Rhuarc tossed him the sloshing waterskin. The lukewarm water slid down his throat like chilled wine. He tried not to splash any over his face, not to waste it, but it was hard.

"I thought you might like to learn the spear," Rhuarc said when Rand finally lowered the half-empty skin. For the first time Rand realized the clan chief was carrying only two spears, and a pair of bucklers. Not practice spears if there were any such, a foot of sharp steel tipped each.

Steel or wood, his muscles cried out for rest. His legs wanted him to sit down, and his head wanted to lie down. Keille and the gleeman were gone, but Aiel were still watching from both camps. They had seen him practicing with a despised sword, if a wooden one. They were his people. He did not know them, but they were his, in more senses than one. Aviendha was still watching him, too, glowering as though blaming him for Rhuarc having set her down. Not that she had anything to do with his decision, of course. The Jindo and Shaido were watching; that was it.

"That mountain can grow awfully heavy sometimes," he sighed, taking a spear and buckler from Rhuarc. "When do you find a chance to put it down awhile?"

"When you die," Lan said simply.

Forcing his legs to move – and trying to ignore Aviendha – Rand squared off with Rhuarc. He did not mean to die just yet. No, not for a long time yet.

Leaning against a tall wheel in the shade of one of the peddlers' wagons, Mat glanced at the line of Jindo watching Rand. All he could see now was their backs. The man was a pure fool, leaping about in this heat. Any sensible man would find a bit of protection from the sun, something to drink. Shifting his seat in the shade, he peered into the mug of ale he had bought from one of the drivers and grimaced. Ale just did not taste right when it was as warm as soup. At least it was wet. The only other thing he had bought, aside from the hat, was a short-stemmed pipe with a silver-worked bowl, snuggled now in his coat pocket with his tabac pouch. Trading was not on his mind. Unless it was for passage out of the Waste, a commodity the peddlers' wagons did not seem to be offering at the moment.

They were doing a steady business, if not for ale. The Aiel did not mind the temperature, but they seemed to think it too weak. Most were Jindo, but there was a steady stream of Shaido from the other camp. Couladin and Kadere had their heads together for a long time, though they came to no agreement, since Couladin left empty-handed. Kadere must not have liked losing the trade; he stared after Couladin with those hawk's eyes, and a Jindo who wanted his attention had to speak three times before he was heard.

The Aiel did not show much in the way of coin, but the peddlers and their people were quick to accept silver bowls or gold figurines or fine wall hangings looted from Tear, and Aiel pouches produced raw nuggets of gold and silver that made Mat sit up. But an Aiel who lost at dice might well reach for his spears. He wondered where the mines were. Where one man could find gold, another could. It was probably a lot of work, though, mining gold. Taking a long drink of warm ale, he settled back against the wagon wheel.

What sold and what did not, and at what price, was interesting. The Aiel were no simple fools to hand over a gold saltcellar, say, for a bolt of cloth. They knew the value of things and bargained hard, though they had their own wants. Books went immediately; not everyone wanted them, but those who did took every last one the wagons held. Laces and velvets vanished as soon as they were brought out, for astonishing quantities of silver and gold, and ribbons for not much less, but the finest silks just lay there. Silk was cheaper in trade to the east, he overheard a Shaido tell Kadere. A heavy-set, broken-nosed driver tried to talk a Jindo Maiden into a carved ivory bracelet. She pulled one wider, thicker and more ornate from her pouch and offered to wrestle him for the pair. He hesitated before refusing, which showed Mat he was even dumber than he looked. Needles and pins were snapped up, but the pots, and most of the knives, earned sneers; Aiel smiths did better work. Everything changed hands, from vials of perfumes and bath salts to kegs of brandy. Wine and brandy fetched good prices. He was startled to hear Heirn ask for Two Rivers tabac. The peddlers had none.

One driver kept trying to interest the Aiel in a heavy, gold-worked crossbow with no success. The crossbow caught Mat's eye, all those inlaid gold lions with what seemed to be rubies for eyes. Small, but still rubies. Of course, a good Two Rivers longbow could shoot six arrows while a crossbowman was still cranking back the bowstring for his second shot. A longer range for a crossbow that size, though, by a hundred paces. With two men doing nothing but keeping a crossbow with bolt in place in the hands of each crossbowman, and stout pikemen to hold the cavalry off...

Wincing, Mat let his head fall back against the spokes. It had happened again. He had to get out of the Waste, away from Moiraine, away from any Aes Sedai. Maybe back home for a while. Maybe he could get there in time to help with this Whitecloak trouble. Small chance of that, unless I use the bloody Ways, or another bloody Portal Stone. That would not solve his problems anyway. For one thing, there were no answers in Emond's Field to what those snaky folk had meant about marrying the Daughter of the Nine Moons, or dying and living again. Or Rhuidean.

Through his coat he rubbed the silver foxhead medallion, hung around his neck again. The pupil of the fox's eye was a tiny circle split by a sinuous line, one side polished bright, the other shaded in some way. The ancient symbol of Aes Sedai, before the Breaking. The black-hafted spear, sword-blade point marked with two ravens, he took from where it was leaning beside him and laid it across his knees. More Aes Sedai work. Rhuidean had provided no answers, only more questions, and...

Before Rhuidean his memory had been full of holes. Casting back in his mind then, he would be able to remember walking up to a door in the morning and leaving in the evening, but nothing between. Now there was something in between, filling all those holes. Waking dreams, or something very like. It was as if he could remember dances and battles and streets and cities, none of which he had ever really seen, none of which he was sure had ever existed, like a hundred pieces of memory from a hundred different men. Better to think of them as dreams, maybe – a little better – yet he was as sure in them as in any of his own remembrances. Battles numbered the most, and sometimes they crept up on him in a way, as with the crossbow. He would find himself looking at a piece of ground and planning how to set an ambush there, or defend against one, or how to set an army for battle. It was madness.

Without looking, he traced the flowing script carved into the black spear shaft. He could read it as easily as any book now, though it had taken him the whole trip back to Chaendaer to realize it. Rand had not said anything, but he suspected he had given himself away, there in Rhuidean. He knew the Old Tongue now, sifted whole out of those dreams. Light, what did they do to me?

"Sa souvraya niende misain ye," he said aloud. "I am lost in my own mind."

"A scholar, for this day and Age."

Mat looked up to find the gleeman looking at him with dark, deep-set eyes. The fellow was taller than most, somewhere in his middle years and likely attractive to women, but with an oddly apprehensive way of holding his head cocked as if trying to look at you sideways.

"Just something I heard once," Mat said. He had to be more careful. If Moiraine decided to pack him off to the White Tower for study, they would never let him out of there again. "You hear scraps of things and remember them. I know a few phrases." That should cover any slips he was stupid enough to make.