The Aiel women showed no more reaction, no more expression, than when they first arrived. That was something of a surprise; kings and queens betrayed their innermost feelings when faced by two or three Aes Sedai, much less half a dozen; brutish savages surely should be trembling visibly by now. Perhaps that should have been almost no reaction. Their leader — her name was Sevanna, followed by some nonsense about “septs” and “Shaido Aiel” and “wise” — said, “It is agreed so long as I get to see his face.” She had a sulky mouth, and wore her blouse unlaced to attract men’s eyes; that the Aiel chose one like her to lead showed how crude they were. “I want to see him, and have him see me, when he is defeated. Only with that will your Tower be allied to the Shaido.”
The hint of eagerness in her voice made Katerine suppress a smile. Wise? This Sevanna truly was a fool. The White Tower did not have allies; there were those who served its ends willingly and those who served unwillingly, no others.
A slight thinning at the corners of Coiren’s mouth betrayed her irritation. The Gray was a good negotiator, but she did like to have things done just so, every foot placed exactly where it had been planned to go. “Without doubt, your service deserves what you ask.”
One of the gray-haired Aiel — Tarva, or some such — narrowed her eyes, but Sevanna nodded, hearing what Coiren had wanted her to
hear.
Coiren set out to escort the Aiel women as far as the foot of the hill, along with Erian, a Green, and Nesune, a Brown, and the five Warders they had between them. Katerine went as far as the edge of the trees to watch. On arrival the Aiel had been allowed to come up alone, like the supplicants they were, but now they were given all honor to make them believe they truly were friends and allies. Katerine wondered whether they were civilized enough to recognize the subtleties.
Gawyn was down there, sitting on a rock, staring off across the grasslands. What would that young man think if he learned he and his children were only here to get them away from Tar Valon? Neither Elaida nor the Hall liked having a pack of young wolves about who refused to accept the leash. Perhaps the Shaido could be prevailed upon to eliminate the problem. Elaida had intimated as much. That way his death would not rebound against the Tower with his mother.
“If you stare so at the young man much longer, Katerine, I will begin to think you should be a Green.”
Katerine stamped out a quick spark of anger and inclined her head respectfully. “I was only speculating on his thoughts, Galina Sedai.”
That was as much respect as was proper in so public a place, and perhaps even a touch more. Galina Casban looked less than Katerine’s true age at most and was twice that, and for eighteen years the round-faced woman had been the head of the Red Ajah. A fact not known outside the Ajah, of course; such things were for the Ajah alone. She was not even one of the Sitters for the Red in the Hall of the Tower; Katerine suspected that the heads of most other Ajahs were. Elaida would have named her leader of this expedition instead of that self-important Coiren, except that Galina herself had pointed out that a Red might make Rand al’Thor suspicious. The Amyrlin Seat was supposed to be of all Ajahs and none, renouncing her old loyalty, but if Elaida deferred to anyone — which was debatable, true — she deferred to Galina.
“Will he come willingly, as Coiren thinks?” Katerine asked.
“Perhaps,” Galina said dryly. “The honor this delegation does him should be enough to make a king carry his throne to Tar Valon on his back.”
Katerine did not bother to nod. “The woman Sevanna will kill him, given a chance.”
“Then she must not be given a chance.” Galina’s voice was cold, her plump mouth tight. “The Amyrlin Seat will not be pleased to have her plans disrupted. And you and I will have days to scream in the dark before we die.”
Drawing her shawl up over her shoulders reflexively, Katerine shuddered. There was dust in the air; she would get out her light cloak. It would not be Elaida’s rage that killed them, though her fury could be terrible. For seventeen years Katerine had been Aes Sedai, but not until the morning before they departed Tar Valon had she learned that she shared more than the Red Ajah with Galina. Twelve years she had been a member of the Black Ajah, never knowing that Galina had too, for far longer. Of necessity Black sisters kept themselves hidden, even from each other. Their rare gatherings were held with faces covered and voices disguised. Before Galina, Katerine had known only two to recognize. Orders were left on her pillow, or in a pocket of her cloak, the ink ready to vanish if any hand but hers touched the paper. She had a secret place to leave messages, and dire orders not to try to see who came to take them. She had never disobeyed. There might be Black sisters among those following a day behind, but she had no way of knowing.
“Why?” she asked. Orders to preserve the Dragon Reborn made no sense, even if they delivered him into Elaida’s hands.
“Questions are dangerous for one sworn to obey without.”
Katerine shuddered again, and barely stopped herself from curtsying. “Yes, Galina Sedai.” But she could not help wondering. Why?
“They show neither respect nor honor,” Therava growled. “They allow us to enter their camp as though we were toothless dogs, then take us out under guard like suspected thieves.”
Sevanna did not look around. She would not until safely back among the trees. The Aes Sedai would be watching for signs of nervousness. “They agreed, Therava,” she said. “That is enough for now.” For now. One day, these lands would be the Shaido’s for the looting. Including the White Tower.
“This is all badly thought out,” the third woman said in a tight voice. “Wise Ones avoid Aes Sedai; it has always been so. Perhaps it was well enough for you, Sevanna — as Couladin’s widow, and Suladric’s, you speak as clan chief until we send another man to Rhuidean — but the rest of us should be no part of it.”
Sevanna barely forced herself to keep walking. Desaine had spoken against her being chosen as a Wise One, speaking loudly about her having served no apprenticeship and paid no visit to Rhuidean, claiming that her place standing for the clan chief disqualified her. Besides, as the widow of not just one, but two dead chiefs, perhaps she carried bad luck. Fortunately, enough of the Shaido Wise Ones had listened to Sevanna, not Desaine. It was unfortunate that Desaine had too many listeners to be safely done away with. Wise Ones were supposed to be inviolate — they even came and went freely among the Shaido from those betrayers and fools down in Cairhien — but Sevanna meant to find a way.
As though Desaine’s doubts had infected Therava, she began muttering, only half to herself. “What is ill done is going against Aes Sedai. We served them before the Breaking, and failed them; that is why we were sent to the Three-fold Land. If we fail them again, we will be destroyed.”
That was what everyone believed; it was part of the old tales, almost part of custom. Sevanna was not so sure. These Aes Sedai looked weak and foolish to her, traveling with a few hundred men for escort through lands where the true Aiel, the Shaido, could smother them with thousands. “A new day has come,” she said sharply, repeating part of one of her speeches to the Wise Ones. “We are no longer bound to the Three-fold Land. Any eye can see that what was, has changed. We must change, or be ended as if we never were.” She had never told them how much change she intended, of course. The Shaido Wise Ones would never send a man to Rhuidean, if she had her way.
“New day or old day,” Desaine grumbled, “what are we to do with Rand al’Thor if we do manage to take him from the Aes Sedai? Better, and easier, to slip a knife between his ribs while they are escorting him north.”
Sevanna did not answer. She did not know what to answer. Not yet. All she knew was that once she had the so-called Car’a’carn, the chief of chiefs of all the Aiel, chained before her tent like a vicious dog, then this land would truly belong to the Shaido. And to her. She had known that even before the strange wetlander man somehow found her in the mountains these people called Kinslayer’s Dagger. He had given her a small cube of some hard stone, intricately carved in strange patterns, and told her what to do with it, with the aid of a Wise One who could channel, once al’Thor was in her hands. She carried it in her belt pouch at all times; she had not decided what to do about it, but so far she had told no one about man or cube. Head high, she walked on beneath that blistering sun in an autumn sky.
The palace garden might have had a semblance of coolness had there been any trees, but the tallest things were fanciful topiary, tortured into the shapes of running horses or bears performing tumblers’ tricks or the like. Shirtsleeved gardeners scurried about with buckets of water beneath the scalding afternoon sun, trying to save their creations. They had given up on the flowers, clearing all the patterned beds and laying them with sod that was dying too.
“A pity the heat is so bad,” Ailron said. Sweeping a lace handkerchief from the lace-fringed sleeve of his yellow silk coat, he dabbed delicately at his face, then tossed it aside. A servant in gold-and-red livery quickly snatched it from the graveled walk and faded into the background again: another liveried man laid a fresh replacement in the King’s hand to be tucked up his sleeve. Ailron did not acknowledge it, of course, or even appear to notice. “These fellows usually manage to keep everything alive till spring, but I may lose a few this winter. Since it doesn’t seem as if we’ll have any winter. They take cold better than drought. Don’t you think they’re very fine, my dear?”
Ailron, Anointed by the Light, King and Defender of Amadicia, Guardian of the Southern Gate, was not as handsome as rumor made him, but then, Morgase had suspected when she first met him, years ago, that he might be the source of those rumors himself. His dark hair was full and wavy — and quite definitely receding in front. His nose was a bit too long, his ears a touch too big. His whole face vaguely suggested softness. One day she would have to ask. The Southern Gate to what?
Working her carved ivory fan, she eyed one of the gardeners’ . . . constructs. It seemed to be three huge nude women wrestling desperately with gigantic serpents. “They are quite remarkable,” she said. One said what one must when coming as a beggar.