Suddenly the morning seemed darker, as though clouds had obscured the sun. Whatever she did, the dead were going to pile up like cordwood, but she had to keep theWhiteToweralive. She had to. When there were no good choices, you had to choose the one that seemed least wrong.
“I’ve seen enough here,” she said quietly. With one last glance at that narrow line of smoke beyond the city, she turned Daishar toward the trees a hundred paces back from the river, where her escort waited among the evergreen leatherleaf and winter-bare beech and birch.
Two hundred light cavalry, in boiled leather breastplates or coats covered with metal discs, would certainly have attracted notice appearing on the riverbank, but Gareth had convinced her of the necessity of these men with their slender lances and short horsebows. Without any doubt, that smoke plume on the far bank rose from burning wagons or supplies. Pinpricks, yet those pin?pricks came every night, sometimes one, sometimes two or three, till everyone looked for smoke first thing on rising. Hunting the raiders down had proved impossible, so far. Sudden snow squalls flared around the pursuers, or fierce freezing night winds, or the tracks simply vanished abruptly, the snow beyond the last hoof-print as smooth as fresh fallen. The residues of weavings made it plain enough they were being aided by Aes Sedai, and there was no point in taking a chance that Elaida had men and maybe sisters on this side of the river, too. Few things could please Elaida more than getting her hands on Egwene al’Vere.
They were not her whole escort, of course. Besides Sheriam, her Keeper, she had ridden out with six more Aes Sedai this morning, and those who had Warders had brought them, so behind the sister eight men waited in color-shifting cloaks that rippled in queasy-making fashion when a breeze caught them and otherwise made parts of riders and horses seem to vanish into the tree trunks. Aware of the dangers - from raiders, at least - aware that their Aes Sedai were wound tight to near breaking, they watched the surrounding copse as though the cavalrymen were not there. The safety of their own Aes Sedai was their primary concern, and that they trusted to no one else. Sarin, a black-bearded stump of a man, not that short but very wide, stayed so close to Nisao that he seemed to loom over the diminutive Yellow, and Jori managed to loom over Morvrin as well, though he was actually shorter than she. As broad as Sarin, but very short even for a Cairhienin. Myrelle’s three Warders, the three she dared acknowledge, clustered around her until she could not have moved her horse without pushing one of theirs out of her way. Anaiya’s Setagana, lean and dark and as beautiful as she was plain, almost managed to surround her by himself, and Tervail, with his bold nose and scarred face, did the same with Beonin. Carlinya had no Warder, not unusual for a White, but she studied the men from the depths of her fur-lined cowl as if thinking about rinding one.
Not too long ago, Egwene would have hesitated to be seen with those six women. They and Sheriam had all sworn fealty to her, for various reasons, and neither they nor she wanted the fact known or even suspected. They had been her way to influence events, to the extent that she could, when everyone thought her no more than a figurehead, a girl Amyrlin the Hall of the Tower could use as it wished and no one listened to. The Hall had lost that illusion when she brought them to declare war on Elaida, finally admitting what they had been about since the day they had fled the Tower in the first place, but that only made the Hall, and the Ajahs, worry over what she would do next and try to figure out how to make sure that whatever it was met with their approval. The Sitters had been very surprised when she accepted their sug?gestion of a council, one sister from each Ajah, to advise her with their wisdom and experience. Or perhaps they thought her success with the declaration of war had gone to her head. Of course, she had just told Morvrin and Anaiya and the others to make sure they were the sisters chosen, and they retained enough prestige within their Ajahs to manage it, just. She had been listening to their advice, if not always taking it, for weeks by that time, but now there was no longer any need to arrange furtive meetings or pass messages in secret.
It seemed, however, that there had been an addition to the party while Egwene was staring at the Tower.
Sheriam, wearing the narrow blue stole of her office outside her cloak, managed a very formal bow from her saddle. The flame-haired woman could be incredibly formal at times. “Mother, the Sitter Delana wishes to speak with you,” she said as if Egwene could not see the stout Gray sister sitting there on a dappled mare almost as dark as Sheriam’s black-footed mount. “On a matter of some importance, so she says.” And the slight touch of asperity meant Delana had not told her what matter. Sheriam would not have liked that. She could be very jealous of her position.
“In private, if you please, Mother,” Delana said, pushing back her dark hood to reveal hair nearly the color of silver. Her voice was deep for a woman’s, but it hardly carried the urgency of someone with important matters to speak of.
Her presence was something of a surprise. Delana often sup?ported Egwene in the Hall of the Tower, when Sitters were quib?bling over whether a particular decision actually concerned the war against Elaida. That meant the Hall was required to support Egwene’s commands as if they had stood with the greater consen?sus, and even the Sitters who had stood for war did not half like that little fact, which made for endless quibbling. They wanted to pull Elaida down, yet left to themselves, the Hall would have done nothing but argue. Truth to tell, though, Delana’s support was not always welcome. One day she could be the very image of a Gray negotiator seeking consensus, and the next so strident in her argu?ments that every Sitter within hearing got her back up. She had been known to set the cat among the pigeons in other ways, too. No fewer than three times now, she had demanded the Hall make a formal declaration that Elaida was Black Ajah, which inevitably led to an awkward silence until someone called for the sitting to be adjourned. Few were willing to discuss the Black Ajah openly. Delana would discuss anything, from how they were to find proper clothes for nine hundred and eighty-seven novices to whether Elaida had secret supporters among the sisters, another topic that gave most sisters a case of the prickles. Which left the question of why she had ridden out so early, and by herself. She had never approached Egwene before without another Sitter or three for com?pany. Delana’s pale blue eyes gave away no more than did her smooth Aes Sedai face.
“While we ride,” Egwene told her. “We will want a little privacy,” she added when Sheriam opened her mouth. “Stay back with the others, please.” The Keeper’s green eyes tightened in what might almost have been anger. An efficient Keeper, and eager with it, she had pinned her hopes on Egwene and made little secret that she disliked being excluded from any meeting Egwene had. Upset or not, she bowed her head in acceptance with only a small hesita?tion. Sheriam had not always known which of them commanded, but she did now.
The land tended upward from the River Erinin, not in hills but simply rising toward the monstrous peak that loomed to the west, so massive it seemed to mock the name mountain. Dragonmount would have towered above everything else even in the Spine of the World; in the relatively flat country around Tar Valon, its white-capped crest seemed to reach the heavens, especially when a thin thread of smoke was streaming away from the jagged top as it was now. A thin thread at that height would be something else entirely, close at hand. Trees gave out less than halfway up Dragonmount, and no one had ever succeeded in reaching the crest or even coming close, though it was said the slopes were littered with the bones of those who had tried. Why anyone would try in the first place, no one could quite explain. Sometimes the long evening shadow of the mountain stretched all the way to the city. People who lived in the region were accustomed to Dragonmount dominating the sky, much as they were accustomed to theWhiteTowerlooming above the city walls and visible for miles. Both were unchanging fixtures that had always been there and always would be, but crops and crafts occupied the people’s lives, not mountains or Aes Sedai.
In tiny hamlets often or a dozen stone houses roofed in thatch or slate, and the occasional village of a hundred, children playing in the snow or carrying buckets of water from the wells stopped to gape at the soldiers riding along the dirt tracks that passed for roads when not covered in snow. They carried no banners, but a few of the sol?diers wore the Flame of Tar Valon worked on their cloaks or coatsleeves, and the Warders’ strange cloaks named at least some of the women as Aes Sedai. Even this near the city, sisters had been an uncommon sight till recently, and they were still something to make a child’s eyes gleam. But then, the soldiers themselves probably came close in the list of marvels. The farms that fed Tar Valon covered most of the land, stone-walled fields surrounding sprawling houses and tall barns of stone or brick, with copses and coppices and thick?ets of trees between, and groups of farm children often ran a little distance parallel to the line of travel, leaping across the snow like hares. Winter chores kept most older folk indoors, but those who ventured out, heavily bundled against the cold, spared barely a glance for soldiers or Warders or Aes Sedai. Spring would be coming soon, and the plowing and planting, and what Aes Sedai did would not affect that. The Li
