"Wash the spears, while the sun climbs high. Wash the spears, while the sun falls low. Wash the spears; who fears to die? Wash the spears; no one I know!"

Singing, the Moshaine Shaido ran to dance their deaths.

Frowning, Graendal watched the gateway close behind the last of the Jumai Shaido. The Jumai and a great many Wise Ones. Unlike with the others, Sammael had not simply knotted this web so it would fall apart eventually. At least, she assumed he held it to the last; the closing, right on the heels of the last brown-and-gray-clad men, was too fortuitous otherwise. Laughing, Sammael tossed away the bag, still holding a few of those useless bits of stone. Her own empty sack was long since discarded. The sun sat low behind the mountains to the west, half of a glowing red ball.

"One of these days," she said dryly, "you will be too smart for your own good. A foolbox, Sammael? Suppose one of them had understood?"

"None did," he said simply, but he kept rubbing his hands together and staring at where the gateway had been. Or maybe at something beyond. He still held the Mask of Mirrors, giving him the illusion of added height. She had dropped hers as soon as the gateway closed.

"Well, you certainly managed to put a panic into them." Around them lay the evidence: a few low tents still standing, blankets, a cookpot, a rag doll, all sorts of rubbish lying where it had fallen. "Where did you send them? Somewhere ahead of al’Thor’s army, I suppose?"

"Some," he said absently. "Enough." His staring introspection vanished abruptly, and his disguise as well. The scar across his face seemed especially livid. "Enough to cause trouble, particularly with their Wise Ones channeling, but not so many that anyone will suspect me. The rest are scattered from Illian to Ghealdan. As to how or why? Maybe al’Thor did it, for his own reasons, but I certainly wouldn’t have wasted most of them if it was my work, now would I?" He laughed again; caught up in his own brilliance.

She adjusted the bodice of her dress to cover a start. Competing that way was remarkably silly — she had told herself that ten thousand times, and never listened once — remarkably silly, and now the dress felt as if it might fall off. Which had nothing to do with her start. He did not know Sevanna had taken every Shaido woman who could channel with her. Was it finally time to abandon him? If she threw herself on Demandred’s mercy...

As if reading her thoughts, he said, "You’re tied to me as tightly as my belt, Graendal." A gateway opened, revealing his private rooms in Illian. "The truth doesn’t matter anymore, if it ever has. You rise with me, or fall with me. The Great Lord rewards success, and he’s never cared how it was achieved."

"As you say," she told him. Demandred had no mercy. And Semirhage... "I rise or fall with you." Still, something would have to be worked out. The Great Lord rewarded success, but she would not be pulled down if Sammael failed. She opened a gateway to her palace in Arad Doman, to the long columned room where she could see her pets frolicking in the pool. "But what if al’Thor comes after you himself? What then?"

"Al’Thor isn’t going after anyone," Sammael laughed. "All I have to do is wait." Still laughing, he stepped into his gateway and let it close.

The Myrddraal moved from the deeper shadows, becoming visible. In its eyes, the gateways had left a residue — three patches of glowing mist. It could not tell one flow from another, but it could distinguish saidinfrom saidarby the smell. Saidinsmelled like the sharp edge of a knife, the point of a thorn. Saidarsmelled soft, but like something that would grow harder the harder it was pressed. No other Myrddraal could smell that difference. Shaidar Haran was like no other Myrddraal.

Picking up a discarded spear, Shaidar Haran used it to upend the bag Sammael had discarded, and then to stir the bits of stone that fell out. Much was happening outside the plan. Would these events churn chaos, or...

Angry black flames raced down the spear haft from Shaidar Haran’s hand, the hand of the Hand of the Shadow. In an instant the wooden haft was charred and twisted; the spearhead dropped off. The Myrddraal let the blackened stick fall and dusted soot from its palm. If Sammael served chaos, then all was well. If not...

A sudden ache climbed the back of its neck; a faint weakness washed along its limbs. Too long away from Shayol Ghul. That tie had to be severed somehow. With a snarl, it turned to find the edge of shadow that it needed. The day was coming. It would come.

Tossing, Rand dreamed, wild dreams where he argued with Perrin and begged Mat to find Elayne, where colors flashed just beyond sight and Padan Fain leaped at him with a flashing blade, and sometimes he thought he heard a voice moaning for a dead woman in the heart of a fog, dreams where he tried to explain himself to Elayne, to Aviendha, to Min, to all three at once, and even Min looked at him with scorn.

"... not to be disturbed!" Cadsuane’s voice. Part of his dreams?

The voice frightened him; in his dream he shouted for Lews Therin, and the sound echoed through a thick mist where shapes moved and people and horses died screaming, a fog where Cadsuane followed him implacably while he ran, panting. Alanna tried to soothe him, but she was afraid of Cadsuane, too; he could feel her fear as strongly as his own. His head hurt. And his side; the old scar was fire. He felt saidin. Someone held saidin. Was it him? He did not know. He struggled to wake.

"You’ll kill him!" Min shouted. "I won’t let you kill him!"

His eyes opened, staring up at her face. Not looking at him, she had his head wrapped in her arms and was glaring at someone away from the bed. Her eyes were red. She had been crying, but no longer. Yes, he was in his own bed, in his rooms in the Sun Palace. He could see a heavy square blackwood bedpost set with wedges of ivory. Coatless in a cream silk blouse, Min lay curled around him protectively, atop the linen sheet that covered him to the neck. Alanna was afraid; that lay shivering in the back of his head. Afraid for him. For some reason, he was sure of that.

"I think he is awake, Min," Amys said gently.

Min looked down, and her face, framed in dark ringlets, beamed with a sudden smile.

Carefully — because he felt weak — he removed her arms and sat up. His head whirled dizzily, but he forced himself not to lie back again. His bed was ringed.

To one side stood Amys, flanked by Bera and Kiruna. Amys’ too-youthful features bore no expression at all, but she brushed back her long white hair and shifted her dark shawl as though tidying herself after a struggle. Outwardly the two Aes Sedai were serene, yet with determined serenity, a queen ready to fight for her throne, a country woman ready to fight for her farm. Oddly, if he had ever seen three people stand together — and not just physically — it was those three, shoulder-to-shoulder as one.

On the opposite side of the bed, Samitsu, with those silver bells in her hair, and a slender sister with thick black eyebrows and a wild look to her raven hair stood with Cadsuane, who had her fists planted on her hips. Samitsu and the raven-haired Aes Sedai wore yellow-fringed shawls and had jaws set every bit as firmly as Bera or Kiruna, yet Cadsuane’s stern stare made all four appear hesitant. The two groups of women were not staring at one another, but at the men.

At the foot of the bed were Dashiva with the silver sword and red-and-gold Dragon glittering his collar, and Flinn and Narishma, all grim-faced, trying to watch the women on both sides of the bed at once. Jonan Adley stood beside them, his black coat looking singed on one sleeve. Saidinfilled all four men, to overflowing it seemed. Dashiva held almost as much as Rand could have. Rand looked to Adley, who nodded slightly.