The Time of Change has come.
Blood feeds blood.
Blood calls blood.
Blood is, and blood was, and blood shall ever be.
The Watchers wait on Toman’s Head.
The seed of the Hammer burns the ancient tree.
Death shall sow, and summer burn, before the Great Lord comes.
Death shall reap, and bodies fail, before the Great Lord comes.
Again the seed slays ancient wrong, before the Great Lord comes.
Now the Great Lord comes.
Now the Great Lord comes.
Blood feeds blood.
Blood calls blood.
Blood is, and blood was, and blood shall ever be.
Now the Great Lord comes.”
There was a long silence when she finished.
Finally the Amyrlin said, “Who else has seen this, Daughter? Who knows of it?”
“Only Serafelle, Mother. As soon as we had copied it down, I had men scrub the walls. They didn’t question; they were eager to be rid of it.”
The Amyrlin nodded. “Good. Too many in the Borderlands can puzzle out Trolloc script. No need to give them something else to worry over. They have enough.”
“What do you make of it?” Moiraine asked Verin in a careful voice. “Is it prophecy, do you think?”
Verin tilted her head, peering at her notes in thought. “Possibly. It has the form of some of the few dark prophecies we know. And parts of it are clear enough. It could still be only a taunt, though.” She rested a finger on one line. “ ‘Daughter of the Night, she walks again.’ That can only mean Lanfear is loose again. Or someone wants us to think she is.”
“That would be something to worry us, Daughter,” the Amyrlin Seat said, “if it were true. But the Forsaken are still bound.” She glanced at Moiraine, looking troubled for an instant before she schooled her features. “Even if the seals are weakening, the Forsaken are still bound.”
Lanfear. In the Old Tongue, Daughter of the Night. Nowhere was her real name recorded, but that was the name she had taken for herself, unlike most of the Forsaken, who had been named by those they betrayed. Some said she had really been the most powerful of the Forsaken, next to Ishamael, the Betrayer of Hope, but had kept her powers hidden. Too little was left from that time for any scholar to say for certain.
“With all the false Dragons that are appearing, it is not surprising someone would try to bring Lanfear into it.” Moiraine’s voice was as unruffled as her face, but inside herself she roiled. Only one thing for certain was known of Lanfear beside the name: before she went over to the Shadow, before Lews Therin Telamon met Ilyena, Lanfear had been his lover. A complication we do not need.
The Amyrlin Seat frowned as if she had had the same thought, but Verin nodded as if it were all just words. “Other names are clear, too, Mother. Lord Luc, of course, was brother to Tigraine, then the Daughter-Heir of Andor, and he vanished in the Blight. Who Isam is, or what he has to do with Luc, I do not know, however.”
“We will find out what we need to know in time,” Moiraine said smoothly. “There is no proof as yet that this is prophecy.” She knew the name. Isam had been the son of Breyan, wife of Lain Mandragoran, whose attempt to seize the throne of Malkier for her husband had brought the Trolloc hordes crashing down. Breyan and her infant son
had both vanished when the Trollocs overran Malkier. And Isam had been blood kin to Lan. Or is blood kin? I must keep this from him, until I know how he will react. Until we are away from the Blight. If he thought Isam were alive. . . .
“ ‘The Watchers wait on Toman Head,’ ” Verin went on. “There are a few who still cling to the old belief that the armies Artur Hawkwing sent across the Aryth Ocean will return one day, though after all this time. . . .” She gave a disdainful sniff. “The Do Miere A’vron, the Watchers Over the Waves, still have a . . . community is the best word, I suppose . . . on Toman Head, at Falme. And one of the old names for Artur Hawkwing was Hammer of the Light.”
“Are you suggesting, Daughter,” the Amyrlin Seat said, “that Artur Hawkwing’s armies, or rather their descendants, might actually return after a thousand years?”
“There are rumors of war on Almoth Plain and Toman Head,” Moiraine said slowly. “And Hawkwing sent two of his sons, as well as armies. If they did survive in whatever lands they found, there could well be many descendants of Hawkwing. Or none.”