Slowly, Maighdin's back straightened, and despair slid off her face. She might still see the abyss, but if she fell, she would fall without flinching. "I'll try," she said.
For a long while she stared up at the scarf, then shook her head dejectedly. "The Source is there, like the sun just beyond the edge of sight," she whispered, "but every time I try to embrace it, it's like trying to catch smoke with my fingers."
Faile hastily pulled the gai’shain robes from her basket and another, careless of the gold belts and collars falling to the stone floor. "Sit down," she said, arranging the robes in a pile. "Make yourself comfortable. I know you can do it, Maighdin." Pressing the other woman down, she folded her legs and sat beside her.
"You can do it," Alliandre said softly, sitting down on Maighdin's other side. "Yes, you can," Lacile whispered, joining them. "I know you can," Arrela said as she lowered herself to the floor.
Time passed, with Maighdin staring at the scarf. Faile whispered encouragement and held onto hope hard. Suddenly the scarf went rigid, as if something had pulled it taut. A wondrous smile appeared on Maighdin's face as the scarf began to swing back and forth like a pendulum. Six, seven, eight times it swung. Then it fluttered in the breeze and fell limp.
"That was marvelous," Faile said. "Marvelous," Alliandre said. "You re going to save us, Maighdin." "Yes." Arrela murmured, "you're going to save us, Maighdin."
There were many kinds of battle. Sitting on the floor, whispering encouragement, Maighdin fighting to find what she could seldom find, they fought for their lives while the scarf swung, then fell to the breeze, swung and fell limp. But they fought on.
Galina kept her head down and tried not to hurry as she made her way out of Maiden, past the streams of white-clad men and women carrying empty buckets into the town and full buckets back out. She did not want to attract attention, not without that cursed belt and necklace. She had donned the things when she dressed in the night, while Therava was still asleep, but it had been such a pleasure to remove them and hide them with the clothes and other things she had secreted away for her escape that she could not resist. Besides, Therava would have been angered to wake and find her missing. She would have ordered a watch for her "little Lina," and everyone marked her by those jewels. Well, they would pay to help her return to the Tower, now, return to her rightful place. That arrogant Faile and the other fools were dead or as good as, and she was free. She stroked the rod, hidden in her sleeve, and shivered with delight. Free!
She did hate leaving Therava alive, but if anyone had entered the woman's tent and found her with a knife through her heart, Galina would have been the first suspect. Besides. . . . Images rose in her head, of her bending stealthily over the sleeping Therava, the woman's own belt knife in hand, of Therava's eyes snapping open, meeting hers in the darkness, of her screaming, of her hand opening nervelessly to drop the knife, of her begging, of Therava. . . .
No. No! It would not have been that way. Certainly not! She had left Therava alive of necessity, not because she was. . . . Not for any other reason.
Suddenly wolves howled, wolves in every direction, a dozen or more. Her feet stopped of their own accord. A motley collection of tents surrounded her, walled tents, peaked tents, low Aiel tents. She had walked
right through the gai'shain portion of the camp without realizing it. Her eyes rose to the ridge west of Maiden, and she flinched. Thick fog curled along the whole length of it, concealing the trees as far as she could see in either direction. The town walls hid the ridge to the east, yet she was sure there would be thick fog there, too.
The man had come! The Great Lord preserve her, she had been just in time. Well, he would not find his fool wife even if he managed to survive whatever he was about to try, nor would he find Galina Casban.
Thanking the Great Lord that Therava had not forbidden her to ride—the woman had much preferred dangling the possibility that she might be allowed, if she groveled sufficiently—Galina hurried toward her hidden stores. Let the fools who wanted to die here, die. She was free. Free!
CHAPTER 29 The Last Knot
Perrin stood just below the ridgetop, near the edge of the fog, and studied the encampment and stone-walled town below. Two hundred paces of fairly steep slope sparsely dotted with low brush down to level ground, perhaps seven hundred more of cleared ground to the first tents, then better than a mile to the town. It seemed so close, now. He did not use his looking glass. A glint off the lens from the sun just peeking over the horizon, a fingernail edge of golden-red, might ruin everything.
The grayness around him curled but did not really move with the breeze, even when it gusted and made his cloak stir. The dense mist on the far ridge, obscuring the windmill there, seemed too still as well, if you studied it a while. How long before someone among those tents noticed?
There was nothing to be done for it. The fog felt like any fog, damp and a little cool, but somehow Neald had fixed these mists in place before he went off to his other tasks. The sun would not burn them off even at noonday, or so the Asha'man claimed. Everything would be done by noon, one way or another, but Perrin hoped the man was right. The sky was clear, and the day looked to be warm for early spring.
Only a few Shaido seemed to be outside in the camp, relatively speaking, but thousands of white-clad figures bustled about among the tents. Tens of thousands. His eyes ached to find Faile among them, his heart ached to see her, but he could as well try to pick out one particular pin from a barley-basket of them spilled on the ground.
Instead, he stared at the town's gates, standing wide open as they had every time he had gazed on them. Invitingly wide. They called to him. Soon, Faile and her companions would know it was time to head for those gates, and the towered fortress that bulked at the north end of the town. She might be at chores, if the Maidens were right about how the prisoners would be treated as gai'shain, but she would know to slip away and go to the fortress. She and her friends, and likely Alyse as well. Whatever her scheme with the Shaido, the Aes Sedai would not want to remain on a battleground. A second sister in the fortress might come in handy. The Light send it did not come to that.
He had planned with care for every eventuality he could imagine down to outright disaster, yet this was no blacksmith's puzzle however much he wished it were. The twisted iron pieces of a blacksmith's puzzle moved only in certain ways. Move them in the right way, and the puzzle came apart. People could move in a thousand ways, sometimes in directions you never believed possible till it happened. Would his plans stand up when the Shaido did something unexpected? They would do it, almost certainly, and all he could do in return was hope it would not lead to that disaster. With a last, longing look at Maiden's gates, he turned and walked back up the ridge.
Inside the fog, even he could not see ten paces, but he soon found Dannil Lewin among the trees on the ridgetop. Lean to the point of skinny, with a pickaxe for a nose and thick mustaches in the Taraboner style, Dannil stood out even when you could not see his face clearly. Other Two Rivers men were shapes beyond him, growing dimmer and dimmer with distance. Most were squatting or sitting on the ground, resting while they had the chance. Jori Congar was trying to entice some of the others into a game of dice, but he was quiet about it, so Perrin let it pass. No one was accepting the offer anyway. Jori was uncommon lucky with his dice.
Dannil made a leg when he saw Perrin and murmured, "My Lord." The man had been spending too much time with Faile's people. He called it acquiring polish, whatever that was supposed to mean. A man was not a piece of brass.
"Make sure nobody does anything woolhead foolish like I just did, Dannil. Sharp eyes below might spot movement near the edge of the fog and send men to investigate."
Dannil coughed discreetly into his hand. Light, he was getting as bad as any of those Cairhienin and Tairens. "As you say, my Lord. I'll keep everybody back."
"My Lord?" Balwer's dry voice said out of the mist. "Ah, there you are, my Lord." The little stick of a man appeared, followed by two larger shapes, though one was not much taller. They halted at a gesture from him, indistinct forms in the fog, and he came on alone. "Masema has put in an appearance below, my Lord," he said quietly, folding his hands. 'I thought it best to keep Haviar and Nerion out of his sight, and his men's, under the circumstances. I don't believe he is suspicious of them. I think he has anyone he is suspicious of killed. But out of sight, out of mind is best."
Perrin's jaw tightened. Masema was supposed to be beyond the eastern ridge with his army, if it could be called that. He had counted those men—and a few women—as they shuffled uneasily through gateways made by the two Asha'man, and they were twenty thousand if they were one. Masema had always been vague about their numbers, and Perrin had not had an accurate count until last night. Ragged and dirty, only one here or there wore a helmet, much less a breastplate, but every hand had gripped sword or spear or axe, halberd or crossbow, the women included. The women among Masema's followers were worse than the men by far, and that was saying something. For the most part the lot of them were only good for terrorizing people into swearing to follow the Dragon Reborn—the colors whirled in his head and were shattered by his anger—that and murdering them if they refused. They had a better purpose today.
"Maybe it's time for Haviar and Nerion to start staying away from Masema's people for good," he said.
"If you wish it, my Lord, but in my judgment, they still are as safe as any man can be doing what they do, and they're eager." Balwer tilted his head, a curious sparrow in a branch. "They haven't been corrupted, if that's what you fear, my Lord. That's always a danger when you send a man to pretend to be what he isn't, but I have a keen nose for the signs."
"Keep them close, Balwer." After today, with luck, there might not be much of Masema's army left to spy on in any case. There might not even be a Masema to worry about.