“He’s in danger,” she said. “We must go to him, Aviendha.”

Aviendha gave herself a shake and stopped staring westward. The glow remained around her, and Elayne could feel that she had drawn on the Source as deeply as she could. But even as Aviendha turned to her, she felt the amount ofsaidar the other woman held dwindle. “We must not, Elayne.”

Aghast, Elayne twisted in Fireheart’s saddle to stare at her. “You want to abandon him? To that!” No one could handle so much of saidar, not the strongest circle, not unaided. Supposedly a sa’angreal existed, greater than anything else ever made, and if what she had heard was correct, that might be able to handle this. Maybe. But from what she had heard, no woman could use it and live, not without ter’angreal made for the purpose, and no one had ever seen one that she knew of. Surely no sister would try even if she had found one. That much of the One Power could level mountain ranges at a stroke! No sister would try except perhaps one of the Black Ajah. Or worse, one of the Forsaken. Maybe more than one. What else could it be? And Aviendha simply wanted to ignore it, when she must know that Rand was there?

The Guardswomen, unaware, were still waiting patiently on their horses, keeping watch on the treeline around the meadow and little concerned with that after their reception at the manor, though Caseille was watching Elayne and Aviendha, a slight frown visible behind the face-bars of her helmet. She knew they never delayed at opening a gateway. The men from the manor were gath­ered around their packhorse, pawing at the bundles and apparently arguing over whether or not something had been included. Aviendha still moved her gray closer to Elayne’s black and spoke in a voice that would not carry.

“We know nothing, Elayne. Not whether he is dancing the spears or this is something else. If he dances the spears and we rush in, will he attack us before he knows who are? Will we distract him because he does not expect us, and allow his enemies to win? If he dies, we will find who took his life and kill them, but if we go to him now, we go blindly, and we may bring disaster on our backs.”

“We could be careful,” Elayne said sullenly. It infuriated her that she was feeling sullen, and showing it, but all she could do was ride her moods and try not let them get the upper hand com­pletely. “We don’t have to Travel right to the spot.” Gripping her pouch, feeling the small ivory carving of a seated woman that nes­tled inside, she looked pointedly at her sister’s amber brooch. “Light, Aviendha, we have angreal, and neither of us is exactly helpless.” Oh, Light, now she was sounding petulant. She knew very well that both of them together, angreal and all, would be flies battling a flame against what they could sense, but even so, a fly-bite at the right moment might make the difference. “And don’t tell me I’ll endanger the baby. Min said she will be born strong and healthy. You told me so yourself. That means I will live at least long enough for my daughter to be born.” She hoped for a daugh­ter.

Fireheart chose that moment to nip at the gray, and Siswai nipped back, and for a bit Elayne was occupied with getting her gelding under control and keeping Aviendha from being thrown and telling Caseille that they did not need any help, and by the end of it, she was not feeling sullen any longer. She wanted to smack Fireheart right between his ears.

Aside from making the animal obey the reins, Aviendha behaved as if nothing had happened at all. She did frown, a little uncertainly, her face framed by the dark wool of her shawl, but her uncertainty had nothing to do with the horse.

“I have told you about the rings in Rhuidean,” she said slowly, and Elayne gave an impatient nod. Every woman who wanted to become a Wise One was sent through a ter’angreal before she began training. It was something like the ter’angreal used to test novices for being raised to Accepted in the White Tower, except that in this one, a woman saw her whole life. All of her possible lives, really, every decision made differently, an infinite fan of lives based on differing choices. “No one can remember all of that, Elayne, only bits and pieces. I knew I would love Rand al’Thor…” she was still uncomfortable sometimes about using just his first name in front of others, “and that I would find sister-wives. For most things, all you retain is a vague impression at best. A hint of warn­ing, sometimes. I think if we go to him now, something very bad will happen. Maybe one of us will die, maybe both in spite of whet Min said.” That she said Min’s name without fumbling was a mea­sure of her concern. She did not know Min very well, and usually named her formally, as Min Farshaw. “Perhaps he will die. Perhaps something else. I do not know for sure – maybe we will all survive, and we will sit around a fire with him roasting pecara when we find him – but the glimmer of a warning is there in my head.”

Elayne opened her mouth angrily. Then she closed it again, anger draining away like water down a hole, and her shoulders slumped. Perhaps Aviendha’s glimmer was true and perhaps not, but the fact was that her arguments had been good from the start. A great risk taken in ignorance, and taking it might bring disaster. The beacon had grown brighter still. And he was there, right where the beacon was. The bond did not tell her so, not at this dis­tance, but she knew. And she knew she had to leave him to take care of himself while she took care of Andor.

“I don’t have anything to teach you about being a Wise One, Aviendha,” she said quietly. “You are already much wiser than I. Not to mention braver and more coolheaded. We return to Caemlyn.”

Aviendha colored faintly under the praise – she could be very sensitive, at times – but she wasted no time in opening the gate­way, a rotating view of a stableyard in the Royal Palace that widened into a hole in the air and let snow from the meadow fall onto the clean-swept paving stones as near three hundred miles away as made no difference. The sense of Birgitte, somewhere in the palace, sprang alive in Elayne’s head. Birgitte had a headache and a sour stomach, not unusual occurrences of late, but they suited Elayne’s mood all too well.

I must leave him to take care of himself, she thought as she rode through. Light, how often had she thought that? No matter. Rand was the love of her heart and the joy of her life, but Andor was her duty.

CHAPTER 11

Talk of Debts

The gateway was positioned so that Elayne seemed to be riding out of a hole in the wall against the street, into a square marked out for safety by sand-filled wine barrels standing on the paving stones. Oddly, she could not feel a single woman channeling anywhere in the palace, though it housed more than a hundred and fifty with the ability. Some would be stationed on the city’s outer walls, of course, too far for her to sense anything short of a linked circle, and a few would be out of the city alto­gether, yet someone in the palace was almost always using saidar, whether to try forcing one of the captive sul’dam to admit that she really could see weaves of the One Power or simply to smooth the wrinkles from a shawl without heating an iron. Not this morning, though. Windfinder arrogance often matched the worst shown by any Aes Sedai, yet even that must be quashed by what they sensed. Elayne thought that if she climbed to a high window, she must be able to see the weaves of that great beacon, hundreds of leagues dis­tant as they were. She felt like an ant that had just become aware of mountains, an ant comparing the Spine of the World to the hills it had always held in awe. Yes, even the Windfinders must be walk­ing small in the face of that.