The Path of Daggers

Who would sup with the mighty must climb the path of daggers.

—Anonymous notation found inked in
the margin of a manuscript history
(believed to date to the time of Artur Hawkwing)
of the last days of the Tovan Conclaves

On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers.

—Old Seanchan saying

## Proloue

#### Deceptive Appearances

Ethenielle had seen mountains lower than these misnamed Black Hills, great lopsided heaps of half-buried boulders, webbed with steep twisting passes. A number of those passes would have given a goat pause. You could travel three days through drought-withered forests and brown-grassed meadows without seeing a single sign of human habitation, then suddenly find yourself within half a day of seven or eight tiny villages, all ignorant of the world. The Black Hills were a rugged place for farmers, away from the trade routes, and harsher now than usual. A gaunt leopard that should have vanished at the sight of men watched from a steep slope, not forty paces away, as she rode past with her armored escort. Westward, vultures wheeled patient circles like an omen. Not a cloud marred the blood-red sun, yet there were clouds of a sort. When the warm wind blew, it raised walls of dust.

With fifty of her best men at her heels, Ethenielle rode unconcernedly, and unhurriedly. Unlike her near legendary ancestor Surasa, she had no illusion that the weather would heed her wishes just because she held the Throne of the Clouds, while as for haste . . . Their carefully coded, closely guarded letters had agreed on the order of march, and that had been determined by each person’s need to travel without attracting notice. Not an easy task. Some had thought it impossible.

Frowning, she considered the luck that had let her come this far without having to kill anyone, avoiding those flyspeck villages even when it meant days added to the journey. The few Ogier stedding presented no problem—Ogier paid little heed to what happened among humans, most times, and less than usual of late, it seemed—but the villages . . . They were too small to hold eyes-and-ears for the White Tower, or for this fellow who claimed to be the Dragon Reborn—perhaps he was; she could not decide which way would be worse—too small, yet peddlers did pass through, eventually. Peddlers carried as much gossip as trade goods, and they spoke to people who spoke to other people, rumor flowing like an ever-branching river, through the Black Hills and into the world outside. With a few words, a single shepherd who had escaped notice could light a signal fire seen five hundred leagues off. The sort of signal fire that set woods and grasslands aflame. And cities, maybe. Nations.

“Did I make the right choice, Serailla?” Vexed at herself, Ethenielle grimaced. She might not be a girl any longer, but her few gray hairs hardly counted her old enough to let her mindless tongue flap in the breeze. The decision was made. It had been on her mind, though. Light’s truth, she was not so unconcerned as she wanted to be.

Ethenielle’s First Councilor heeled her dun mare closer to the Queen’s sleek black gelding. Round face placid, dark eyes considering, Lady Serailla could have been a farmwife suddenly stuck into a noblewoman’s riding dress, but the mind behind those plain, sweaty features was as sharp as any Aes Sedai’s. “The other choices only carried different risks, not lesser,” she said smoothly. Stout yet as graceful in her saddle as she was at dancing, Serailla was always smooth. Not oily, or false; just completely unflappable. “Whatever the truth, Majesty, the White Tower appears to be paralyzed as well as shattered. You could have sat watching the Blight while the world crumbled behind you. You could have if you were someone else.”

The simple need to act. Was that what had brought her here? Well, if the White Tower would not or could not do what had to be done, then someone must. What good to guard the Blight if the world did crumble behind her?

Ethenielle looked to the slender man riding at her other side, white streaks at his temples giving him a supercilious air, the ornately sheathed Sword of Kirukan resting in the crook of one arm. It was called the Sword of Kirukan, at any rate, and the fabled warrior Queen of Aramaelle might have carried it. The blade was ancient, some said Power-wrought. The two-handed hilt lay toward her as tradition demanded, though she herself was not about to try using a sword like some fire-brained Saldaean. A queen was supposed to think, lead, and command, which no one could manage while trying to do what any soldier in her army could do better. “And you, Swordbearer?” she said. “Do you have any qualms at this late hour?”

Lord Baldhere twisted in his gold-worked saddle to glance back at the banners carried by horsemen behind them, cased in tooled leather and embroidered velvet. “I don’t like hiding who I am, Majesty,” he said fussily, straightening around. “The world will know us soon enough, and what we’ve done. Or tried to do. We’ll end dead or in the histories or both, so they might as well know what names to write.” Baldhere had a biting tongue, and he affected to care more for music and his clothes than anything else—that well-cut blue coat was the third he had worn already today—but as with Serailla, appearances deceived. The Swordbearer to the Throne of the Clouds bore responsibilities much heavier than that sword in its jeweled scabbard. Since the death of her husband some twenty years ago, Baldhere had commanded the armies of Kandor for her in the field, and most of her soldiers would have followed him to Shayol Ghul itself. He was not counted among the great captains, but he knew when to fight and when not, as well as how to win.

“The meeting place must be just ahead,” Serailla said suddenly, just as Ethenielle saw the scout Baldhere had sent forward, a sly fellow named Lomas who wore a foxhead crest on his helmet, rein in atop the peak of the pass ahead. With his lance slanted, he made the arm gesture for “assembly point in sight.”

Baldhere swung his heavy-shouldered gelding and bellowed a command for the escort to halt—he could bellow, when he had a mind to—then spurred the bay to catch up to her and Serailla. It was to be a meeting between long-standing allies, but as they rode past Lomas, Baldhere gave the lean-faced man a curt order to “Watch and relay”; should anything go wrong, Lomas would signal the escort forward to bring their queen out.

Ethenielle sighed faintly when Serailla nodded approval at the command. Allies of long standing, yet the times bred suspicion like flies on a midden. What they were about stirred the heap and set the flies swirling. Too many rulers to the south had died or vanished in the last year for her to feel any comfort in wearing a crown. Too many lands had been smashed as thoroughly as an army of Trollocs could have achieved. Whoever he was, this al’Thor fellow had much to answer for. Much.

Beyond Lomas the pass opened into a shallow bowl almost too small to be named a valley, with trees too widely spaced to be called a thicket. Leatherleaf and blue fir and three-needle pine held to some green along with a few oaks, but the rest were sheathed in brown if not bare-branched. To the south, however, lay what had made this spot a good choice for meeting. A slender spire like a column of gleaming golden lace lay slanting and partly buried in the bare hillside, a good seventy paces of it showing above the treetops. Every child in the Black Hills old enough to run off leading strings knew of it, but there was not a village inside four days’ travel, nor would anyone come within ten miles willingly. The stories of this place spoke of mad visions, of the dead walking, and death at touching the spire.

Ethenielle did not consider herself fanciful, yet she shivered slightly. Nianh said the spire was a fragment from the Age of Legends, and harmless. With luck, the Aes Sedai had no reason to recall that conversation of years ago. A pity the dead could not be made to walk, here. Legend said Kirukan had beheaded a false Dragon with her own hands, and borne two sons by another man who could channel. Or maybe the same one. She might have known how to go about their purpose and survive.

As expected, the first pair of those Ethenielle had come to meet was waiting, each with two attendants. Paitar Nachiman had many more creases in his long face than the stunningly handsome older man she had admired as a girl, not to mention too little hair and most of that gray. Fortunately he had relinquished the Arafellin fashion for braids and wore his hair cut short. But he sat his saddle straight-backed, his shoulders needed no padding in that embroidered green silk coat, and she knew he still could wield the sword at his hip with vigor and skill. Easar Togita, square-faced and his scalp shaved except for a white topknot, his plain coat the color of old bronze, was a head shorter than the King of Arafel, and slighter, yet he made Paitar look almost soft. Easar of Shienar did not scowl—if anything, a touch of sadness seemed permanent in his eyes—but he might have been made from the same metal as the long sword on his back. She trusted both men—and hoped their familial connections helped secure that trust. Alliances by marriage had always bound the Borderlands together as much as their war against the Blight did, and she had a daughter wed to Easar’s third son and a son to Paitar’s favorite granddaughter, as well as a brother and two sisters married into their Houses.

Their companions appeared as different as their kings. As always, Ishigari Terasian looked just risen from a stupor after a drunken feast, as fat a man as she had ever seen in a saddle; his fine red coat was rumpled, his eyes bleary, his cheeks unshaven. By contrast, Kyril Shianri, tall and lean, and nearly as elegant as Baldhere despite the dust and sweat on his face, with silver bells on his boot tops and gloves as well as fastened to his braids; he wore his usual expression of dissatisfaction and had a way of always peering coolly down his prominent nose at anyone but Paitar. Shianri really was a fool in many ways—Arafellin kings rarely made much pretense of listening to councilors, relying instead on their queens—but he was more than he appeared at a glance. Agelmar Jagad could have been a larger version of Easar, a simple, plainly garbed man of steel and stone with more weapons hung about him than Baldhere carried, sudden death waiting to be unleashed, while Alesune Chulin was as slim as Serailla was stout, as pretty as Serailla was plain, and as fiery as Serailla was calm. Alesune seemed born to her fine, blue silks. It was well to remember that judging Serailla by her surface was a mistake, too.

“Peace and the Light favor you, Ethenielle of Kandor,” Easar said gruffly as Ethenielle reined in before them, and at the same time Paitar intoned, “The Light embrace you, Ethenielle of Kandor.” Paitar still had a voice to make women’s hearts beat faster. And a wife who knew he was hers to his bootsoles; Ethenielle doubted that Menuki had ever had a jealous moment in her life, or cause for one.

She made her own greetings just as short, ending with a direct “I hope you’ve come this far without detection.”

Easar snorted and leaned on his cantle, eyeing her grimly. A hard man, but eleven years widowed and still mourning. He had written poetry for his wife. There was always more than the surface. “If we’ve been seen, Ethenielle,” he grumbled, “then we might as well turn back now.”

“You speak of turning back already?” Between his tone and a flip of his tasseled reins, Shianri managed to combine disdain with barely enough civility to forestall a challenge. Even so, Agelmar studied him coldly, shifting in his saddle slightly, a man recalling where each of his weapons was placed. Old allies in many battles along the Blight, but those new suspicions swirled.

Alesune made her mount dance, a gray mare as tall as a war-horse. The thin white streaks in her long black hair suddenly seemed crests on a helmet, and her eyes made it easy to forget that Shienaran women neither trained with weapons nor fought duels. Her title was simply shatayan of the royal household, yet whoever believed any shatayan’s influence stopped at ordering the cooks and maids and victualers made a grave error. “Foolhardiness is not courage, Lord Shianri. We leave the Blight all but unguarded, and if we fail, maybe even if we succeed, some of us could find our heads on spikes. Perhaps all of us will. The White Tower may well see to it if this al’Thor does not.”

“The Blight seems almost asleep,” Terasian muttered, whiskers rasping as he rubbed his fleshy chin. “I’ve never seen it so quiet.”

“The Shadow never sleeps,” Jagad put in quietly, and Terasian nodded as if that, too, was something to consider. Agelmar was the best general of them all, one of the best to be found anywhere, but Terasian’s place at Paitar’s right hand had not come because he was a good drinking companion.

“What I’ve left behind can guard the Blight short of the Trolloc Wars coming again,” Ethenielle said in a firm voice. “I trust you’ve all done as well. It hardly matters, though. Does anyone believe we truly can turn back now?” She made that last question dry, expecting no answer, but she received one.

“Turn back?” a young woman’s high voice demanded behind her. Tenobia of Saldaea galloped into the gathering, drawing her white gelding up so that he reared flamboyantly. Thick lines of pearls marched down the dark gray sleeves of her narrow-skirted riding habit, while red-and-gold embroidery swirled thickly to emphasize the narrowness of her waist and the roundness of her bosom. Tall for a woman, she managed to be pretty if not beautiful despite a nose that was overbold at best. Large tilted eyes of a dark deep blue certainly helped, but so did a confidence in herself so strong that she seemed to glow with it. As expected, the Queen of Saldaea was accompanied only by Kalyan Ramsin, one of her numerous uncles, a scarred and grizzled man with the face of an eagle and thick mustaches that curved down around his mouth. Tenobia Kazadi tolerated the counsel of soldiers, but no one else. “I will not turn back,” she went on fiercely, “whatever the rest of you do. I sent my dear Uncle Davram to bring me the head of the false Dragon Mazrim Taim, and now he and Taim both follow this al’Thor, if I can believe half what I hear. I have close to fifty thousand men behind me, and whatever you decide, I will not turn back until my uncle and al’Thor learn exactly who rules Saldaea.”

Ethenielle exchanged glances with Serailla and Baldhere while Paitar and Easar began telling Tenobia that they also meant to keep on. Serailla gave her head the smallest shake, made the slightest shrug. Baldhere rolled his eyes openly. Ethenielle had not exactly hoped Tenobia might decide at the last to stay away, but the girl would surely make difficulties.

Saldaeans were a strange lot—Ethenielle had often wondered how her sister Einone managed so well married to yet another of Tenobia’s uncles—yet Tenobia carried that strangeness to extremes. You expected showiness from any Saldaean, but Tenobia took delight in shocking Domani and making Altarans seem drab. Saldaean tempers were legendary; hers was wildfire in a high wind, and you could never tell what would provide the spark. Ethenielle did not even want to think of the difficulty in getting the woman to listen to reason when she did not want to; only Davram Bashere had ever been able to do that. And then there was the question of marriage.

Tenobia was still young, though years past the age she should have wed—marriage was a duty for any member of a ruling House, the more so for a ruler; alliances had to be made, an heir provided—yet Ethenielle had never considered the girl for any of her own sons. Tenobia’s requirements for a husband were on a level with everything else about her. He must be able to face and slay a dozen Myrddraal at once. While playing the harp and composing poetry. He must be able to confound scholars while riding a horse down a sheer cliff. Or perhaps up it. Of course he would have to defer to her—she was a queen, after all—except that sometimes Tenobia would expect him to ignore whatever she said and toss her over his shoulder. The girl wanted exactly that! And the Light help him if he chose to toss when she wanted deference, or to defer when she wanted the other. She never said any of this right out, but any woman with wits who had heard her talk about men could piece it together in short order. Tenobia would die a maiden. Which meant her uncle Davram would succeed, if she left him alive after this, or else Davram’s heir.

A word caught Ethenielle’s ear and jerked her upright in her saddle. She should have been paying attention; too much was at stake. “Aes Sedai?” she said sharply. “What about Aes Sedai?” Save for Paitar’s, their White Tower advisors had all left at news of the troubles in the Tower, her own Nianh and Easar’s Aisling vanishing without a trace. If Aes Sedai had gained a hint of their plans . . . Well, Aes Sedai always had plans of their own. Always. She would dislike discovering that she was putting her hands into two hornet nests, not just one.

Paitar shrugged, looking a trifle embarrassed. That was no small trick for him; he, like Serailla, let nothing upset him. “You hardly expected me to leave Coladara behind, Ethenielle,” he said in soothing tones, “even if I could have kept the preparations from her.” She had not; his favorite sister was Aes Sedai, and Kiruna had given him a deep fondness for the Tower. Ethenielle had not expected it, but she had hoped. “Coladara had visitors,” he continued. “Seven of them. Bringing them along seemed prudent, under the circumstances. Fortunately, they required little convincing. None, in truth.”

“The Light illumine and preserve our souls,” Ethenielle breathed, and heard near echoes from Serailla and Baldhere. “Eight sisters, Paitar? Eight?” The White Tower surely knew every move they intended, now.

“And I have five more,” Tenobia put in as if announcing she had a new pair of slippers. “They found me just before I left Saldaea. By chance, I’m sure; they appeared as surprised as I was. Once they learned what I was doing—I still don’t know how they did, but they did—once they learned, I was sure they’d go scurrying to find Memara.” Her brows furrowed in a momentary glare. Elaida had miscalculated badly in sending a sister to try bullying Tenobia. “Instead,” she finished, “Illeisien and the rest were more intent on secrecy than I.”

“Even so,” Ethenielle insisted. “Thirteen sisters. All that is needed is for one of them to find some way to send a message. A few lines. A soldier or a maid intimidated. Does any of you think you can stop them?”

“The dice are out of the cup,” Paitar said simply. What was done, was done. Arafellin were almost as odd as Saldaeans, in Ethenielle’s book.

“Further south,” Easar added, “it may be well to have thirteen Aes Sedai with us.” That brought a silence while the implications hung in the air. No one wanted to voice them. This was far different from facing the Blight.

Tenobia gave a sudden, shocking laugh. Her gelding tried to dance, but she settled him. “I mean to press south as fast as I can, but I invite you all to dine with me in my camp tonight. You can speak with Illeisien and her friends, and see whether your judgment matches mine. Perhaps tomorrow night we can all gather in Paitar’s camp and question his Coladara’s friends.” The suggestion was so sensible, so obviously necessary, that it brought instant agreement. And then Tenobia added, as if an afterthought, “My uncle Kalyan would be honored if you allowed him to sit beside you tonight, Ethenielle. He admires you greatly.”

Ethenielle glanced toward Kalyan Ramsin—the fellow had sat his horse silently behind Tenobia, never speaking, hardly seeming to breathe—she merely glanced at him, and for an instant that grizzled eagle unhooded his eyes. For an instant, she saw something she had not seen since her Brys died, a man looking not at a queen, but at a woman. The shock of it was a blow taking her breath. Tenobia’s eyes darted from her uncle to Ethenielle, her tiny smile quite satisfied.

Outrage flared in Ethenielle. That smile made it all clear as spring water, if Kalyan’s eyes had not. This chit of a girl thought to marry off this fellow to her? This child presumed to . . . ? Suddenly, ruefulness replaced fury. She herself had been younger when she arranged her widowed sister Nazelle’s wedding. A matter of state, yet Nazelle had come to love Lord Ismic despite all her protests in the beginning. Ethenielle had been arranging others’ marriages for so long that she had never considered that her own would make a very strong tie. She looked at Kalyan again, a longer look. His leathery face was all proper respect once more, yet she saw his eyes as they had been. Any consort she chose would have to be a hard man, but she had always demanded a chance of love for her children’s marriages, if not her siblings’, and she would do no less for herself.

“Instead of wasting daylight on chatter,” she said, more breathless than she could have wished, “let us do what we came for.” The Light sear her soul, she was a woman grown, not a girl meeting a prospective suitor for the first time. “Well?” she demanded. This time, her tone was suitably firm.

All of their agreements had been made in those careful letters, and all of their plans would have to be modified as they moved south and circumstances changed. This meeting had only one real purpose, a simple and ancient ceremony of the Borderlands that had been recorded only seven times in all the years since the Breaking. A simple ceremony that would commit them beyond anything words could do, however strong. The rulers moved their horses closer while the others drew back.

Ethenielle hissed as her belt knife slashed across her left palm. Tenobia laughed at cutting hers. Paitar and Easar might as well have been plucking splinters. Four hands reached out and met, gripped, heart’s blood mingling, dripping to the ground, soaking into the stony dirt. “We are one, to the death,” Easar said, and they all spoke with him. “We are one, to the death.” By blood and soil, they were committed. Now they had to find Rand al’Thor. And do what needed to be done. Whatever the price.

Once she was sure that Turanna could sit up on the cushion unaided, Verin rose and left the slumped White sister sipping water. Trying to sip, anyway. Turanna’s teeth chattered on the silver cup, which was no surprise. The tent’s entryway stood low enough that Verin had to duck in order to put her head out. Weariness augered into her back when she bent. She had no fear of the woman shivering behind her in a coarse black woolen robe. Verin held the shield on her tight, and she doubted Turanna possessed enough strength in her legs at the moment to contemplate leaping on her from behind, even if such an incredible thought occurred to her. Whites just did not think that way. For that matter, in Turanna’s condition, it was doubtful she would be able to channel a hair for several hours yet, even if she were not shielded.

The Aiel camp covered the hills that hid Cairhien, low earth-colored tents filling the space between the few trees left standing this close to the city. Faint clouds of dust hung in the air, but neither dust nor heat nor the glare of an angry sun bothered the Aiel at all. Bustle and purpose filled the camp to equal any city. Within her sight were men butchering game and patching tents, sharpening knives and making the soft boots they all wore, women cooking over open fires, baking, working small looms, looking after some of the few children in the camp. Everywhere white-robed gai’shain darted about carrying burdens, or stood beating rugs, or tended packhorses and mules. No hawkers or shopkeepers. Or carts and carriages, of course. A city? It was more like a thousand villages gathered in one spot, though men greatly outnumbered women and, except for the blacksmiths making their anvils ring, nearly every man not in white carried weapons. Most of the women did, as well.

The numbers certainly equaled one of the great cities’, more than enough to envelope a few Aes Sedai prisoners completely, yet Verin saw a black-robed woman plodding away not fifty paces off, struggling to pull a waist-high pile of rocks behind her on a cowhide. The deep cowl hid her face, but no one in the camp except the captive sisters wore those black robes. A Wise One strolled along close to the hide, glowing with the Power as she shielded the prisoner, while a pair of Maidens flanked the sister, using switches to urge her on whenever she faltered. Verin wondered whether she had been meant to see. That very morning she had passed a wild-eyed Coiren Saeldain, sweat streaming down her face, with a Wise One and two tall Aielmen for escort and a large basket heaped with sand bending her back as she staggered up a slope. Yesterday it had been Sarene Nemdahl. They had set her moving handfuls of water from one hide bucket to another beside it, switched her to move faster, then switched her for every drop spilled when the water spilled because they were switching her to move faster. Sarene had stolen a moment to ask Verin why, though not as if she expected any answer. Verin certainly had not been able to supply one before the Maidens drove Sarene back to her useless labor.

She suppressed a sigh. For one thing, she could not truly like seeing sisters treated so, whatever the reasons or need, and for another, it was obvious that a fair number of the Wise Ones wanted . . . What? For her to know that being Aes Sedai counted for nothing here? Ridiculous. That had been made abundantly clear days ago. Perhaps that she could be put into a black robe, too? For the time she thought she was safe from that, at least, but the Wise Ones hid a number of secrets she had yet to puzzle out, the smallest of them how their hierarchy worked. Very much the smallest, yet life and a whole skin lay wrapped inside that one. Women who gave commands sometimes took them from the very women they had been commanding earlier, and then later it was turned about again, all without rhyme or reason that she could see. No one ever ordered Sorilea, though, and in that might lie safety. Of a sort.

She could not help a surge of satisfaction. Early this morning in the Sun Palace, Sorilea had demanded to know what shamed wetlanders most. Kiruna and the other sisters did not understand; they made no real efforts to see what was happening out here, perhaps fearing what they might learn, fearing the strains knowledge might put on their oaths. They still struggled to justify taking the path fate had pushed them down, but Verin already had reasons for the path she followed, and purpose. She also had a list in her pouch, ready to hand to Sorilea when they were alone. No need to let the others know. Some of the captives she had never met, but she thought that for most women, that list summed up the weaknesses Sorilea was seeking. Life was going to grow much more difficult for the women in black. And her own efforts would be aided no end, with luck.

Two great hulking Aielmen, each an axe handle wide across the shoulders, sat right outside the tent, seemingly absorbed in a game of cat’s cradle, but they had looked around immediately when her head appeared through the tentflaps. Coram had risen like a serpent uncoiling for all of his size, and Mendan waited only to tuck the string away. Had she been standing straight, her head barely would have reached the chest of either. She could have turned them both upside down and paddled them, of course. Had she dared. She had been tempted from time to time. They were her assigned guides, her protection against misunderstandings in the camp. And doubtless they reported everything she said or did. In some ways she would have preferred to have Tomas with her, but only some. Keeping secrets from your Warder was far more difficult than keeping them from strangers.

“Please tell Colinda that I’m done with Turanna Norill,” she told Coram, “and ask her to send Katerine Alruddin to me.” She wanted to deal first with the sisters who had no Warders. He nodded once before trotting off without speaking. These Aielmen were not much for civility.

Mendan settled into a crouch, watching her with startlingly blue eyes. One of them stayed with her no matter what she said. A strip of red cloth was tied around Mendan’s temples and marked with the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai. Like the other men who wore that, like the Maidens, he seemed to be waiting for her to make a mistake. Well, they were not the first, and a great way from the most dangerous. Seventy-one years had passed since she had last made a serious mistake.

She gave Mendan a deliberately vague smile and started to pull back into the tent, when suddenly something caught her eye and held her like a vise. If the Aielman had tried to cut her throat right then, she might not have noticed.

Not far from where she stood stooped over in the mouth of the tent, nine or ten women knelt in a row, rolling the grindstones on flat stone handmills much like those on many isolated farms. Other women brought grain in baskets and took away the coarse flour. The nine or ten women knelt in dark skirts and pale blouses, folded scarves holding their hair back. One, noticeably shorter than the rest, the only one with hair that did not hang to her waist or below, wore not even a single necklace or bracelet. She glanced up, the resentment on her sun-pinkened face sharpening as she met Venn’s gaze. Only for an instant, though, before she cringed hurriedly to her task.

Verin jerked back into the tent, her stomach roiling queasily. Irgain was Green Ajah. Or rather, had been Green, before Rand al’Thor stilled her. Being shielded dulled and fuzzed the bond to your Warder, but being stilled snapped it as surely as death. One of Irgain’s two apparently had fallen over dead from the shock, and the other had died trying to kill thousands of Aiel without making any effort to escape. Very likely Irgain wished she also were dead. Stilled. Verin pressed both hands to her middle. She would not sick up. She had seen worse than a stilled woman. Much worse.

“There’s no hope, is there?” Turanna muttered in a thick voice. She wept silently, staring into the silver cup in her trembling hands at something distant and horrifying. “No hope.”

“There is always a way if you only look for it,” Verin said, absently patting the woman’s shoulder. “You must always look.”

Her thoughts raced, and none touched Turanna. Irgain’s stilling made her belly feel full of rancid grease, the Light knew. But what was the woman doing grinding grain? And dressed like the Aiel women! Had she been put to work just there so Verin could see? Foolish question; even with a ta’veren as strong as Rand al’Thor only a few miles away, there was some limit to the number of coincidences she would accept. Had she miscalculated? At worst, it could not be a large error. Only, small mistakes sometimes proved as fatal as large. How long could she hold out if Sorilea decided to break her? A distressingly short time, she suspected. In some ways, Sorilea was as hard as anyone she had ever met. And not a thing she could say that would stop it. A worry for another day. There was no point getting ahead of herself.

Kneeling, she put a little effort into comforting Turanna, but not too much. Soothing words that sounded as hollow to her as they did to Turanna, judging by the bleakness in her eyes. Nothing could change Turanna’s circumstances except Turanna, and that had to come from within herself. The White sister just wept harder, making no sound as her shoulders shook, tears streaming down her face. The entry of two Wise Ones and a pair of young Aielmen who could not straighten up inside the tent was something of a relief. For Verin, anyway. She rose and curtsied smoothly, but none of them had any interest in her.

Daviena was a green-eyed woman with yellow-red hair, Losaine gray-eyed with dark hair that only showed glints of red in the sun, both head-and-shoulders taller than she, both wearing the expressions of women given a grimy task they wished on someone else. Neither could channel strongly enough to have any certainty of holding Turanna by herself, but they linked as though they had been forming circles all their lives, the light of saidar around one seeming to blend with that around the other despite the fact that they stood apart. Verin forced her face into a smile to keep from frowning. Where had they learned that? She would have wagered all she possessed that they had not known how only a few days ago.

Everything went quickly then, and smoothly. As the crouching men lifted Turanna to her feet by the arms, she let the silver cup fall. Empty, luckily for her. She did not struggle, which was just as well, considering that either could have carried her off under one arm like a sack of grain, but her mouth hung open, emitting a wordless keening. The Aiel paid no heed. Daviena, focusing the circle, assumed the shield, and Verin let go of the Source completely. None of them trusted her enough to let her hold saidar without a known reason, no matter what oaths she had sworn. Neither appeared to notice, but they surely would have had she held on. The men hauled Turanna away, her bare feet dragging across the layered carpets that floored the tent, and the Wise Ones followed them out. And that was that. What could be done with Turanna had been done.

Letting out a long breath, Verin sagged onto one of the bright, tasseled cushions. A fine golden ropework tray sat on the carpets next to her. Filling one of the mismatched silver cups from a pewter pitcher, she drank deeply. This was thirsty work, and tiring. Hours of daylight remained, yet she felt as if she had carried a heavy chest twenty miles. Over hills. The cup went back onto the tray, and she pulled the small, leather-bound notebook from behind her belt. It always took a little time for them to fetch those she asked for. A few moments to peruse her notes—and make some—would not be amiss.

There was no need for notes about the captives, but the sudden appearance of Cadsuane Melaidhrin, three days ago now, gave cause for concern. What was Cadsuane after? The woman’s companions could be dismissed, but Cadsuane herself was a legend, and even the believable parts of the legend made her very dangerous indeed. Dangerous and unpredictable. She took a pen from the small wooden writing case she always carried, reached toward the stoppered inkbottle in its scabbard. And another Wise One entered the tent.

Verin scrambled to her feet so quickly that she dropped her notebook. Aeron could not channel at all, yet Verin made a much deeper curtsy for the graying woman than she had for Daviena and Losaine. At the bottom of her dip, she let go of her skirts to reach for her book, but Aeron’s fingers reached it first. Verin straightened, calmly watching the taller woman thumb through the pages.

Sky blue eyes met hers. A winter sky. “Some pretty drawings and a great deal about plants and flowers,” Aeron said coldly. “I see nothing concerning the questions you were sent to ask.” She thrust the book at Verin more than handed it to her.

“Thank you, Wise One,” Verin said meekly, tucking the book back safely behind her belt. She even added another curtsy for good measure, just as deep as the first. “I have the habit of noting down what I see.” One day she would have to write out the cipher she used in her notebooks—a lifetime’s worth of them filled cupboards and chests in her rooms above the White Tower library—one day, but she hoped not soon. “As for the . . . um . . . prisoners, so far they all say variations of the same thing. The Car’a’carn was to be housed in the Tower until the Last Battle. His . . . um . . . mistreatment . . . began because of an escape attempt. But you know that already, of course. Never fear, though; I’m sure I will learn more.” All true, if not all of the truth; she had seen too many sisters die to risk sending others to the grave without a very good reason. The trouble was deciding what might cause that risk. The manner of young al’Thor’s kidnapping, by an embassy supposedly treating with him, enraged the Aiel to the point of murder, yet what she called his “mistreatment” barely angered them at all as far as she could tell.

Gold and ivory bracelets clattered softly as Aeron adjusted her dark shawl. She peered down as though trying to read Verin’s thoughts. Aeron seemed to stand high among the Wise Ones, and while Verin occasionally had seen a smile crease those dark-tanned cheeks, a warm and easy smile, it was never directed at an Aes Sedai. We never suspected that you would be the ones to fail, she had told Verin somewhat murkily. There had been nothing unclear in the rest of it, however. Aes Sedai have no honor. Give me one hair of suspicion, and I will strap you till you cannot stand, with my own hands. Give me two hairs, and I will stake you out for the vultures and the ants. Verin blinked up at her, trying to appear open. And meek; she must not forget meek. Docile, and compliant. She did not feel fear. In her time she had faced harder stares, from women—and men—without so much as Aeron’s slim compunction about ending her life. But a good deal of effort had gone into being sent to ask those questions. She could not afford to waste it now. If only these Aiel let more show on their faces.

Abruptly she became aware that they were no longer alone in the tent. Two flaxen-haired Maidens had entered with a black-robed woman a hand shorter than either. They were half-holding her upright. At one side stood Tialin, a lanky redhead wearing a grim expression behind the light of saidar, shielding the black-robed prisoner. The sister’s hair hung in sweat-soaked ringlets to her shoulders and strands that clung to her face, which bore so much dirt that Verin did not recognize her at first. High cheekbones, but not very high, a nose with just the hint of a hook to it, and the slightest tilt to the brown eyes . . . Beldeine. Beldeine Nyram. She had instructed the girl in a few novice classes.

“If I may ask,” she said carefully, “why was she brought? I asked for another.” Beldeine had no Warder despite being Green—she had been raised to the shawl barely three years ago, and Greens were often especially choosy about their first—but if they started bringing whoever they selected, the next might have two or three Warders. She thought she could deal with two more today, but not if either had even one Warder. And she doubted they would give her a second chance at any of them.

“Katerine Alruddin escaped last night,” Tialin nearly spat, and Verin gasped.

“You let her escape?” she burst out without thinking. Tiredness gave no excuse, but the words spilled from her tongue before she could stop them. “How could you be so foolish? She’s Red! And neither a coward nor weak in the Power! The Car’a’carn could be in danger! Why were we not told of this when it happened?”

“It was not discovered until this morning,” one of the Maidens growled. Her eyes could have been polished sapphires. “A Wise One and two Cor Darei were poisoned, and the gai’shain who brought them drink was found with his throat cut.”

Aeron arched an eyebrow at the Maiden coldly. “Did she speak to you, Carahuin?” Both Maidens suddenly became engrossed in the task of keeping Beldeine on her feet. Aeron merely glanced at Tialin, but the red-haired Wise One lowered her gaze. Verin was the next recipient of those attentions. “Your concern for Rand al’Thor does you . . . honor,” Aeron said grudgingly. “He will be guarded. You have no need to know more. Or so much.” Abruptly her tone hardened. “But apprentices do not use that tone with Wise Ones, Verin Mathwin Aes Sedai.” The last words were a sneer.

Smothering a sigh, Verin all but fell into another deep curtsy, a part of her wishing she were even as slim as she had been on arriving in the White Tower. She was not really constructed for all this bending and bobbing. “Forgive me, Wise One,” she said humbly. Escaped! The circumstances made everything plain, to her if not to the Aiel. “Apprehension must have loosened my wits.” A pity she had no way to make sure Katerine met with a fatal accident. “I will do my best to remember in the future.” Not so much as the flicker of an eyelash told whether Aeron accepted that. “May I assume her shield, Wise One?”

Aeron nodded without looking at Tialin, and Verin quickly embraced the Source, taking up the shield Tialin released. It never ceased to amaze her that women who could not channel gave orders so freely to women who could. Tialin was not much weaker in the Power than Verin, yet she watched Aeron nearly as warily as the Maidens did, and when the Maidens hurried out of the tent at a gesture of Aeron’s hand, leaving Beldeine wavering where she stood, Tialin was only a step behind.

Aeron did not go, however, not immediately. “You will not speak of Katerine Alruddin to the Car’a’carn,” she said. “He has enough to occupy his thoughts without giving him trifles to worry over.”

“I will say nothing to him about her,” Verin agreed quickly. Trifles? A Red with Katerine’s strength was no trifle. Perhaps a note. It needed thought.

“Be certain to hold your tongue, Verin Mathwin, or you will use it to howl.”

There seemed nothing to say to that, so Verin concentrated on meekness and docility, making yet another curtsy. Her knees wanted to groan.

Once Aeron departed, Verin allowed herself a sigh of relief. She had been afraid Aeron intended to remain. Gaining permission to be alone with the prisoners had required nearly as much effort as getting Sorilea and Amys to decide they needed to be questioned, and by someone intimate with the White Tower. If they ever learned they had been guided to that decision . . . It was a worry for another day. She seemed to be piling up a great many of those.

“There’s enough water to wash your face and hands, at least,” she told Beldeine mildly. “And if you wish, I will Heal you.” Every sister she had interviewed had carried at least a few welts. The Aiel did not beat the prisoners except for spilling water or balking at a task—the haughtiest words of defiance earned only scornful laughter, if that—but the black-robed women were herded like animals, a tap of the switch for go or turn or stop, and a harder tap if they did not obey quickly enough. Healing made other things easier, too.

Filthy, sweaty, wavering like a reed in the wind, Beldeine curled her lip. “I would rather bleed to death than be Healed by you!” she spat. “Maybe I should have expected to see you groveling to these wilders, these savages, but I never thought you would stoop to revealing Tower secrets! That ranks with treason, Verin! With rebellion!” She grunted contemptuously. “I suppose if you didn’t shy at that, you’ll stop at nothing! What else have you and the others taught them besides linking?”

Verin clicked her tongue irritably, not bothering to set the young woman straight. Her neck ached from looking up at Aiel—for that matter, even Beldeine stood a hand or more taller than she—her knees ached from curtsying, and entirely too many women who should know better had flung blind contempt and foolish pride at her today. Who should know better than an Aes Sedai that a sister had to wear many faces in the world? You could not always overawe people, or bludgeon them, either. Besides, far better to behave as a novice than be punished like one, especially when it earned you only pain and humiliation. Even Kiruna had to see the sense of that eventually.

“Sit down before you fall down,” she said, suiting her own words. “Let me guess what you’ve been doing today. By all that dirt, I’d say digging a hole. With your bare hands, or did they let you use a spoon? When they decide it’s finished, they will just make you fill it again, you know. Now, let me see. Every part I can see of you is grubby, but that robe is clean, so I expect they had you digging in your skin. Are you sure you don’t want Healing? Sunburn can be painful.” She filled another cup with water and wafted it across the tent on a flow of Air to hover in front of Beldeine. “Your throat must be parched.”

The young Green stared unsteadily at the cup for a moment; then suddenly her legs gave way and she collapsed onto a cushion with a bitter laugh. “They . . . water me frequently.” She laughed again, though Verin could not see the joke. “As much as I want, so long as I swallow it all.” Studying Verin angrily, she paused, then went on in a tight voice. “That dress looks very nice on you. They burned mine; I saw them. They stole everything except this.” She touched the golden Great Serpent around her left forefinger, a bright golden gleam among the dirt. “I suppose they couldn’t find quite enough nerve for that. I know what they’re trying to do, Verin, and it won’t work. Not with me, not with any of us!”

She was still on her guard. Verin set the cup down on the flowered carpet beside Beldeine, then took up her own and sipped before speaking. “Oh? What are they trying to do?”

This time, the other woman’s laugh was brittle as well as harsh. “Break us, and you know it! Make us swear oaths to al’Thor, the way you did. Oh, Verin, how could you? Swearing fealty! And worse, to a man, to him! Even if you could bring yourself to rebel against the Amyrlin Seat, against the White Tower . . . ” She made the two sound much the same. “ . . . how could you do that!”

For a moment Verin wondered whether things would be better if the women now held in the Aiel camp had been caught up as she had been, a woodchip in the millrace of Rand al’Thor’s ta’veren swirl, words pouring from her mouth before they had time to form in her brain. Not words she could never have said on her own—that was not how ta’veren affected you—but words she might possibly have said one time in a thousand under those circumstances, one time in ten thousand. No, the arguments had been long and hot over whether oaths given in that way had to be kept; and the arguments over how to keep them still continued. Much better as it was. Absently she fingered a hard shape inside her belt pouch, a small brooch, a translucent stone carved into what appeared to be a lily with too many petals. She never wore it, but it had not been out of her reach in nearly fifty years.

“You are da’tsang, Beldeine. You must have heard that.” She did not need Beldeine’s curt nod; telling the despised one was part of Aiel law, like pronouncing sentence. That much she knew, if very little more. “Your clothes, and anything else that would burn, were put to the fire because no Aiel would own anything that once belonged to a da’tsang. The rest was hacked to pieces or hammered into scrap, even the jewelry you had with you, and buried under a pit dug for a jakes.”

“My . . . ? My horse?” Beldeine asked anxiously.

“They didn’t kill the horses, but I don’t know where yours is.” Being ridden by someone in the city, probably, or perhaps given to an Asha’man. Telling her that might do more harm than good. Verin seemed to recall that Beldeine was one of those young women who had very deep feelings for horses. “They let you keep the ring to remind you of who you were, and increase your shame. I don’t know whether they would let you swear to Master al’Thor if you begged. It would take something incredible on your part, I think.”

“I won’t! Never!” The words rang hollow, though, and Beldeine’s shoulders slumped. She was shaken, but not sufficiently.

Verin put on a warm smile. A fellow had once told her that her smile made him think of his dear mother. She hoped he had not been lying about that, at least. He had tried to slide a dagger between her ribs a little later, and her smile had been the last thing he ever saw. “I can’t think of the reason you would. No, I fear what you have to look forward to is useless labor. That’s shaming, to them. Bone shaming. Of course, if they realize you don’t see it that way . . . Oh, my. I’ll wager you didn’t like digging without any clothes on, even with Maidens for guards, but think of, say, standing in a tent full of men that way?” Beldeine flinched. Verin prattled on; she had developed prattling to something of a Talent. “They’d only make you stand there, of course. Da’tsang aren’t allowed to do anything useful unless there’s great need, and an Aielman would as soon put his arm around a rotting carcass as . . . Well, that’s not a pleasant thought, is it? In any case, that’s what you have to look forward to. I know you’ll resist as long as you can, though I’m not sure what there is to resist. They won’t try to get information out of you, or anything that people usually do with prisoners. But they won’t let you go, not ever, until they’re sure the shame is so deep in you there’s nothing else left. Not if it takes the rest of your life.”

Beldeine’s lips moved soundlessly, but she might as well have spoken the words. The rest of my life. Shifting uncomfortably on her cushion, she grimaced. Sunburn or welts or simply the ache of unaccustomed work. “We will be rescued,” she said finally. “The Amyrlin won’t leave us . . . We’ll be rescued, or we’ll—We will be rescued!” Snatching up the silver cup from beside her, she tilted her head back to gulp until it was empty, then thrust it out for more. Verin floated the pewter pitcher over and set it down so the young woman could pour for herself.

“Or you’ll escape?” Verin said, and Beldeine’s dirty hands jerked, splashing water down the sides of the cup. “Really, now. You have as much chance of that as you do of rescue. You’re surrounded by an army of Aiel. And apparently al’Thor can call up a few hundred of those Asha’man whenever he wants, to hunt you down.” The other woman shivered at that, and Verin nearly did. That little mess should have been stopped as soon as it started. “No, I fear you must make your own way, somehow. Deal with things as they are. You are quite alone in this. I know they don’t let you speak to the others. Quite alone,” she sighed. Wide eyes stared at her as they might have at a red adder. “There’s no need to make it worse than it must be. Let me Heal you.”

She barely waited for the other woman’s pitiful nod before moving to kneel beside her and place hands on Beldeine’s head. The young woman was almost as ready as she could be. Opening herself to more of saidar, Verin wove the flows of Healing, and the Green gasped and quivered. The half filled cup dropped from her hands, and a flailing arm knocked the pitcher onto its side. Now she was as ready as she could be.

In the moments of confusion that gripped anyone after being Healed, while Beldeine still blinked and tried to come back to herself, Verin opened herself further, opened herself through the carved-flower angreal in her pouch. Not a very powerful angreal, but enough, and she needed every bit of the extra Power it gave her for this. The flows she began weaving bore no resemblance to Healing. Spirit predominated by far, but there was Wind and Water, Fire and Earth, the last of some difficulty for her, and even the skeins of Spirit had to be divided again and again, placed with an intricacy to boggle a weaver of fine carpets. Even if a Wise One poked her head into the tent, with the smallest of luck she would not possess the rare Talent needed to realize what Verin was doing. There would still be difficulties, perhaps painful difficulties one way and another, but she could live with anything short of true discovery.

“What . . . ?” Beldeine said drowsily. Her head would have lolled except for Verin’s grip, and her eyelids were half-closed. “What are you . . . ? What is happening?”

“Nothing that will harm you,” Verin told her reassuringly. The woman might die inside the year, or in ten, as a result of this, but the weave itself would not harm her. “I promise you, this is safe enough to use on an infant.” Of course, that depended on what you did with it.

She needed to lay the flows in place thread by thread, but talking seemed to help rather than hinder. And too long a silence might rouse suspicion, if her twin guardians were listening. Her eyes darted frequently to the dangling doorflaps. She wanted some answers she had no intention of sharing, answers none of the women she questioned were likely to give freely even if they knew them. One of the smaller effects of this weave was to loosen the tongue and open the mind as well as any herb ever could, an effect that came on quickly.

Dropping her voice almost to a whisper, she continued. “The al’Thor boy seems to think he has supporters of some kind inside the White Tower, Beldeine. In secret, of course; they must be.” Even a man with his ear pressed to the fabric of the tent should be able to hear only that they were talking. “Tell me anything you know about them.”

“Supporters?” Beldeine murmured, attempting a frown that seemed beyond her ability. She stirred, though it hardly deserved the word agitation, feeble and uncoordinated. “For him? Among the sisters? It can’t be. Except for those of you who . . . How could you, Verin? Why didn’t you fight it?”

Verin tsked vexedly. Not for the foolish suggestion that she should have fought a ta’veren. The boy seemed so certain. Why? She kept her voice low. “Do you have no suspicions, Beldeine? Did you hear no rumors before you left Tar Valon? No whispers? No one who hinted at approaching him differently? Tell me.”

“No one. Who could . . . ? No one would . . . I admired Kiruna so.” There was a hint of loss in Beldeine’s sleepy voice, and tears leaking from her eyes made tracks through the dirt. Only Verin’s hands kept her sitting upright.

Verin continued to lay down the threads of her weaving, eyes flashing from her work to the doorflaps and back. She felt a little like sweating herself. Sorilea might decide she needed help with the questioning. She might bring out one of the sisters from the Sun Palace. Should any sister learn of this, stilling was a very real possibility. “So you were going to deliver him to Elaida neatly washed and well-behaved,” she said in a slightly louder tone. The quiet had gone on too long. She did not want that pair outside reporting that she was whispering with the prisoners.

“I couldn’t . . . speak out . . . against Galina’s decision. She led . . . by the Amyrlin’s command.” Beldeine shifted again, weakly. Her voice was still dreamy, but it picked up an agitated edge. Her eyelids fluttered. “He had to . . . be made . . . to obey! He had to be! Shouldn’t have been . . . treated so harshly. Like putting . . . him to . . . question. Wrong.”

Verin snorted. Wrong? Disastrous was more like it. A disaster from the first. Now the man looked at any Aes Sedai almost the way Aeron did. And if they had succeeded in carrying him to Tar Valon? A ta’veren like Rand al’Thor actually inside the White Tower? A thought to make a stone tremble. However it had turned out, disaster would surely have been too mild a word. The price paid at Dumai’s Wells was small enough, for avoiding that.

She went on asking questions in a tone that could be heard clearly by anyone listening outside. Asking questions she already had answers for, and avoiding those too dangerous to be answered. She paid little heed to the words coming out of her mouth or to Beldeine’s replies. Mainly she concentrated on her weaving.

A great many things had captured her interest over the years, not all strictly approved of by the Tower. Almost every wilder who came to the White Tower for training—both true wilders, who really had begun teaching themselves, and girls who merely had started touching the Source because the spark born in them had quickened on its own; for some sisters, there was no real difference—nearly every one of those wilders had created at least one trick for herself, and those tricks almost invariably fell under one of two headings. A way to listen in on other people’s conversations or a way of making people do as they wanted.

The first, the Tower did not care much about. Even a wilder who had gained considerable control on her own quickly learned that as long as she wore novice white, she was not to so much as touch saidar without a sister or one of the Accepted standing over her. Which did tend to limit eavesdropping rather sharply. The other trick, however, smelled too akin to forbidden Compulsion. Oh, it was just a way to make Father give her dresses or trinkets he did not want to buy, or make Mother approve of young men she ordinarily ran off, things of that nature, but the Tower rooted the trick out most effectively. Many of the girls and women Verin had spoken to over the years could not make themselves form the weaves, much less use them, and a fair number could not even make themselves remember how. From bits and pieces and scraps of half-remembered weaves created by untrained girls for very limited purposes, Verin had reconstructed a thing forbidden by the Tower since its founding. In the beginning it had been simple curiosity on her part. Curiosity, she thought wryly, working at the weave on Beldeine, has made me climb into more than one pickling kettle. Usefulness came later.

“I suppose Elaida meant to keep him down in the open cells,” she said conversationally. The grill-walled cells were intended for men who could channel, as well as initiates of the Tower under close arrest, wilders who had claimed to be Aes Sedai, and anyone else who must be both confined and blocked off from the Source. “Not a comfortable place for the Dragon Reborn. No privacy. Do you believe he is the Dragon Reborn, Beldeine?” This time she paused to listen.

“Yes.” The word was a long hiss, and Beldeine rolled frightened eyes toward Verin’s face. “Yes . . . but he must . . . be kept . . . safe. The world . . . must be . . . safe . . . from him.”

Interesting. They had all said the world had to be kept safe from him; what was interesting was those who thought he needed protection, too. Some who had said that, surprised her.

To Verin’s eyes, the weave she had made resembled nothing so much as a haphazard tangle of faintly glowing transparent threads all bundled around Beldeine’s head, with four threads of Spirit trailing out of the mess. Two of those, opposite one another, she pulled, and the tangle collapsed slightly, falling inward, into something on the edge of order. Beldeine’s eyes shot open wide, staring into the far distance.

In a firm, low voice, Verin gave her instructions. More like suggestions, though she phrased them as commands. Beldeine would have to find reasons within herself to obey; if she did not, then all this had been so much wasted effort.

With the final words, Verin pulled the other two threads of Spirit, and the tangle collapsed further. This time, though, it fell into what seemed perfect order, a pattern more precise, more complicated than the most intricate lace, and complete, tied off by the same action that began its shrinking. This time, it continued to fall inward on itself, inward around Beldeine’s head. Those faintly glowing threads sank into her, vanished. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she began to thrash, limbs quivering. Verin held her as gently as she could, but Beldeine’s head still whipped from side to side, and her bare heels drummed on the carpets. Soon, only the most careful Delving would tell that anything had been done, and not even that would identify the weave. Verin had tested that carefully, and if she did say so herself, none surpassed her at Delving.

Of course the thing was not truly Compulsion as ancient texts described it. The weaving went with painful slowness, cobbled together as it was, and there was that need for a reason. It helped a great deal if the object of the weave was emotionally vulnerable, but trust was absolutely essential. Even catching someone by surprise did no good if they were suspicious. That fact cut down its usefulness with men considerably; very few men lacked suspicion around Aes Sedai.

Distrust aside, men were very bad subjects, unfortunately. She could not understand why. Most of those girls’ weaves had been intended for their fathers or other men. Any strong personality might begin to question his own actions—or even forget doing them, which led to another set of problems—but all things being equal, men were much more likely to. Much more likely. Perhaps it was the suspicion again. Why, once a man had even remembered the weaves being woven on him, if not the instructions she had given him. Such a lot of bother that caused! Not something she would risk again.

At last Beldeine’s convulsions lessened, stopped. She raised a filthy hand to her head. “What—? What happened?” she said, almost inaudibly. “Did I faint?” Forgetfulness was another good point about the weave, not unexpectedly. After all, Father must not remember that you somehow made him buy that expensive dress.

“The heat is very bad,” Verin said, helping her to sit up again. “I have felt light-headed myself once or twice today.” From weariness, not heat. Handling that much of saidar took it out of you, especially when you had already done it four times today. The angreal did nothing to buffer the effects once you stopped using it. She could have used a steadying hand herself. “I think that’s about enough. If you’re fainting, perhaps they’ll find something for you to do out of the sun.” The prospect did not seem to cheer Beldeine at all.

Rubbing the small of her back, Verin stuck her head out of the tent. Coram and Mendan stopped their game of cat’s cradle once more; there was no sign that either had listened, but she would not wager her life on it. She told them that she was finished with Beldeine and, after a moment’s thought, added that she needed another pitcher of water since Beldeine had overturned hers. Both men’s faces darkened beneath their tans. That would be passed along to the Wise One who came for Beldeine. It would serve as something more to help her reach her decision.

The sun still had a long way to fall to the horizon, but the ache in her back told her it was time to stop for the day. She could still do one more sister, but if she did, by morning she would feel it in every muscle. Her eyes fell on Irgain, now with the women carrying baskets to the handmills. How would her life have gone if she had not been so curious, Verin wondered. For one thing, she would have married Eadwin and remained in Far Madding instead of going to the White Tower. She would be long dead, for another, and the children she had never had, and her grandchildren, too.

With a sigh, she turned back to Coram. “When Mendan returns, would you go tell Colinda that I would like to see Irgain Fatamed?” The pain in her muscles tomorrow would be a small penance for Beldeine’s suffering over that spilled water, but that was not why she did it, or even her curiosity, really. She still had a task. Somehow, she had to keep young Rand alive until it was time for him to die.

The room might have been in a grand palace, except that it had neither windows nor doors. The fire on a golden marble hearth gave no heat, and the flames did not consume the logs. The man seated at a table with gilded legs, centered on a silk carpet woven with glittering threads of gold and silver, cared little for the trappings of this Age. They were necessary to impress; no more. Not that he really needed more than himself to overawe the stiffest pride. He called himself Moridin, and surely no one had ever had more right to name himself Death.

From time to time he idly stroked one of the two mindtraps that hung on plain silken cords around his neck. At his touch, the blood-red crystal of the cour’souvra pulsed, swirls moving in endless depths like the beating of a heart. His real attention was on the game laid out before him on the table, thirty-three red pieces and thirty-three green arrayed across a playing surface of thirteen squares by thirteen. A re-creation of the early stages of a famous game. The most important piece, the Fisher, black-and-white like the playing surface, still waited in its starting place on the central square. A complex game, sha’rah, ancient long before the War of Power. Sha’rah, tcheran, and no’ri, the game now called simply “stones,” each had adherents who claimed it encompassed all the subtleties of life, but Moridin had always favored sha’rah. Only nine people living even remembered the game. He had been a master of it. Much more complex than tcheran or no’ri. The first object was capture of the Fisher. Only then did the game truly begin.

A servant approached, a slim graceful young man clad all in white, impossibly handsome, bowing as he presented a crystal goblet on a silver tray. He smiled, but it did not touch his black eyes, eyes more lifeless than simply dead. Most men would have felt uncomfortable having that gaze on them. Moridin merely took the goblet and motioned the servant away. The vintners of this time produced some excellent wines. He did not drink, though.

The Fisher held his attention, baiting him. Several pieces had varying moves, but only the Fisher’s attributes altered according to where it stood; on a white square, weak in attack yet agile and far-ranging in escape; on black, strong in attack but slow and vulnerable. When masters played, the Fisher changed sides many times before the end. The green-and-red goal-row that surrounded the playing surface could be threatened by any piece, but only the Fisher could move onto it. Not that he was safe, even there; the Fisher was never safe. When the Fisher was yours, you tried to move him to a square of your color behind your opponent’s end of the board. That was victory, the easiest way, but not the only one. When your opponent held the Fisher, you attempted to leave him no choice for the Fisher but to move onto your color. Anywhere at all along the goal-row would do; holding the Fisher could be more dangerous than not. Of course, there was a third path to victory in sha’rah, if you took it before letting yourself be trapped. The game always degenerated in a bloody melee, then, victory coming only with complete annihilation of your enemy. He had tried that, once, in desperation, but the attempt had failed. Painfully.

Fury boiled suddenly in Moridin’s head, and black flecks swam across his eyes as he seized the True Power. Ecstasy that amounted to pain thundered through him. His hand closed around the two mindtraps, and the True Power closed around the Fisher, snatching it into the air, a hair from crushing it to powder, crushing the powder out of existence. The goblet shattered in his hand. His grip bordered on crushing the cour’souvra. The saa were a blizzard of black, but they did not hinder his sight. The Fisher was always worked as a man, a bandage blinding his eyes and one hand pressed to his side, a few drops of blood dripping through his fingers. The reasons, like the source of the name, were lost in the mist of time. That troubled him sometimes, enraged him, what knowledge might be lost in the turnings of the Wheel, knowledge he needed, knowledge he had a right to. A right!

Slowly he set the Fisher back on the board. Slowly his fingers uncurled from around the cour’souvra. There was no need for destruction. Yet. Icy calm replaced rage in the blink of an eye. Blood and wine dripped from his gashed hand, unnoticed. Perhaps the Fisher did come from some dim remnant of a memory of Rand al’Thor, the shadow of a shadow. It did not matter. He realized he was laughing, and made no effort to stop. On the board, the Fisher stood waiting, but in the greater game, al’Thor moved already to his wishes. And soon, now . . . It was very hard to lose a game when you played both sides of the board. Moridin laughed so hard that tears rolled down his face, but he was not aware of them.