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Authors: Robert Jordan

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Elayne found herself studying him much as she had the dolphins. What kind of man was this? Twice now he might have laughed at her—he
had
been amused just then, as much as she hated to admit it—but instead he talked to her as seriously as … . Well, as father to daughter. “You might find a few answers on this ship, Thom. They were bound east until we convinced the Sailmistress to take us to Tanchico. To Shara, the Cargomaster said, east of Mayene; that must mean beyond the Waste.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Shara, you say? I have never heard any such name before. Is Shara city or nation or both? Perhaps I will learn a little more.”
What did I say
? she wondered.
I said something to make him think. Light! I told him we convinced Coine to change her plans.
It could not make any difference, but she scolded herself severely. A careless word to this nice old man might do no harm, but the same might kill her in Tanchico, and Nynaeve, too, not to mention the thief-catcher and Thom himself. If he was such a nice old man. “Thom, why did you come with us? Just because Moiraine asked?”
His shoulders shook; she realized he was laughing at himself. “As to that, who can say? Aes Sedai asking favors are not easily resisted. Perhaps it was the prospect of your pleasant company for the voyage. Or perhaps I decided Rand is old enough to look after himself for a while.”
He laughed out loud, and she had to laugh with him. The idea of this white-haired old fellow looking after Rand. The feeling that she could trust him came back, stronger than ever, as he looked at her. Not because he could laugh at himself, or not only that. She could not have given a reason beyond the fact that, looking up into those blue eyes, she could not make herself believe this man would ever do anything to harm her.
The urge to pull one of his mustaches again was almost overwhelming, but she schooled her hands to stillness. She was not a child, after all. A child. She opened her mouth—and suddenly everything went out of her head.
“Please excuse me, Thom,” she said hurriedly. “I must … . Excuse me.” She started toward the stern quickly, not waiting for a reply. He probably thought the ship’s motion had upset her stomach.
Wavedancer
was pitching more rapidly, moving faster through the great sea swells as the wind freshened.
Two men stood at the wheel on the sterndeck, the muscle of both needed
to hold the vessel on course. The Sailmistress was not on deck, but the Windfinder was, standing at the rail beyond the wheelmen, bare to the waist like the men, studying the sky where billowing clouds rolled more fiercely than the ocean. For once it was not Jorin’s state of dress—or undress—that bothered Elayne. The glow of a woman embracing
saidar
surrounded her, clearly visible despite the lurid light. That was what she had felt, what had drawn her. A woman channeling.
Elayne stopped short of the sterndeck to study what she was doing. The flows of Air and Water the Windfinder handled were cable-thick, yet her weaving was intricate, almost delicate, and it reached as far as the eye could see across the waters, a web drawn across the sky. The wind rose higher, higher; the wheelmen strained, and
Wavedancer
flew through the sea. The weaving stopped, the glow of
saidar
vanished, and Jorin slumped at the rail, leaning on her hands.
Elayne climbed the ladder quietly, yet the Sea Folk woman spoke in a soft voice without turning her head as soon as she was near enough to hear. “In the middle as I worked, I thought that you were watching me. I could not stop then; there might have been a storm even
Wavedancer
could not survive. The Sea of Storms is well named; it will throw up bad winds enough without my help. I meant not to do this at all, but Coine said we must go quickly. For you, and for the Coramoor.” She raised her eyes to peer at the sky. “This wind will hold until morning, if it pleases the Light.”
“This is why the Sea Folk do not carry Aes Sedai?” Elayne said, taking a place beside her at the rail. “So the Tower won’t learn Windfinders can channel. That is why it was your decision to let us aboard, not your sister’s. Jorin, the Tower will not try to stop you. There is no law in the Tower to stop any woman channeling, even if she is not Aes Sedai.”
“Your White Tower will interfere. It will try to reach onto our ships, where we are free of the land and landsmen. It will try to tie us to itself, binding us away from the sea.” She sighed heavily. “The wave that has passed cannot be called back.”
Elayne wished she could tell her it was not so, but the Tower did seek out women and girls who could learn to channel, both to bolster the numbers of Aes Sedai, dwindling now compared to what they once had been, and because of the danger of learning unguided. In truth, a woman who could be taught to touch the True Source usually found herself in the Tower whatever she wanted, at least until she was trained enough not to kill herself or others by accident.
After a moment Jorin went on. “It is not all of us. Only some. We send a few girls to Tar Valon so Aes Sedai will not come looking among us. No ship will carry Aes Sedai whose Windfinder can weave the winds. When you first named yourselves, I thought you must know me, but you did not speak, and you asked passage, and I hoped perhaps you were not Aes Sedai despite your rings. A foolish hope. I could feel the strength of you both. And now the White Tower will know.”
“I cannot promise to keep your secret, but I will do what I can.” The woman deserved more. “Jorin, I swear by the honor of House Trakand of Andor that I will do my best to keep your secret from any who would harm you or your people, and that if I must reveal it to anyone, I will do all in my ability to protect your people from interference. House Trakand is not without influence, even in the Tower.”
And I will make mother use it, if need be. Somehow.
“If it pleases the Light,” Jorin said fatalistically, “all will be well. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well, if it pleases the Light.”
“There was a
damane
on that Seanchan ship, wasn’t there?” The Windfinder gave her a quizzical look. “One of the captive women who can channel.”
“You see deeply for one so young. That is why I first thought you might not be Aes Sedai, because you are so young; I have daughters older than you, I think. I did not know she was a captive; that makes me wish we could have saved her.
Wavedancer
outran the Seanchan vessel easily at first—we had heard of the Seanchan and their vessels with ribbed sails, that they demanded strange oaths and punished those who would not give them—but then the—
damane
?—broke two of his masts, and they boarded him with swords. I managed to start fires on the Seanchan vessel—weaving Fire is difficult for me beyond lighting a lamp, but it pleased the Light to make it enough—and Toram led the crew to fight the Seanchan back to their own decks. We cut loose the boarding hooks, and their ship drifted away, burning. They were too occupied with trying to save him to bother us as we limped away. I regretted seeing him burn and sink, then; he was a fine ship, I think, for heavy seas. Now I regret it because we might have saved the woman, the
damane.
Even if she damaged him, perhaps she would not have, free. The Light illumine her soul, and the waters take her peacefully.”
Telling the story had saddened her. She needed to be distracted. “Jorin,
why do the Atha’an Miere call ships ‘he’? Everyone else I’ve ever met calls them ‘she.’ I don’t suppose it makes any difference, but why?”
“The men will give you a different answer,” the Windfinder said, smiling, “speaking of strength and grandness and the like as men will, but this is the truth. A ship is alive, and he is like a man, with a true man’s heart.” She rubbed the rail fondly, as if stroking something alive, something that could feel her caress. “Treat him well and care for him properly, and he will fight for you against the worst sea. He will fight to keep you alive even after the sea has long since given him his own deathstroke. Neglect him, though, ignore the small warnings he gives of danger, and he will drown you in a flat sea beneath a cloudless sky.”
Elayne hoped Rand was not as fickle as that.
Then why does he hop about, glad to see me go one minute and sending Juilin Sandar after me the next?
She told herself to stop thinking about him. He was a long way away. There was nothing to be done about him now.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the bow. Thom was gone. She was sure she had found the key to his puzzle, just before she had felt the Windfinder channeling. Something to do with his smile. It was gone, whatever it was. Well, she meant to find it again before they reached Tanchico, if she had to sit on him. But he would still be there in the morning. “Jorin, how long before we reach Tanchico? I have been told rakers are the fastest ships in the world, but how fast?”
“To Tanchico? To serve the Coramoor, we will not stop at any port between. Perhaps ten days, if I can weave the winds well enough, if it pleases the Light that I find the proper currents. Perhaps as few as seven or eight, with the grace of the Light.”
“Ten days?” Elayne gasped. “It cannot be possible.” She had seen maps, after all.
The other woman’s smile was half pride, half indulgence. “As you yourself said, the fastest ships in the world. The next quickest take half again as long over any stretch, and most more than twice as long. Coasting craft that hug the shore and anchor in the shallows each night …” She sniffed contemptuously. “ … require ten times as much.”
“Jorin, would you teach me to do what you were just doing?”
The Windfinder stared, her dark eyes wide and shining in the fading light. “Teach you? But you are Aes Sedai.”
“Jorin, I have never woven a flow half as thick as those you were handling. And the scope of it! I am astounded, Jorin.”
The Windfinder stared a moment more, no longer in amazement, but as if trying to fix Elayne’s face in her mind. Finally she kissed the fingers of her right hand and pressed them to Elayne’s lips. “If it pleases the Light, we both shall learn.”
Into the Heart
T
airen nobility filled the great vaulted chamber with its huge polished redstone columns, ten feet thick, rising into shadowed heights above golden lamps hanging on golden chains. The High Lords and Ladies were arrayed in a thick hollow circle under the great dome at the chamber’s heart with the lesser nobles ranked behind, row on row back into the forest of columns, all in their best velvets and silks and laces, wide sleeves and ruffed collars and peaked hats, all murmuring uneasily so the towering ceiling echoed the sounds of nervous geese. Only the High Lords themselves had ever before been bidden to this place, called the Heart of the Stone, and they had come only four times a year, at the twin demands of law and custom. They came now, all who were not out in the countryside somewhere, at the summons of their new lord, the maker of law and breaker of custom.
The packed crowd gave way before Moiraine as soon as they saw who she was, so she and Egwene moved in a pocket of open space. Lan’s absence irritated Moiraine. It was not like the man to vanish when she might need him; his way usually was to watch over her as if she could not fend for herself without a guardian. Had she not been able to feel the bond linking them and known he could not be very far from the Stone, she might have worried.
He fought the strings Nynaeve was tying to him as hard as he had ever
fought Trollocs in the Blight, but much as he might deny it, that young woman had bound him as tightly as she herself did, though in other ways. He might as well try tearing steel with his hands as those ties. She was not jealous, exactly, but Lan had been her sword arm, her shield and companion for too many years for her to give him up lightly.
I have done what had to be done, there. She will have him if I die, and not before. Where is the man? What is he doing?
One red-gowned lace-ruffed woman, a horse-faced Lady of the Land called Leitha, drew her skirts away a bit too assiduously, and Moiraine looked at her. Merely looked, without slowing her step, but the woman shuddered and dropped her eyes. Moiraine nodded to herself. She could accept that these people hated Aes Sedai, but she would not endure open rudeness on top of veiled slights. Besides, the rest shied back another step after seeing Leitha faced down.
“Are you certain he said nothing of what he means to announce?” she asked quietly. In this gabble, no one three paces away could have made out a word. The Tairens kept about that distance now. She did not like being overheard.
“Nothing,” Egwene said just as softly. She sounded as irritated as Moiraine felt.
“There have been rumors.”
“Rumors? What sort of rumors?”
The girl was not that good at controlling her face and voice; clearly she had not heard the tales, of doings in the Two Rivers. Betting that Rand had not, though, might be putting her horse at a ten-foot fence. “You should bring him to confide in you. He needs an attentive ear. It will help him, to talk out his troubles with someone he can trust.” Egwene gave her a sidelong glance. She was becoming too sophisticated for such simple methods. Still, Moiraine had spoken unadorned truth—the boy did need someone to listen and by listening lighten his burdens—and it might work.
“He will not confide in anyone, Moiraine. He hides his pains, and hopes he can deal with them before anyone notices.” Anger flashed across Egwene’s face. “The wool-brained mule!”
Moiraine felt a momentary sympathy. The girl could not be expected to accept Rand’s strolling about arm in arm with Elayne, kissing in corners where they thought themselves unseen. And Egwene did not know the half, yet. Commiseration did not last. There was too much of importance
to deal with for the girl to be fretting over what she could not have in any case.
Elayne and Nynaeve should be aboard the raker by now, out of the way. Their voyage might eventually tell her if her suspicions about the Windfinders were correct. That was a minor point, though. At worst the pair had enough gold to buy a ship and hire a crew—which might be necessary given the rumors of Tanchico—with enough left for the bribes so often necessary with Taraboner officials. Thom Merrilin’s room was empty, and her informants had reported him muttering about Tanchico on his way out of the Stone; he would see they got a good crew and found the right officials. The purported plan with Mazrim Taim was much the more likely of the two, but her messages to the Amyrlin should have taken care of that. The two young women could handle the much less likely eventuality of a mysterious danger hidden in Tanchico, and they were out of her hair and away from Rand. She only regretted that Egwene had refused to go with them. Tar Valon would have been best for all three, but Tanchico would do.
“Speaking of wool-brained, do you mean to continue with this plan to go into the Waste?”
“I do,” the girl said firmly. She needed to be back in the Tower, training her strength.
What was Siuan thinking of? She will probably give me one of those sayings about boats and fish, when I can ask her.
At least Egwene would be out of the way, too, and the Aiel girl would look after her. Perhaps the Wise Ones really could teach her something of Dreaming. That had been the most astounding letter from them, not that she could afford to heed most of it. Egwene’s journey into the Waste might be useful in the long run.
The last line of Tairens gave way, making a little hollow, and she and Egwene faced the open area under the vast dome. The nobles’ ill ease was most evident here; many studied their feet like sulky children, and others stared at nothing, looking at anything but where they were. Here was where
Callandor
had been kept before Rand took it. Here beneath this dome, untouched by any hand for more than three thousand years, untouchable by any hand but that of the Dragon Reborn. Tairens did not like admitting that the Heart of the Stone existed.
“Poor woman,” Egwene murmured.
Moiraine followed the girl’s gaze. The High Lady Alteima, already
gowned and ruffed and capped in shimmering white as Tairen widows were though her husband still lingered, was perhaps the most composed of all the nobles. She was a slender, lovely woman, made more so by her small sad smile, with large brown eyes and long black hair hanging halfway to her waist. A tall woman, though Moiraine admitted she did tend to judge such things by her own height, and rather too full-bosomed. Cairhienin were not a tall people, and she had been considered short even among them.
“Yes, a poor woman,” she said, but she did not mean it for sympathy. It was good to see Egwene had not yet grown sophisticated enough to see beneath the surface all the time. The girl was already far less malleable than she should have been for years yet. She needed to be shaped before she was hardened.
Thom had missed, with Alteima. Or perhaps he had not wanted to see; he seemed to have a strange reluctance to move against women. The High Lady Alteima was far more dangerous than her husband or her lover, both of whom she had manipulated without either knowing it. Perhaps more dangerous than anyone else in Tear, man or woman. She would find others to use soon enough. It was Alteima’s style to remain in the background and pull strings. Something would have to be done about her.
Moiraine shifted her gaze along the rows of High Lords and Ladies, until she found Estanda, in brocaded yellow silks with a large ivory lace ruff and a tiny matching cap. A certain sternness marred the beauty of her face, and the occasional glances she gave Alteima were iron hard. Feelings between the two went beyond mere rivalry; had they been men, one would have shed the other’s blood in a duel years since. If that antagonism could be sharpened, Alteima would be too busy to make trouble for Rand.
For an instant she regretted sending Thom away. She did not like having to waste her time with these petty affairs. But he had too much influence with Rand; the boy had to depend on her counsel. Hers, and hers alone. The Light knew he was difficult enough without interference. Thom had been settling the boy down to rule Tear when he needed to be moving on to greater things. But that was dealt with for now. The problem of bringing Thom Merrilin to heel could be managed later. Rand was the dilemma now. What did he mean to announce?
“Where is he? He has learned the first art of kings, it seems. Making people wait.”
She did not realize she had spoken aloud until Egwene gave her a
startled look. She smoothed the irritation from her face immediately. Rand would appear eventually, and she would learn what he meant to do. Learn along with everyone else. She nearly ground her teeth. That blind fool of a boy, running headlong through the night with never a care for cliffs, never thinking he could carry the world over as well as himself. If only she could keep him from rushing back to save his village. He would want to, but he could not afford to do so now. Perhaps he did not know; it could be hoped.
Mat stood across from them, uncombed and slouching with his hands in the pockets of his high-collared green coat. It was half-unbuttoned, as usual, and his boots were scuffed, in sharp contrast to the precise elegance around him. He shifted nervously as he saw her looking at him, then gave one of his rudely defiant grins. At least he was here, under her eye. Mat Cauthon was an exhausting young man to keep track of, avoiding her spies with ease; he never gave any sign that he knew they were there, but her eyes-and-ears reported that he seemed to slide out of sight whenever they got too close.
“I think he sleeps in his coats,” Egwene said disapprovingly. “On purpose. I wonder where Perrin is.” She went on tiptoes, trying to search over the heads of the assemblage. “I don’t see him.”
Frowning, Moiraine scanned the crowd, not that she could make out much beyond the front row. Lan could have been back among the columns. She would not strain, though, or jump up on her toes like an anxious child. Lan was due a talking-to he would not soon forget when she laid hands on him. With Nynaeve tugging at him one way and
ta’veren
—Rand, at least—seemingly pulling another, she sometimes wondered how well their bond still held. At least his time with Rand was useful; it gave her another string to the young man.
“Perhaps he is with Faile,” Egwene said. “He won’t have run away, Moiraine. Perrin has a strong sense of duty.”
Almost as strong as a Warder’s, Moiraine knew, which was why she did not keep eyes-and-ears on him as she tried to with Mat. “Faile has been trying to talk him into leaving, girl.” Quite possibly he was with her; he usually was. “Do not look so surprised. They often talk—and argue—where they can be overheard.”
“I am not surprised you know,” Egwene said dryly, “only that Faile would try to talk him out of what he knows he has to do.”
“Perhaps she does not believe it as he does.” Moiraine had not believed it herself, at first, had not seen it. Three
ta’veren
, all the same age,
coming out of one village; she must have been blind not to realize they had to be connected. Everything had become much more complicated with that knowledge. Like trying to juggle three of Thom’s colored balls one-handed and blindfolded; she had seen Thom do that, but she would not want to try. There was no guide to how they were connected, or what they were supposed to do; the Prophecies never mentioned companions.
“I like her,” Egwene said. “She is good for him, just what he needs. And she cares for him deeply.”
“I suppose she does.” If Faile became too troublesome, Moiraine would have to have a talk with her, about the secrets Faile had been keeping from Perrin. Or have one of her eyes-and-ears do it. That should settle her down.
“You say it as if you don’t believe it. They love each other, Moiraine. Can’t you see that? Can’t you even recognize a human emotion when you see one?”
Moiraine gave her a firm look, one that settled her on her heels in a satisfactory manner. The girl knew so little and thought she knew so much. Moiraine was about to tell her so in withering fashion when startled, even fearful, gasps rose from among the Tairens.
The crowd gave way hurriedly, more than eagerly, those in front ruthlessly forcing those behind farther back, opening a wide passage to the space beneath the dome. Rand strode down that corridor, looking straight ahead, imperious in a red coat embroidered with golden scrolls up his sleeves, cradling
Callandor
in his right arm like a scepter. It was not only he that made the Tairens give way, though. Behind him came perhaps a hundred Aiel, spears and arrow-nocked bows in hand,
shoufa
wrapped around their heads, black veils hiding everything but their eyes. Moiraine thought she recognized Rhuarc at the front, just behind Rand, but only by the way he moved. They were anonymous. Ready for killing. Plainly, whatever he meant to say, Rand intended to quell any resistance before it had a chance to coalesce.

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