The Practice of Diffidence

The Practice of Diffidence

You are rudderless," Siuan told the six women facing her in six different sorts of chair. The room itself was a muddle. Two large kitchen tables against the walls held pens and ink jars and sand bottles in neat arrays. Mismatched lamps, some glazed pottery and some gilded, and candles in every thickness and length stood ready to provide light at nightfall. A scrap of Illianer silk carpet, rich in blues and reds and gold, lay on a floor of rough, weathered planks. She and Leane had been seated across the piece of carpet from the others, in such a way that they were the focus of every eye. Open casement windows with panes cracked or replaced by oiled silk let a breath of air stir in, but not enough to cut the heat. Siuan told he 353i84d rself that she did not envy these women their ability to channel - she was past that, surely - but she did envy the way none of them perspired. Her own face was quite damp. "All that activity out there is play and show. You might be fooling each other, and maybe even the Gaidin - though I'd not count on that, were I you - but you can't fool me."

She wished that Morvrin and Beonin had not been added to the group. Morvrin was skeptical of everything despite her placid, sometimes vaguely absent look, a stout Brown with gray-streaked hair who demanded six pieces of evidence before she would believe fish had scales. And Beonin, a pretty Gray with dark honey hair and blue-gray eyes so big they constantly made her appear slightly startled - Beonin made Morvrin seem gullible.

"Elaida has the Tower in her fist, and you know she will mishandle Rand al'Thor," Siuan said scornfully. "It will be pure luck if she doesn't panic and have him gentled before Tarmon Gai'don. You know that whatever you feel about a man channeling, Reds feel ten times more. The White Tower is at its weakest when it should be at its strongest, in the hands of a fool when it must have skilled command." She wrinkled her nose, staring them in the eye one by one. "And you sit here, drifting with your sails down. Or can you convince me that you are doing more than twiddling your thumbs and blowing bubbles?"

"Do you agree with Siuan, Leane?" Anaiya asked mildly. Siuan had never been able to understand why Moiraine liked the woman. Trying to get her to do anything she did not want to was like hitting a sack of feathers. She did not stand up to you, or argue; she just silently refused to move. Even the way she sat, with her hands folded, looked more like a woman waiting to knead dough than an Aes Sedai.

"In part I do," Leane replied. Siuan gave her a sharp look that she ignored. "About Elaida, certainly. Elaida will misuse Rand al'Thor, as surely as she is misusing the Tower. For the rest, I know that you have worked hard to gather as many sisters here as you have, and I expect that you are working just as hard to do something about Elaida."

Siuan sniffed loudly. On her way through the common room she had snatched glimpses of some of those parchments being examined so assiduously. Lists of provisions, allotments of timber for rebuilding, assignments for woodcutting and repairing houses and cleaning out wells. Nothing more. Nothing that looked the least like a report on Elaida's activities. They were planning to winter here. All it took was one Blue being captured after she had learned of Salidar, one woman being put to the question - she would not hold back much if Alviarin had charge of it - and Elaida would know exactly where to net them. While they worried about planting vegetable gardens and having enough firewood cut before the first freeze.

"Then that is out of the way," Carlinya said coolly. "You do not seem to understand that you are not Amyrlin and Keeper any longer. You are not even Aes Sedai." Some had the grace to look embarrassed. Not Morvrin or Beonin, but the others. No Aes Sedai liked to speak of stilling, or be reminded of it; they would think it especially harsh in front of the two of them. "I do not say this to be cruel. We do not believe the charges against you - despite your traveling companion - or we would not be here, but you cannot assume your old places among us, and that is a simple fact."

Siuan remembered Carlinya well as novice and Accepted. Once a month she had committed some minor offense, a small thing that earned her an extra hour or two of chores. Exactly once each month. She had not wanted the others to think her a prig. Those had been her only offenses - she never broke another rule or put a foot wrong; it would not have been logical - yet she had never understood why the other girls had considered her an Aes Sedai pet anyway. A great deal of logic and not much common sense: that was Carlinya.

"While what was done to you followed the letter of the law narrowly," Sheriam said gently, "we agree that it was malignantly unjust, an extreme distortion of the law's spirit." The chair-back behind her fire-red head was incongruously carved with what seemed to be a mass of snakes fighting. "Whatever rumor might say, most of the charges laid against you were so thin that they should have been laughed away."

"Not the charge that she knew of Rand al'Thor and conspired to hide him from the Tower," Carlinya broke in sharply.

Sheriam nodded. "But be that as it may, even that was not sufficient for the penalty given. Nor should you have been tried in secret, without even a chance to defend yourself. Never fear that we will turn our backs on you. We will see that you both are cared for."

"I thank you," Leane said, her voice soft and almost trembling.

Siuan grimaced at them. "You haven't even asked me about the eyes-and-ears I can use." She had liked Sheriam when they were students together, though years and position had opened water between them. "Cared for" indeed! "Is Aeldene here?" Anaiya started to shake her head before stopping herself. "I suspected not, or you would know more of what is going on. You've left them sending their reports to the Tower." Slow realization dawned on their faces; they had not known Aeldene's office. "I headed the Blue Ajah's net of eyes-and-ears, before I was raised Amyrlin." More surprise. "With a little effort every Blue agent, and those who served me as Amyrlin too, can be sending her reports to you, by routes that keep her ignorant of their final destination." It would take considerably more than a little work, but she had already sketched most of it out in her head, and there was no need for them to know more at the moment. "And they can continue sending reports to the Tower, reports containing what... you want Elaida to believe." She had almost said "we"; she had to watch her tongue.

They did not like it, of course. The women who tended the networks might be unknown to all but a few, but they were every one Aes Sedai. They had always been Aes Sedai. But that was her only lever with which to pry her way into the circles where decisions were made. Otherwise, they would likely stuff her and Leane into a cottage with a servant to look after them, and maybe a rare visit from Aes Sedai who wanted to examine women who had been stilled, until they died. They would die soon, in those circumstances.

Light, they might even marry us off! Some thought that a husband and children could occupy a woman enough to replace the One Power in her life. More than one woman, stilled by drawing too much of saidar to herself, or in testing ter'angreal for their uses, had found herself being matched with potential husbands. Since those who did marry always put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Tower and its memories, the theory remained unproven.

"It should not be difficult," Leane said diffidently, "to put myself in touch with those who were my eyes-and-ears before I was Keeper. More importantly, as Keeper of the Chronicles I had agents in Tar Valon itself." Startlement widened a few eyes, though Carlinya's narrowed. Leane blinked, shifted uneasily, smiled weakly. "I always thought it foolish that we paid more attention to the mood of Ebou Dar or Bandar Eban than to the mood of our own city." They had to see the value of eyes-and-ears in Tar Valon.

"Siuan." Leaning forward in her thick-armed chair, Morvrin said the name firmly, as though to emphasize that she had not said Mother. That round face looked more stubborn than placid now, her stoutness a threatening mass. When Siuan had been a novice, Morvrin rarely seemed to notice the mischief of the girls around her, but when she did, she had taken care of matters herself, in ways that had everyone sitting straight and walking small for days. "Why should we allow you to do as you want? You have been stilled, woman. Whatever you were, you are no longer Aes Sedai. If we want these agents' names, you will both give them to us." There was a flat certainty to that last; they would give them, one way or another. They would, if these women wanted them enough.

Leane shivered visibly, but Siuan's chair creaked as she stiffened her back. "I know that I am not Amyrlin anymore. Do you think I don't know I was stilled? My face is changed, but not what is inside. Everything I ever knew is still in my head. Use it! For the love of the Light, use me!" She took a deep breath to calm herself - Burn me if I let them shove me aside to rot! - and Myrelle spoke into the pause.

"A young woman's temper to go with a young woman's face." Smiling, she sat on the edge of a stiff-backed armchair that could have stood in front of a farmer's fireplace, if the farmer had not cared that the varnish was flaking. The smile was not her usual one, though, languid and knowing at the same time, and her dark eyes, nearly as large as Beonin's, were full of sympathy. "I am sure that no one wants you to feel useless, Siuan. And I am sure that we all want to employ your knowledge fully. What you know will be of great use to us."

Siuan did not want her sympathy. "You seem to have forgotten Logain, and why I dragged him all the way here from Tar Valon." She had not meant to bring this up herself, but if they were going to let it lie wallowing... "My 'crack-brained' idea?"

"Very well, Siuan," Sheriam said. "Why?"

"Because the first step to pulling Elaida down is for Logain to reveal to the Tower, to the world if need be, that the Red Ajah set him up as a false Dragon so that he could be pulled down." She certainly had their attention now. "He was found by Reds in Ghealdan at least a year before he proclaimed himself, but instead of bringing him to Tar Valon to be gentled, they planted the idea in his head of claiming to be the Dragon Reborn."

"You are certain of this?" Beonin asked quietly, in a heavy Taraboner accent. She sat very still in her tall, cane-bottomed chair, watching carefully.

"He does not know who Leane and I are. He talked with us sometimes on the journey here, late at night when Min was sleeping and he could not rest. He said nothing before because he thinks the entire Tower was behind it, but he knows that it was Red sisters who shielded him and talked to him of the Dragon Reborn."

"Why?" Morvrin demanded, and Sheriam nodded.

"Yes, why? Any of us would go out of our way to see a man like that gentled, but the Red Ajah lives for nothing else. Why would they create a false Dragon?"

"Logain did not know," she told them. "Perhaps they think they gain more by capturing a false Dragon than gentling a poor fool who might terrorize one village. Perhaps they have some reason to want more turmoil."

"We do not suggest they've had anything to do with Mazrim Taim or any of the others," Leane added quickly. "Elaida will no doubt be able to tell you what you want to know."

Siuan watched them mull it over in silence. They never considered the possibility that she was lying. An advantage to having been stilled. It did not seem to occur to them that being stilled might have broken all ties to the Three Oaths. Some Aes Sedai studied stilled women, true, but gingerly and reluctantly. No one wanted to be reminded of what might happen to herself.

For Logain, Siuan had no worry. Not as long as Min continued to see whatever it was that she saw. He would live long enough to reveal what Siuan wanted him to, once she had talked to him. She had not dared risk his deciding to go his own way, which he might well have done had she told him before. But it was his one chance for revenge now against those who had gentled him, surrounded by Aes Sedai again as he was. Revenge only against the Red Ajah, true, but he would have to settle for that. A fish in the boat was worth a school in the water.

She glanced at Leane, who smiled the faintest possible smile. That was good. Leane had disliked being kept in the dark about her plan for the man until this morning, but Siuan had lived too long wrapped in secrecy to be easy revealing more than she had to, even to a friend. She thought that the idea of Red Ajah involvement with other false Dragons had been neatly planted. Reds had been the leaders in overthrowing her. There might not be a Red Ajah once this was done with.

"This changes a great deal," Sheriam said after a time. "We cannot possibly follow an Amyrlin who would do such a thing."

"Follow her!" Siuan exclaimed, for the first time truly startled. "You were actually considering going back to kiss Elaida's ring? Knowing what she has done, and will do?" Leane quivered in her seat as if she wanted to say a few choice words herself, but they had agreed that Siuan was to be the one to lose her temper.

Sheriam looked a trifle embarrassed, and spots of color floated in Myrelle's olive cheeks, but the others took it as calmly as sunshine.

"The Tower must be strong," Carlinya said in a voice as hard as winter stone. "The Dragon has been Reborn, the Last Battle is coming, and the Tower must be whole."

Anaiya nodded. "We understand your reasons for disliking Elaida, even hating her. We do understand, but we must think of the Tower, and the world. I confess I do not like Elaida myself. But then, I have never liked Siuan, either. It is not necessary to like the Amyrlin Seat. There is no need to glare so, Siuan. You have had a file for a tongue since you were a novice, and it has only roughened with the years. And as Amyrlin, you pushed sisters where you wanted and only seldom explained why. The two do not make a likable combination."

"I will try to... smooth my tongue," Siuan said dryly. Did the woman expect the Amyrlin Seat to treat every sister like a childhood friend? "But I hope what I've told you changes your desire to kneel at Elaida's feet?"

"If that is your smoother tongue," Myrelle said idly, "I may have to smooth it myself, if we do allow you to run the eyes-and-ears for us."

"We cannot go back to the Tower now, of course," Sheriam said. "Not knowing this. Not until we are in position to see Elaida deposed."

"Whatever she has done, the Reds, they will continue to support her." Beonin stated it as fact, not objection. It was no secret that the Reds resented the fact that there had not been an Amyrlin from their Ajah since Bonwhin.

Morvrin nodded heavily. "Others will, as well. Those who have thrown themselves too much behind Elaida to believe they have any other choice. Those who will support authority, however vile. And some who will believe we are dividing the Tower when it must be whole at any cost."

"All but the Red sisters can be approached," Beonin said judiciously, "negotiated with." Mediation and negotiation were her Ajah's reason for existence.

"It seems we will have a use for your agents, Siuan." Sheriam looked around at the others. "Unless anyone still thinks we should take them away from her?" Morvrin was the last to shake her head, but she did it, finally, after a long study that made Siuan feel she had been stripped, weighed and measured.

She could not stop a sigh of relief. Not a short life drying up in a cottage, but a life of purpose. It might still be a short life - no one knew how long a stilled woman could live given something to replace the One Power in her life - but with purpose it would be long enough. So Myrelle was going to smooth her tongue for her, was she? I'll show that fox-eyed Green - I will hold my tongue and be glad she isn't doing more than look at me is what I'll do. I knew how this would go. Burn me, but I did.

"Thank you, Aes Sedai," she said in the meekest tone she could find. To call them that pained her; it was another break, another reminder of what she was not any longer. "I will try to give good service." Myrelle did not have to nod in such a satisfied way. Siuan ignored a small voice that said she would have done as much or more in Myrelle's place.

"If I may suggest," Leane said, "it is not enough to wait until you have enough support in the Hall of the Tower to depose Elaida." Siuan put on an interested look, as though hearing this for the first time. "Elaida sits in Tar Valon, in the White Tower, and to the world she is Amyrlin. At the moment, you are only a flock of dissidents. She can call you rebels and agitators, and coming from the Amyrlin Seat, the world will believe it."

"We can hardly stop her being Amyrlin before she is deposed," Carlinya said, shifting on her chair in icy contempt. Had she been wearing her white-fringed shawl, she would have snapped it around her.

"You can give the world a true Amyrlin." Leane spoke not to the White sister, but to all of them, eyeing each in turn, sure of what she was saying yet at the same time offering a suggestion that she merely hoped they would take. It had been Siuan who pointed out that the techniques she employed on men could be adapted for women. "I saw Aes Sedai from every Ajah save the Red in the common room, and in the streets. Have them elect a Hall of the Tower here, and let that Hall select a new Amyrlin. Then you can present yourselves to the world as the true White Tower, in exile, and Elaida as a usurper. With Logain's revelations added in, can you doubt who the nations will accept as the real Amyrlin Seat?"

The idea took hold. Siuan could see them turning it over in their minds. Whatever the others thought, only Sheriam voiced a word against. "It will mean that the Tower truly is broken," the green-eyed woman said sadly.

"It already is broken," Siuan told her tartly, and instantly wished she had not when they all looked at her.

This was supposed to be purely Leane's notion. She herself had a reputation as a deft manipulator, and they could well be suspicious of anything she proposed. That was why she had begun by scathing them; they would not have believed her if she had begun with mild words. She would come at them as if she still thought herself Amyrlin, and let them put her in her place. By comparison, Leane would seem more cooperative, only offering the little she could, and they would be more likely to listen to her. Doing her own part had not been difficult until it came to pleading; then she had wanted to hang them all in the sun to dry. Sitting here, doing nothing!

You didn't have to worry about them being suspicious. They think you are a broken reed. If everything went properly, they would not learn differently. A useful reed, but a weak one, not to be thought of twice. It was a painful accommodation to make, but Duranda Tharne had shown her the necessity in Lugard. They would accept her only on their terms, and she would have to make the best of it.

"I wish I had thought of this myself," she went on. "Now that I hear it, Leane's idea gives you a way to build the Tower again without having to tear it down completely first."

"I still cannot like it." Sheriam's voice firmed. "But what must be must be. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and the Light willing, it will weave Elaida out of the stole."

"We will need to negotiate with those sisters who remain in the Tower," Beonin mused, only half to herself. "The Amyrlin we choose, she must be a skilled negotiator, yes?"

"Clear thinking will be needed," Carlinya put in. "The new Amyrlin must be a woman of cool reason and logic."

Morvrin's snort was loud enough to make everyone jump in their chairs. "Sheriam is the highest among us, and she has kept us together when we'd have been running in ten different directions."

Sheriam shook her head vigorously, but Myrelle gave her no chance to speak. "Sheriam is an excellent choice. I can promise every Green sister here behind her, I know." Anaiya opened her mouth, agreement plain on her face.

It was time to put a stop to this before it got out of hand. "If I may suggest?" Siuan thought she managed diffidence much better than she had meekness. It was a strain, but she thought she had better learn to maintain it. Myrelle isn't the only one who will try to stuff me in the bilges if they think I've overstepped my place. Whatever it is. Only they would not try; they would do. Aes Sedai expected - no, required - respect from those who were not. "It seems to me that whoever you choose should be someone who was not in the Tower when I... was deposed. Would it not be best if the woman who unites the Tower again was one whom no one could accuse of choosing a side on that day?" If she had to keep this up, she was going to burst a seam in her head.

"Someone very strong in the Power," Leane added. "The stronger she is, the more she can stand for all that the Tower means. Or will again, once Elaida is gone."

Siuan could have kicked her. That thought was supposed to wait a full day, to be tossed in once they actually began considering names. Between them, she and Leane knew enough of every sister to find some weakness, some doubt to be dangled subtly as to her fitness for stole and staff. She would rather wade naked through a school of silverpike than have these women realize that she was trying to manipulate them.

"A sister who was out of the Tower," Sheriam said, nodding. "That makes excellent sense, Siuan. Very good." How easily they slipped into patting her on the head.

Morvrin pursed her lips. "It will not be easy, finding whoever we choose."

"Strength narrows the possibilities." Anaiya looked around at the others. "It will not only make her a better symbol, to the other sisters at least, but strength in the Power often goes with strength of will, and whoever we choose will surely need that."

Carlinya and Beonin were the last to join in agreement.

Siuan kept her face smooth, her smile on the inside. The breaking of the Tower had changed many things, many ways of thinking besides her own. These women had led the sisters gathered here, and now they were discussing who should be presented to their new Hall of the Tower as if that should not be the Hall's choice. It would not be difficult to bring them around, ever so gently, to the belief that the new Amyrlin should be one who could be guided by them. And unknowing, they and the Amyrlin she chose for her replacement would be guided by herself. She and Moiraine had worked too long to find Rand al'Thor and prepare him, given too much of their lives, for her to risk the rest of it being bungled by someone else.

"If I may make another suggestion?" Diffidence was simply not in her nature; she was going to have to find something else. She waited, trying not to grit her teeth, for Sheriam to nod before going on. "Elaida will be attempting to discover where Rand al'Thor is; the farther south I came, the more rumors I heard that he has left Tear. I think that he has, and I think that I have reasoned out where he went."

There was no need for her to say that they had to find him before Tar Valon did. They all understood. Not only would Elaida mishandle him, certainly, but should she put her hands on him, display him shielded and in her control, any hope of toppling her would be gone. Rulers knew the Prophecies, if their people usually did not; they would forgive her a dozen false Dragons out of necessity.

"Where?" Morvrin barked, a hair ahead of Sheriam, Anaiya and Myrelle all together.

"The Aiel Waste."

There was a moment of silence before Carlinya said, "That is ridiculous."

Siuan bit back an angry reply and smiled what she hoped was an apologetic smile. "Perhaps, but I read something of the Aiel when I was Accepted. Gitara Moroso thought that some of the Aiel Wise Ones might be able to channel." Gitara had been Keeper then. "One of the books she had me read, an old thing from the dustiest corner of the library, claimed that the Aiel call themselves the People of the Dragon. I did not remember it until I tried puzzling out where Rand could have vanished to. The Prophecies say 'the Stone of Tear shall never fall till the People of the Dragon come,' and there were Aiel in the taking of the Stone. That, every rumor and tale agrees on."

Morvrin's eyes suddenly seemed to look elsewhere. "I remember speculation about the Wise Ones when I was newly raised to the shawl. It would be fascinating, if true, but Aiel are little more welcoming to Aes Sedai than to anyone else who enters the Waste, and their Wise Ones apparently have some law or custom against speaking to strangers, so I understand, which makes it extremely hard to come close enough to one, to feel if she - "Suddenly she gave herself a shake, staring at Siuan and Leane as though her wandering had been their fault. "A thin straw to weave a basket, something you remember from a book likely written by someone who never saw an Aiel."

"A very thin straw," Carlinya said.

"But worth sending someone to the Waste?" It took effort to make that a question instead of a demand. Siuan thought she might sweat down to nothing if she could not find another way. She still had enough control of herself to ignore the heat, usually, but not while trying to drag these women along without letting them notice her fist in their hair. "I do not think the Aiel would try to harm an Aes Sedai." Not if she was quick enough to show that she was Aes Sedai. Siuan did not think they would. It had to be risked. "And if he is in the Waste, the Aiel will know of it. Remember those Aiel at the Stone."

"Perhaps," Beonin said slowly. "The Waste is large. How many would we need to send?"

"If the Dragon Reborn is in the Waste," Anaiya said, "the first Aiel met will know of it. Events follow this Rand al'Thor, by all accounts. He could not slip into the ocean without making a splash heard in every corner of the world."

Myrelle smiled. "She should be Green. None of the rest of you will bond more than one Warder, and two or three Gaidin might be very useful in the Waste until the Aiel know her for Aes Sedai. I have always wanted to see an Aiel." She had been a novice during the Aiel War, and not allowed out of the Tower. Not that any Aes Sedai had taken part beyond Healing, of course. The Three Oaths had bound them unless Tar Valon, or maybe even the Tower itself, were attacked, and that war had never crossed the rivers.

"Not you," Sheriam told her, "or any other member of this council. You agreed to see this through, Myrelle, when you agreed to sit with us, and that does not include gallivanting off because you are bored. I fear there will be more excitement than any of us could wish, before we finish." She would have made an excellent Amyrlin in other circumstances; in these, she was simply too strong and sure of herself. "But Greens... Yes, I think so. Two?" Her green eyes swept along the others. "To be certain?"

"Kiruna Nachiman?" Anaiya, offered, and Beonin added, "Bera Harkin?" The others nodded, except for Myrelle, who shifted her shoulders irritably. Aes Sedai did not pout, but she came close.

Siuan took her second relieved breath. She was certain her reasoning was correct. He had vanished to somewhere, and if he was anywhere between the Spine of the World and the Aryth Ocean, rumors would have been flying. And wherever he was, Moiraine would be there with a hand on his collar. Kiruna and Bera would surely be willing to carry a letter to Moiraine, and they had seven Warders between them to keep the Aiel from killing them.

"We do not want to tire you and Leane," Sheriam went oh. "I will ask one of the Yellow sisters to look at both of you. Perhaps she can do something to help, to ease you in some way. I will have rooms found for you, where you can rest."

"If you are to be our mistress of eyes-and-ears," Myrelle added solicitously, "you must maintain your strength."

"I am not so frail as you seem to think," Siuan protested. "If I were, could I have followed you nearly two thousand miles? Whatever weakness I had after being stilled is gone, believe me." The truth was that she had found a center of power again, and she did not want to leave it, but she could hardly say that. All those concerned eyes on her, and Leane. Well, not Carlinya's particularly, but the rest. Light! They're going to have a novice tuck us into bed for a nap!

A knock at the door was followed immediately by Arinvar, Sheriam's Warder. Cairhienin, he was not tall, and slender besides, but in spite of gray at his temples he was hard of face, and he moved like a stalking leopard. "There are twenty-odd riders to the east," he said without preamble.

"Not Whitecloaks," Carlinya said, "or I presume you would have reported as much."

Sheriam gave her a look. Many sisters could be prickly when it came to another stepping between them and their Gaidin. "We cannot allow them to get away, and perhaps carry word of our presence. Can they be captured, Arinvar? I would prefer that to killing them."

"Either may be difficult," he replied. "Machan says they are armed and have the look of veterans. Worth ten times their number of younger men."

Morvrin made a vexed sound. "We must do one or the other. Forgive me, Sheriam. Arinvar, can the Gaidin sneak some of the more agile sisters close enough to weave Air around them?"

He shook his head fractionally. "Machan says they may have seen some of the Warders keeping watch. They would certainly see if we tried to bring more than one or two of you near. They are still coming, though."

Siuan and Leane were not the only ones to exchange startled glances. Few men saw a Warder who did not want to be seen, even without the Gaidin cloak.

"Then you must do as you think best," Sheriam said. "Capture them, if possible. But none must escape to betray us."

Before Arinvar could complete his bow, hand to sword hilt, another man was beside him, a dark bear of a man, tall and wide, with hair to his shoulders and a short beard that left his upper lip bare. That flowing Warder movement seemed odd on him. He winked at Myrelle, his Aes Sedai, even as he said in a thick Illianer accent, "Most of the riders do be stopped, but one does come on by himself. If my aged mother did say different, I would still name him Gareth Bryne from the glimpse I did get."

Siuan stared at him; her hands and feet suddenly felt cold. Strong rumor said that Myrelle had actually married this Nuhel and her other two Warders, in defiance of convention and law in every land Siuan had ever heard of. It was the sort of incongruous thought that drifted through a stunned mind, and right then she felt as if a mast had fallen on her head. Bryne, here? It's impossible! It is mad! Surely the man could not have followed them all this way for... Oh yes, he could and would. That one would. As they journeyed, she had told herself that it was only sensible caution to leave no trace behind, that Elaida knew they were not dead, whatever the rumors said, and she would not stop hunting until they were found or she was pulled down. Siuan had been irritated at having to ask directions finally, yet the thought that had snapped at her like a shark had not been that Elaida might somehow find a blacksmith in one small Altaran village, but that the blacksmith would be like a painted sign for Bryne. Told yourself it was foolish, didn't you? And now here he is.

She well remembered her confrontation with him, when she had had to bend him to her will on that matter of Murandy. It had been like bending a thick iron bar, or some huge spring that would leap back if she let up for an instant. She had had to bring all of her force to bear, had had to humiliate him publicly, in order to make certain he would remain bent for as long as she needed. He could hardly go against what he had agreed to on his knees, begging her pardon, with fifty nobles watching. Morgase had been difficult enough herself, and Siuan had not been willing to risk Bryne giving Morgase an excuse to go against her instructions. Strange to think that she and Elaida had worked together then, bringing Morgase to heel.

She had to take hold of herself. She was in a daze, thinking of everything except what she needed to. Concentrate. This is no time to panic. "You must send him away. Or kill him."

She knew it for a mistake while the words were still leaving her mouth, all too full of urgency. Even the Warders looked at her, and the Aes Sedai... She had never before known what it felt like for someone who lacked the Power to have those eyes turned on them at full strength. She felt naked, her very mind laid bare. Even knowing that Aes Sedai could not read thoughts, she still wanted to confess before they listed her lies and crimes. She hoped that her face was not like Leane's, red-cheeked and wide-eyed.

"You know why he is here." Sheriam's voice was calmly certain. "Both of you do. And you do not want to confront him. Enough so that you would have us kill him for you."

"There do be few great captains living." Nuhel marked them off on gauntleted fingers. "Agelmar Jagad and Davram Bashere will no leave the Blight, I think, and Pedron Niall will surely no be of use to you. If Rodel Ituralde do be alive, he do be mired somewhere in what do remain of Arad Doman." He raised his thick thumb. "And that do leave Gareth Bryne."

"Do you think that we will need a great captain, then?" Sheriam asked quietly.

Nuhel and Arinvar did not look at one another, but Siuan still had the feeling that they had exchanged glances. "It is your decision, Sheriam," Arinvar replied just as quietly, "yours and the other sisters, but if you mean to return to the Tower, we could use him. If you intend to remain here until Elaida sends for you, then not." Myrelle gazed at Nuhel questioningly, and he nodded.

"It seems that you were right, Siuan," Anaiya said wryly. "We have not fooled the Gaidin."

"The question is whether he will agree to serve us," Carlinya said, and Morvrin nodded, adding, "We must make him see our cause in such a way that he wishes to serve. It will not help us if it becomes known that we killed or imprisoned so notable a man before we have even begun."

"Yes," Beonin said, "and we must offer him the rewards that will bind him to us firmly."

Sheriam turned her eyes on the two men. "When Lord Bryne reaches the village, tell him nothing, but bring him to us." As soon as the door closed behind the Warders, her gaze firmed. Siuan recognized it; the same clear green stare that had novices' knees knocking before a word was said. "Now. You will tell us exactly why Gareth Bryne is here."

There was no choice. If they caught her in even the tiniest lie, they would begin to question everything. Siuan took a deep breath. "We took shelter for the night in a barn near Kore Springs, in Andor. Bryne is the lord there, and..."