“Ta’veren,” Moiraine sighed. “Perhaps it was that. Rather than guiding a chip floating down a stream, I am trying to guide a log through rapids. Every time I push at it, it pushes at me, and the log grows larger the farther we go. Yet I must see it through to the end.” She gave a little laugh. “I will not be unhappy, my old friend, if you manage to put those plans awry. Now, please leave me. I need to be alone to think.” He hesitated only a moment before turning for the door. At the last moment, though, she could not let him go without one more question. “Do you ever dream of something different, Lan?”
“All men dream. But I know dreams for dreams. This”—he touched his sword hilt—“is reality.” The walls were back, as high and hard as ever.
For a time after he left, Moiraine leaned back in her chair, looking into the fire. She thought of Nynaeve and cracks in a wall. Without trying, without thinking what she was doing, that young woman had put cracks in Lan’s walls and seeded the cracks with creepers. Lan thought he was secure, imprisoned in his fortress by fate and his own wishes, but slowly, patiently, the creepers were tearing down the walls to bare the man within. Already he was sharing some of Nynaeve’s loyalties; in the beginning he had been indifferent to the Emond’s Field folk, except as people in whom Moiraine had some interest. Nynaeve had changed that as she had changed Lan.
To her surprise, Moiraine felt a flash of jealousy. She had never felt that before, certainly not for any of the women who had thrown their hearts at his feet, or those who had shared his bed. Indeed, she had never thought of him as an object of jealousy, had never thought so of any man. She was married to her battle, as he was married to his. But they had been companions in those battles for so long. He had ridden a horse to death, then run himself nearly to death, carrying her in his arms at the last, to Anaiya for Healing. She had tended his wounds more than once, keeping with her arts a life he had been ready to thro
w away to save hers. He had always said he was wedded with death. Now a new bride had captured his eyes, though he was blind to it. He thought he still stood strong behind his walls, but Nynaeve had laced bridal flowers in his hair. Would he still find himself able to court death so blithely? Moiraine wondered when he would ask her to release him from his bond. And what she would do when he did.
With a grimace, she got to her feet. There were more important matters. Far more important. Her eyes ran over the open books and papers crowding the room. So many hints, but no answers.
Vandene came in with a teapot and cups on a tray. She was slender and graceful, with a straight back, and the hair gathered neatly at the nape of her neck was almost white. The agelessness of her smooth face was that of long, long years. “I would have had Jaem bring this, and not disturb you myself, but he’s out in the barn practicing with his sword.” She made a clucking sound as she pushed a battered manuscript aside to set the tray on the table. “Lan being here has him remembering he’s more than a gardener and handyman. Gaidin are so stiff-necked. I thought Lan would still be here; that’s why I brought an extra cup. Have you found what you were seeking?”
“I am not even sure what it is I am seeking.” Moiraine frowned, studying the other woman. Vandene was of the Green Ajah, not Brown like her sister, yet the two of them had studied so long together that she knew as much of history as Adeleas.
“Whatever it is, you don’t even seem to know where to look.” Vandene shifted some of the books and manuscripts on the table, shaking her head. “So many subjects. The Trolloc Wars. The Watchers Over the Waves. The legend of the Return. Two treatises on the Horn of Valere. Three on dark prophecy, and—Light, here’s Santhra’s book on the Forsaken. Nasty, that. As nasty as this on Shadar Logoth. And the Prophecies of the Dragon, in three translations and the original. Moiraine, whatever are you after? The Prophecies, I can understand—we hear some news here, remote as we are. We hear some of what’s happening in Illian. There’s even a rumor in the village that someone has already found the Horn.” She gestured with a manuscript on the Horn, and coughed in the dust that rose from it. “I discount that, of course. There would be rumors. But what—? No. You said you wanted privacy, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Stop a moment,” Moiraine said, halting the other Aes Sedai short of the door. “Perhaps you can answer some questions for me.”
“I will try.” Vandene smiled suddenly. “Adeleas claims I should have chosen Brown. Ask.” She poured two cups of tea and handed one to Moiraine, then took a chair by the fire.
Steam curled over the cups while Moiraine chose her questions carefully. To find the answers, and not reveal too much. “The Horn of Valere is not mentioned in the Prophecies, but is it linked to the Dragon anywhere?”
“No. Except for the fact that the Horn must be found before Tarmon Gai’don and that the Dragon Reborn is supposed to fight the Last Battle, there is no link between them at all.” The white-haired woman sipped her tea and waited.
“Does anything link the Dragon with Toman Head?”
Vandene hesitated. “Yes, and no. This is a bone between Adeleas and me.” Her voice took on a lecturing tone, and for a time she did sound like a Brown. “There is a verse in the original that translates literally as ‘Five ride forth, and four return. Above the watchers shall he proclaim himself, bannered cross the sky in fire. . . .’ Well, it goes on. The point is, the word ma’vron. I say it should be translated not simply as ‘watchers,’ which is a’vron. Ma’vron has more importance to it. I say it means the Watchers Over the Waves, though they call themselves Do Miere A’vron, of course, not Ma’vron. Adeleas tells me I am quibbling. But I believe it means the Dragon Reborn will appear somewhere above Toman Head, in Arad Doman, or Saldaea. Adeleas may think I’m foolish, but I listen to every scrap I hear coming from Saldaea these days. Mazrim Taim can channel, so I hear, and our sisters haven’t managed to corner him yet. If the Dragon is Reborn, and the Horn of Valere found, then the Last Battle is coming soon. We may never finish our history.” She gave a shiver, then abruptly laughed. “Odd thing to worry about. I suppose I am becoming more a Brown. Horrible thing to contemplate. Ask your next question.”
“I do not think you need worry about Taim,” Moiraine said absently. It was a link with Toman Head, however small and tenuous. “He will be dealt with as Logain was. What of Shadar Logoth?”
“Shadar Logoth!” Vandene snorted. “In brief, the city was destroyed by its own hate, every living thing except Mordeth, the councilor who began it all, using the tactics of the Darkfriends against the Darkfriends, and he now lies trapped there waiting for a soul to steal. It is not safe to enter, and nothing in the city is safe to touch. But every novice close to being Accepted knows as much as that. In full, you will have to stay here a month and listen to Adeleas lecture—she has the true knowledge of it—but even I can tell you there’s nothing of the Dragon in it. That place was dead a hundred years before Yurian Stonebow rose from the ashes of the Trolloc Wars, and he lies closest to it in history of all the false Dragons.”
Moiraine raised a hand. “I did not speak clearly, and I do not speak of the Dragon, now, Reborn or false. Can you think of any reason why a Fade would take something that had come from Shadar Logoth?”
“Not if it knew the thing for what it was. The hate that killed Shadar Logoth was hate they thought to use against the Dark One; it would destroy Shadowspawn as surely as it would those who walk in the Light. They rightly fear Shadar Logoth as much as we.”
“And what can you tell me of the Forsaken?”
“You do leap from subject to subject. I can tell you little more than you learned as a novice. No one knows much more of the Nameless than that. Do you expect me to ramble on with what we both learned as girls?”
For an instant, Moiraine was silent. She did not want to say too much, but Vandene and Adeleas had more knowledge at their fingertips than existed anywhere else but the White Tower, and more complications awaited her there than she cared to deal with now. She let the name slip between her lips as if it were escaping. “Lanfear.”
“For once,” the other woman sighed, “I know not a whit more than I did as a novice. The Daughter of the Night remains as much a mystery as if she truly had cloaked herself in darkness.” She paused, peering into her cup, and when she looked up, her eyes were sharp on Moiraine’s face. “Lanfear was linked to the Dragon, to Lews Therin Telamon. Moiraine, do you have some clue as to where the Dragon will be Reborn? Or was Reborn? Has he come already?”
“If I did,” Moiraine replied levelly, “would I be here, instead of in the White Tower? The Amyrlin knows as much as I, that I swear. Have you received a summons from her?”
“No, and I suppose we would. When the time comes that we must face the Dragon Reborn, the Amyrlin will need every sister, every Accepted, every novice who can light a candle unguided.” Vandene’s voice lowered, musing. “With such power as he will wield, we must overwhelm him before he has a chance to use it against us, before he can go mad and destroy the world. Yet first we must let him face the Dark One.” She laughed mirthlessly at the look on Moiraine’s face. “I am not a Red. I’ve studied the Prophecies enough to know we dare not gentle him first. If we can gentle him. I know as well as you, as well as any sister who cares to find out, that the seals holding the Dark One in Shayol Ghul are weakening. The Illianers call the Great Hunt of the Horn. False Dragons abound. And two of them, Logain and now this fellow in Saldaea, able to channel. When was the last time the Reds found two men channeling in less than a year? When did they last find one in five years? Not in my lifetime, and I am a good deal older than you. The signs are everywhere. Tarmon Gai’don is coming. The Dark One will break free. And the Dragon will be Reborn.” Her cup rattled as she set it down. “I suppose that is why I feared you might have seen some sign of him.”
“He will come,” Moiraine said smoothly, “and we will do what must be done.”
“If I thought it would do any good, I’d pull Adeleas’s nose out of her book and set off for the White Tower. But I find I am glad to be here where I am instead. Perhaps we will have time to finish our history.”
“I hope that you will, Sister.”
Vandene rose to her feet. “Well, I have tasks to be about before bed. If you have no more questions, I will leave you to your studies.” But she paused and revealed that however long she had spent with books, she was still of the Green Ajah. “You should do something about Lan, Moiraine. The man is rumbling inside worse than Dragonmount. Sooner or later, he will erupt. I’ve known enough men to see when one is troubled with a woman. You two have been together a long time. Perhaps he has finally come to see you are a woman as well as Aes Sedai.”
“Lan sees me as what I am, Vandene. Aes Sedai. And still as a friend, I hope.”