To show his unconcern, he sat down on the foot of his pallet, legs folded and hands on his knees. He thought his face was as calm as hers. Inside him, the Power swelled. He had flows of Air ready to bind her, and flows of Spirit. That was what wove a shield against the True Source. The racking of his brain for the how of it seemed far off, but he could not remember anyway. Without that, the other was useless. She could pick apart or slice through anything he wove, even if she could not see it. Asmodean was trying to teach him that trick, but it was hard going without a woman’s weaving to practice on.
Lanfear eyed him in a disconcerted fashion, a slight frown marring her beauty. “I have examined the Aielwomen’s dreams. These so-called Wise Ones. They do not know how to shield themselves very well. I could frighten them till they never dream again, never even think of invading yours surely.”
“I thought you would not help me openly.” He did not dare tell her to leave the Wise Ones alone; she might well do something to spite him. She had made it plain from the start, if not in words, that she meant to have the upper hand between them. “Wouldn’t that risk another of the Forsaken finding out? You aren’t the only one who knows how to enter people’s dreams.”
“The Chosen,” she said absently. For a moment she chewed a full underlip. “I have watched the girl’s dreams, too. Egwene. Once I thought you had feelings for her. Do you know who she dreams of? Morgase’s son and stepson. The son, Gawyn, most often.” Smiling, she put on a tone of mock shock. “You would not believe a simple country girl could have such dreams.”
She was trying to test his jealousy, he realized. She really thought he warded his dreams to hide thoughts of another woman! “The Maidens guard me closely,” he said dryly. “If you want to know how close, look at Isendre’s dreams.”
Spots of color flared in her cheeks. Of course. He was not supposed to see what she was trying. Confusion rolled outside the Void. Or did she think . . . ? Isendre? Lanfear knew she was a Darkfriend. Lanfear had brought Kadere and the woman to the Waste in the first place. And planted most of the jewelry Isendre was accused of stealing; Lanfear’s spite was cruel even when petty. Still, if she thought he could love her, Isendre being a Darkfriend was probably no obstacle in her eyes.
“I should have let them send her off to try reaching the Dragonwall,” he went on casually, “but who knows what she might have said to save herself? I must protect her and Kadere to some extent in order to protect Asmodean.”
The color faded, but as she opened her mouth again, a knock came at the door. Rand bounded to his feet. No one would recognize Lanfear, yet if a woman were discovered in his room, a woman whom none of the Maidens below had seen enter, questions would be asked and he had no answers.
But Lanfear already had a gateway open, to somewhere full of white silk hangings and silver. “Remember that I am your only hope of surviving, my love.” It was a very cool voice in which to call someone that. “Beside me, you need fear nothing. Beside me, you can rule—everything that is or will be.” Lifting her snowy skirts, she stepped through, and the gateway winked shut.
The knock sounded again before he could make himself push away saidin and haul open the door.
Enaila peered past him suspiciously, muttering, “I thought perhaps Isendre. . . .” She gave him an accusing look. “Spear-sisters are searching everywhere for you. No one saw you return.” With a shake of her head, she straightened; she always tried to stand as tall as possible. “The chiefs have come to speak with the Car’a’carn,” she said formally. “They wait below.”
They waited on the columned portico, as it turned out, being men. The sky was still dark, but the first glimmers of dawn lined the mountains to the east. If they felt any impatience with the two Maidens who stood between them and the tall doors, it did not show on their shadowed faces.
“Th
e Shaido are moving,” Han barked as soon as Rand appeared. “And the Reyn, the Miagoma, the Shiande. . . . Every clan!”
“Joining Couladin, or me?” Rand demanded.
“The Shaido are moving toward the Jangai Pass,” Rhuarc said. “For the others, it is too early to tell. But they are on the march with every spear not needed to defend the holds, herds and flocks.”
Rand only nodded. All of his determination not to let anyone else dictate what he would do, and now this. Whatever the other clans intended, Couladin had to plan a crossing into Cairhien. So much for his grand schemes of imposing peace, if the Shaido ravaged Cairhien even further while he sat in Rhuidean waiting for the other clans.
“Then we move for the Jangai, too,” he said finally.
“We cannot catch him if he means to cross,” Erim cautioned, and Han added sourly, “If any of the others are joining him, we will be caught strung out like blindworms in the sun.”
“I won’t sit here until I find out,” Rand said. “If I can’t catch Couladin, I mean to be right behind him into Cairhien. Rouse the spears. We leave as soon after first light as you can manage.”
Giving him that odd Aiel bow used only on the most formal occasions, one foot forward and one hand extended, the chiefs departed. Only Han said anything. “To Shayol Ghul itself.”
CHAPTER
7
A Departure
Yawning in the early-morning grayness, Egwene pulled herself up onto her fog-colored mare, then had to handle her reins smartly as Mist frisked about. The animal had not been ridden in weeks. Aiel not only preferred their own legs, they avoided riding almost completely, though they did use packhorses and pack mules. Even if there had been enough wood to build wagons, the terrain in the Waste was not hospitable to wheels, as more than one peddler had learned to his or her sorrow.
She was not looking forward to the long journey west. The mountains hid the sun now, but the heat would grow by the hour once it climbed clear, and there would be no convenient tent to duck into at nightfall. She was not certain that Aiel garb was suitable for riding, either. The shawl, worn over her head, always did a surprisingly good job of keeping the sun off, but those bulky skirts would bare her legs to the thigh if she was not careful. Blisters worried her as much as modesty. The sun on one side, and . . . A month out of the saddle should not have softened her that much. She hoped it had not, or this would be a very long journey.
Once she had settled Mist down, Egwene found Amys looking at her, and shared a smile with the Wise One. All of that running the night before was not the reason she was still sleepy; if anything, it had helped her sleep even more soundly. She had found the other woman’s dreams last night, and in celebration they had sipped tea in the dream, in Cold Rocks Hold, early on an evening when children were playing among the crop-planted terraces and a pleasant breeze blew down the valley as the sun sank.
Of course, that would not have been enough to steal her rest, but she had been so exultant that when she left Amys’ dreams, she did not stop; she could not, not then, no matter what Amys would have said. There had been dreams all around, though with most she had no idea whose they were. With most, not all. Melaine had been dreaming of suckling a babe at her breast, and Bair of one of her dead husbands, both of them young and yellow-haired. She had been especially careful not to enter those; the Wise Ones would have known an intruder in an instant, and she shuddered to think of what they would have done before letting her go.
Rand’s dreams had been a challenge, of course, one she could not fail to face. Now that she could flit from dream to dream, how could she not try where the Wise Ones failed? Only, attempting to enter his dreams had been like running headlong into an invisible stone wall. She knew that his dreams lay on the other side, and she was sure she could find a way through, but there had been nothing to work on, nothing to pry at. A wall of nothing. It was a problem she meant to worry at until she solved it. Once she put her mind on something, she could be as persistent as a badger.
All around her gai’shain were bustling about, loading the Wise Ones’ camp onto mules. Before long, only an Aiel or someone just as skilled at tracking would be able to tell there had ever been tents on that patch of hard clay. The same activity covered the surrounding mountain slopes, and the hubbub extended into the city, as well. Not everyone would be going, but thousands would. Aiel thronged the streets, and Master Kadere’s train of wagons stood strung out across the great plaza, laden with Moiraine’s selections, the three white-painted water wagons at the end of the line like huge barrels on wheels behind twenty-mule teams. Kadere’s own wagon, at the head of the column, was a little white house on wheels, with steps at the back and a metal stovepipe sticking out of the flat roof. The thick, hawk-nosed merchant, all in ivory-colored silk today, swept off his incongruously battered hat as she rode past, his dark, tilted eyes not sharing in the wide smile he flashed at her.