bond they shared with their Aes Sedai. He had known of that for a long, long time, but whenever he thought he had the measure of them, these primitives revealed some new skill, did something that no one in his own Age had dreamed of. Something the pinnacle of civilization had not known! What had the girl done?

“Great Master?”

Moridin barely turned his head from the window. “Yes, Madic?” Her soul be damned, what had the girl done?

The balding man in green-and-white who had slipped into the small room bowed deeply before falling to his knees. One of the upper servants in the palace, Madic, with his long face, possessed a pompous dignity that he tried to maintain even now. Moridin had seen men who stood far higher do far worse. “Great Master, I have learned what the Aes Sedai brought to the palace this morning. It is said they found a great treasure hidden in ancient days, gold and jewels and heartstone, artifacts from Shiota and Eharon and even the Age of Legends. There are said to be things among them that use the One Power. It is said that one can control the weather. No one knows where they are going, Great Master. The palace is aquiver with talk, but ten tongues name ten different destinations.”

Moridin went back to studying the stableyard below as soon as Madic spoke. Ridiculous tales of gold and cuendillar held no interest. Nothing would make a gateway behave that way. Unless . . . Could she actually have unraveled the web? Death held no fear for him. Coldly he considered the possibility that he had been within sight of an unraveling web. One that had been unmade successfully. Another impossibility casually offered up by these . . .

Something Madic had said caught his ear. “The weather, Madic?” The shadows of the palace spires had barely lengthened from their bases, but there was not a cloud to shield the baking city.

“Yes, Great Master. It is called the Bowl of the Winds.”

The name meant nothing to him. But . . . a ter’angreal to control the weather . . . In his own Age, weather had been carefully regulated with the use of ter’angreal. One of the surprises of this Age—one of the smaller, it had seemed—was that there were those who could manipulate weather to a degree that should have required one of those ter’angreal. One such device should not be enough to affect even a large part of a single continent. But what could these women do with it? What? If they used a ring?

He seized the True Power without thought, the saa billowing black across his sight. His fingers tightened in the wrought-iron grille across the window; the metal groaned, twisting, not from his grip but from the tendrils of the True Power, drawn from the Great Lord himself, that wreathed around the grillework, flexing as he flexed his hand in anger. The Great Lord would not be pleased. He had strained from his prison to touch the world enough to fix the seasons in place. He was impatient to touch the world more, to shatter the void that contained him, and he would not be pleased. Rage enveloped Moridin, blood pounding in his ears. A moment past, he had not cared where those women went, but now . . . Somewhere far from here. People fleeing ran as far and as fast as they could. Somewhere they felt safe. No use sending Madic to ask questions, no use squeezing anyone here; they would not have been fool enough to leave anyone behind alive who knew their destination. Not to Tar Valon. To al’Thor? To that band of rebel Aes Sedai? In all three places he had eyes, some that did not know they served him. All would serve him, before the end. He would not allow chance slips to spoil his plans now.

Abruptly he heard something other than the thundering drumbeat of his own fury. A bubbling sound. He looked at Madic curiously, and stepped back from the spreading puddle on the floor. It seemed that in his anger he had seized at more than the wrought-iron screen with the True Power. Remarkable how much blood could be squeezed from a human body.

He let what remained of the man fall without regret; indeed, thinking only that when Madic was found, the Aes Sedai would surely be blamed. A small addition to the chaos growing in the world. Ripping a hole in the fabric of the Pattern, he Traveled with the True Power. He had to find those women before they used this Bowl of the Winds. And failing that . . . He disliked people meddling with his carefully laid plans. Those who did so and lived, lived to pay.

The gholam stepped into the room cautiously, nostrils already twitching with the scent of still hot blood. The livid burn on its cheek seemed like a live coal. The gholam appeared to be merely a slender man, a little taller than average in this time, yet it had never encountered anything that could harm it. Until that man with the medallion. What might have been smile or snarl bared its teeth. Curious, it peered around the room, but there was nothing beyond the crushed corpse on the floor tiles. And a . . . feel . . . of something. Not the One Power, but something that made it . . . itch, if not quite in the same way. Curiosity had brought it here. Parts of the grill over the window were crushed, pulling the whole thing loose at the sides. The gholam seemed to remember something that made it itch in that manner, yet so much of what it recalled was fogged and dim. The world had changed, as it seemed, in the blink of an eye. There had been a world of war and killing on a huge scale, with weapons that reached across miles, across thousands of miles, and then there was . . . this. But the gholam had not changed. It was still the most dangerous weapon of all.

Its nostrils flared again, though it was not by scent that it tracked those who could channel. The One Power had been used below, and miles to the north. To follow, or not? The man who had wounded it was not with them; it had made sure of that before leaving the high vantage place. The one who commanded it wanted the man who had wounded it dead perhaps as much as he did the women, but the women were an easier target. The women had been named, too, and for the time being, it was constrained. For its entire existence it had been compelled to obey one or another human, but its mind held the concept of not being constrained. It must follow the women. It wanted to follow. The moment of death, when it felt the ability to channel vanish along with life, produced ecstasy. Rapture. But it was hungry, too, and there was time. Where they could run, it could follow. Settling fluidly beside the mangled body, it began to feed. Fresh blood, hot blood, was a necessity, but human blood always held the sweetest savor.