Faile frowned as she watched the woman go. She should have felt exultation, but she did not. Galina seemed almost a wild thing, unpredictable. Still, Aes Sedai could not lie. There seemed no way for her to wriggle out of her promise. And if she found one, there were still her own plans for an escape, though those seemed no further along, if much more dangerous, than they had when first begun. Which left Rolan. And his kissing games. Galina had to prove true. She had to.

CHAPTER 27 A Plain Wooden Box

The midday Altaran sun was warm, though a gusting breeze sometimes whipped Rand's cloak. They had been on the hilltop for two hours, now. A great mass of dark clouds creeping down from the north above blue-gray haze spoke of rain to come, and a cooling. Andor lay only a few miles in that direction across low, forested hills of oak and pine, leatherleaf and sourgum. That border had seen countless generations of cattle raids going in both directions.

Was Elayne watching it rain in Caemlyn? That lay a good hundred and fifty leagues east, too far for her to be more than a faint presence in the back of his head. Aviendha, in Arad Doman, was fainter still. He had not considered that the Wise Ones would take her along. Still, she would be safe among tens of thousands of Aiel, as safe as Elayne behind Caemlyn's walls.

Tai'daishar stamped a hoof and tossed his head, eager to be moving. Rand patted the big black's neck. The stallion could reach the border in under an hour, but their way was west today. A short way west in just a short while, now.

He had to impress at today's meeting, and he had chosen his garb with care. The Crown of Swords sat on his head for more reason than making an impression, though. Half the small swords nestled among the wide band of laurel leaves pointed down, making it uncomfortable to wear, giving constant reminders of its weight, in gold and in responsibility. A small chip in one of those laurel leaves dug at his temple to remind him of the battle against the Seanchan where it had been made. A battle lost when he could not afford to lose. His dark green silk coat was embroidered in gold on the sleeves, shoulders and high collar, a gold-inlaid buckle in the shape of a dragon fastened his sword-belt, and he had the Dragon Scepter in hand, a two-foot length of spearhead with a long green-and-white tassel below the polished steel point. If the Daughter of the Nine Moons recognized it for part of a Seanchan spear, she must also see the dragons that Maidens had carved winding around the remaining haft. Today, he wore no gloves. The golden-maned dragonheads on the backs of his hands glittered metallically in the sun. However high she stood among the Seanchan, she would know whom she faced.

A fool. Lews Therin's wild laughter echoed inside his head. A fool to walk into a trap.

Rand ignored the madman. It might be a trap, but he was ready to spring it if it was. It was worth the risk. He needed this truce. He could crush the Seanchan, but at what cost in blood, and in time he might not have?

He glanced north again. The sky above Andor was clear except for a few high white clouds, drifting wisps. The Last Battle was coming. He had to take the risk.

Min, toying with the reins of her gray mare nearby, was feeling smug, and that irritated him. She had inveigled a promise from him in a weak moment and refused to release him. He could just break it. He should break it.

As if she had heard his thoughts, she looked at him. Her face, surrounded by dark shoulder-length ringlets, was smooth, but the bond suddenly carried suspicion and hints of anger. She seemed to be trying to suppress both, yet she adjusted the cuffs of her ornately embroidered red coat the way she did when checking her knives. Of course, she would not use one of her blades on him. Of course not.

A woman's love can be violent, Lews Therin murmured. Sometimes they hurt a man worse than they think they have, worse than they mean to. Sometimes, they're even sorry afterwards. He sounded sane for the moment, but Rand shoved the voice down.

"You should let us scout farther out, Rand al'Thor," Nandera said. She and the two dozen other Maidens on the sparsely wooded hilltop wore their black veils up. Some had their bows in hand and arrows nocked. The rest of the Maidens were among the trees well out from the hill, keeping watch against unpleasant surprises. "The land is clear all the way to the manor house, but this still smells of a trap to me." There had been a time when words like "manor" and "house" sounded awkward on her tongue. She had been a long time in the wetlands now, though.

"Nandera speaks truth," Alivia muttered sullenly, heeling her roan gelding closer. Apparently the golden-haired woman still resented the fact that she would not be going with him, but her reaction to hearing her native accents in Tear made that impossible. She admitted having been shaken, but claimed it had been the surprise of the thing. He could not chance it, though. "You cannot trust any of the High Blood. especially not a daughter of the Empress, may she—" Her mouth snapped shut, and she smoothed her dark blue skirts unnecessarily, grimacing at what she had almost said. He trusted her, literally with his life, but she had too many deep-buried instincts to risk putting her face-to-face with the woman he was going to meet. The bond carried anger with no effort to suppress it, now. Min disliked seeing Alivia near him.

"It smells of a trap to me, too," Bashere said, easing his sinuously curved sword in its scabbard. He was plainly clad, in burnished helmet and breastplate, his gray silk coat alone marking him out from the eighty-one Saldaean lancers arrayed around the hilltop. His thick, down-curved mustaches almost bristled behind the face-bars of his helmet. "I'd give ten thousand crowns to know how many soldiers she has out there. And how many damane. This Daughter of the Nine Moons is the heir to their throne, man." He had been shocked when Alivia revealed that. No one in Ebou Dar had mentioned it to him, as if it were of no importance. "They may claim their control ends far south of here, but you can wager she has at least a small army to see to her safety."

"And if our scouts find this army," Rand replied calmly, "can we be sure they won't be seen?" Nandera made a scornful sound. "Best not to assume you're the only one with eyes," he told her. "If they think we're planning to attack them or kidnap the woman, everything falls apart." Maybe that was why they had kept their secret. The Imperial heir would be a more tempting target for a kidnapping than a mere high-ranking noblewoman. "You just keep watch to make sure they don't catch us by surprise. If it all goes wrong, Bashere, you know what to do. Besides, she may have an army, but so do I, and not so small."

Bashere had to nod at that. Aside from the Saldaeans and the Maidens, the hilltop was crowded with Asha'man and Aes Sedai and Warders, better than twenty-five all told, and as formidable a group as any small army. They mingled with surprising ease, and few outward signs of tension.

Oh, Toveine, a short, coppery-skinned Red, was scowling at Logain, but Gabrelle, a dusky Brown with sooty green eyes, was talking with him quite companionabiy, perhaps even coquettishly. That might have been the reason for Toveine's scowl, though disapproval seemed more likely than jealousy. Adrielle and Kurin each had an arm around the other's waist, though she was tall enough to overtop the Domani Asha'man, and beautiful where he was plain and had gray at his temples. Not to mention that he had bonded the Gray against her will.

Beldeine, new enough to the shawl that she simply looked like any young Saldaean woman with slightly tilted brown eyes, reached out every now and then to touch Manfor, and he smiled at her whenever she did. Her bonding of him had been a shock, but apparently the yellow-haired man had been more than willing. Neither had asked Rand his opinion before the bonding.

Strangest of all perhaps were Jenare, pale and sturdy in a gray riding dress embroidered with red on the skirts, and Kajima, a clerkish fellow in his middle years who wore his hair like Narishma, in two braids with silver bells at the ends. She laughed at something Kajima said, and murmured something that made him laugh in turn. A Red joking with a man who could channel! Maybe Taim had effected a change for the better, whatever he had intended. And maybe Rand al'Thor was living in a dream, too. Aes Sedai were famous for their dissembling. But could a Red dissemble that far?

No

t everyone felt agreeable today. Ayako's eyes seemed almost black as she glared at Rand, but then, considering what happened to a Warder when his Aes Sedai died, the dark-complected little White had reason to fear Sandomere going into possible danger. The Asha'man bond differed from the Warder bond in some respects, but in others it was identical, and no one yet knew the effects of an Asha'man's death on the woman he had bonded.

Elza was frowning at Rand, too, one hand on the shoulder of her tall, lean Warder Fearil as if she were gripping a guard dog's collar and thinking of loosing him. Not against Rand, certainly, but he worried for anyone she thought might be threatening him. He had given her orders about that, and her oath should see them obeyed, yet Aes Sedai could find loopholes in almost anything.

Merise was speaking firmly to Narishma, with her other two Warders sitting their horses a little way off. There was no mistaking the way the stern-faced woman gestured as she spoke, leaning close to him so she could speak in a low voice. She was instructing him about something. Rand disliked that in the circumstances, yet there seemed little he could do. Merise had sworn no oaths, and she would ignore him when it came to one of her Warders. Or much of anything else, for that matter.

Cadsuane was watching Rand, too. She and Nynaeve were wearing all of their ter'angreal jewelry. Nynaeve was making a good try at Aes Sedai calm. She seemed to practice that a great deal since sending Lan wherever she had sent him. Half the hilltop separated her plump brown mare from Cadsuane's bay, of course. Nynaeve would never admit it, but Cadsuane intimidated her.

Logain rode up between Rand and Bashere, his black gelding prancing. The horse was almost the exact shade of his coat and cloak. "The sun is almost straight overhead," he said. "Time we go down?" There was only a mere hint of question in that. The man chafed at taking orders. He did not wait on a reply. "Sandomere!" he called loudly. "Narishma!"

Merise held Narishma by his sleeve for another moment of instructions before letting him ride over, which made Logain scowl. Sun-dark Narishma with his dark, belled braids looked years younger than Rand, though he was a few years older in truth. Sitting his dun as straight as a sword, he nodded to Logain as to an equal, producing another scowl.

Sandomere spoke a quiet word to Ayako before mounting his dapple, and she touched his thigh once he was in the saddle. Wrinkled, with receding hair and a gray-streaked beard trimmed to a point and oiled, he made her appear youthful rather than ageless. He wore the red-and-gold dragon on his high black collar, now, as well as the silver sword. Every Asha'man on the hill did, even Manfor. He had only recently been raised to Dedicated, but he had been one of the first to come to the Black Tower, before there was a Black Tower. Most of the men who had begun with him were dead. Even Logain had not denied he deserved it.

Logain had enough sense not to call Cadsuane or Nynaeve, but they rode to join Rand anyway, placing themselves to either side of him, each briefly eyeing him, faces so smooth they might have been thinking anything. Their eyes met, and Nynaeve looked away quickly. Cadsuane gave a faint snort. And Min came, too. His "one more" to balance the honors. A man should never give promises in bed. He opened his mouth, and she arched an eyebrow, looking at him very directly. The bond felt full of. . . something dangerous.

"You stay behind me once we get there," he told her, not at all what he had intended to say.

Danger faded to what he had come to recognize as love. There was wry amusement in the bond, too, for some reason. "I will if I want to, you wool-headed sheepherder," she said with more than a little asperity, just as if the bond would not tell him her true feelings. Hard as those might be to decipher.

"If we're going to do this fool thing, let's get it done with," Cadsuane said firmly, and heeled her dark bay down the hill.

A short distance from the hill, farms began to appear along a meandering dirt road through the forest, hard-packed by long years of use but still carrying a slick of mud from the last rainfall. The chimneys of thatched stone houses smoked with the midday meal-cooking. Sometimes girls and women sat out in the sun at their spinning wheels. Men in rough coats walked in the stone-walled fields checking their sprouting crops amid boys hoeing weeds. The pastures held brown-and-white cattle or black-tailed sheep, usually watched by a boy or two with bows or slings. There were wolves in these forests, and leopards and other things that enjoyed the taste of beef and mutton.

Some people shaded their eyes to peer at the passersby, doubtless wondering who these finely dressed folk were who had come to visit the Lady Deirdru. Surely there could be no other reason for their presence, heading toward the manor house and so far from anywhere important. No one seemed agitated or frightened, though, just going about their day's work. Rumors of an army in the region surely would have upset them, and rumors of that sort spread like wildfire. Strange. The Seanchan could not Travel and arrive without news speeding ahead of them. It was very strange.

He felt Logain and the other two men seize saidin, filling themselves with it. Logain held almost as much as he could have himself, Narishma and Sandomere somewhat less. They were the strongest among the other Asha'man, though, and both had been at Dumai's Wells. Logain had proven he could handle himself in other places, other battles. If this was a trap, they would be ready, and the other side would never know it until too late. Rand did not reach for the Source. He could feel Lews Therin lurking in his head. This was no time to give the madman a chance to get hold of the Power.

"Cadsuane, Nynaeve, you'd better embrace the Source now," he said. "We're getting close."

"I've been holding saidar since back on that hill," Nynaeve told him. Cadsuane snorted and gave him a look that called him an idiot.

Rand stilled a grimace before it could begin. His skin felt no tingling, no goosebumps. They had masked their ability, and with it, shielded him from sensing the Power in them. Men had had few advantages over women when it came to channeling, but now they had lost those few while women retained all of theirs. Some of the Asha'-man were trying to puzzle out how to duplicate what Nacelle had created, to find a weave that would allow men to detect women's weaves, but so far without success. Well, it would have to be dealt with by someone else. He had all he could manage on his plate at the moment.

The farms continued, some alone in a clearing, others clustered three or four or five together. If they followed the road far enough they would reach the village of King's Crossing in a few miles, where a wooden bridge spanned a narrow river called the Reshalle, but well short of that the road passed by a large clearing marked by a pair of tall stone gateposts, though there were neither gates nor fence. A hundred paces or more beyond it, at the end of a mud-slicked clay lane, lay Lady Deidru's manor, two stories of thatch-roofed gray stone saved from looking a large farmhouse only by the gateposts and the tall twinned doors at the front. The stables and outbuildings had the same practical appearance, sturdy and unornamented. There was no one in sight, no stablemen, no servant on her way to fetch eggs, no men in the fields that flanked the lane. The house's tall chimneys stood smokeless. It did smell of a trap. But the countryside was quiet, the farmers unruffled. There was only one way to find out.

Rand turned Tai'daishar in through the gateposts, and the others followed. Min did not heed his warning. She pushed her gray in between Tai'daishar and Nynaeve's mare and grinned at him. The bond carried nervousness, but the woman grinned!

When he was halfway to the house, the doors opened, and two women came out, one in dark gray, the other in blue with red panels on her breast and ankle-length skirts. Sunlight glinted off the silvery leash connecting them. Two more appeared, and two more, until three pairs stood in a row to either side of the door. As he reached the three-quarter point, another woman stepped into the doorway, very dark and very small, dressed in pleated white, her head covered by a transparent scarf that fell over her face. The Daughter of the Nine Moons. She had been described to Bashere right down to her shaven head. A tension in his shoulders he had not been aware of melted. That she was actually he

re did away with the possibility of a trap. The Seanchan would not risk the heir to their throne in anything so dangerous. He drew rein and dismounted.

"One of them is channeling.'' Nynaeve said, just loudly enough for him to hear, as she climbed down from her saddle. "I can't see anything. so she's masked her ability and inverted the weave—and I wonder how the Seanchan learned that!—but she's channeling. Only one; there isn't enough for it to be two." Her ter'angreal could not tell whether it was saidin or saidar being channeled, but it was unlikely to be a man. I told you it was trap, Lews Therin groaned. I told you!

Rand pretended to check his saddle girth. "Can you tell which one?" he asked quietly. He still did not reach for saidin. There was no telling what Lews Therin might do in these circumstances if he managed to grab control again. Logain was fiddling with his girth, too, and Narishma was watching Sandomere check one of the dapple's hooves. They had heard. The small woman was waiting in the doorway, very still but no doubt impatient and likely offended by their apparent interest in their horses.

"No," Cadsuane replied grimly. "But I can do something about it. Once we're closer." Her golden hair ornaments swayed as she tossed her cloak back as though unmasking a sword.

"Stay behind me," he told Min, and to his relief, she nodded. Her face wore a small frown, and the bond carried worry. Not fear, though. She knew he would protect her.

Leaving the horses standing, he started toward the sul'dam and damane with Cadsuane and Nynaeve a little distance to either side of him. Logain, hand resting on his sword hilt as if that were his real weapon, strode along on the other side of Cadsuane, Narishma and Sandomere beyond Nynaeve. The small dark woman began walking toward them slowly, holding her pleated skirts up off the damp ground.

Abruptly, no more than ten paces away, she . . . flickered. For an instant, she was taller than most men, garbed all in black, surprise on her face, and though she still wore the veil, her head was covered with short-cut wavy black hair. Only an instant before the small woman returned, her step faltering as she let her white skirts fall, but another flicker, and the tall dark woman stood there, her face twisted in fury behind the veil. He recognized that face, though he had never seen it before. Lews Therin had, and that was enough.