Mat whistled through his teeth, seeing it in his head, explosions erupting among the enemy before they were near enough to see you clearly. A nasty thing to be receiving. Now that would be as good as having Aes Sedai on your side, or some of those Asha’man. Better. Aes Sedai had to be in danger to use the Power as a weapon, and while he had heard rumors about hundreds of Asha’man, rumors grew with every telling. Besides, if Asha’man were anything like Aes Sedai, they would start deciding where they were needed and then take over the whole fight. He began envisioning how to use Aludra’s bronze tubes, and right away he spotted a glaring problem. All your advantage was gone if the enemy came from the wrong direction, or got behind you, and if you needed derricks to move these things… “These bronze lofting tubes-’

“Dragons,” she broke in. “Lofting tubes are for making the night-flowers bloom. For delighting the eye. I will call them dragons, and the Seanchan will howl when my dragons bite.” Her tone was grim as sharp stone.

“These dragons, then. Whatever you call them, they’ll be heavy and hard to move. Can you mount them on wheels? Like a wagon or cart? Would they be too heavy for horses to pull?”

She laughed again. “It’s good to see you are more than the pretty face.” Climbing a three-step folding ladder that put her waist nearly level with the top of the lofting tube, she set the nightflower into the tube with the fuse down. It slid in a little way and stopped, a dome above the top of the tube. “Hand me that,” she told him, gesturing to a pole as long and thick as a quarterstaff. When he handed it up to her, she held it upright and used a leather cap on one end to push the nightflower deeper. That appeared to take little effort. “I have already drawn plans for the dragoncarts. Four horses could draw one easily, along with a second cart to hold the eggs. Not nightflowers. Dragons’ eggs. You see, I have thought long and hard about how to use my dragons, not just how to make them.’ Pulling the capped rod from the tube, she climbed down and picked up the lantern. “Come. I must make the sky bloom a little, then I want my supper and my bed.”

Just outside the canvas enclosure stood a wooden rack filled with more peculiar implements, a forked stick, tongs as long as Mat was tall, other things just as odd and all made of wood. Setting the lantern on the ground, she placed the capped pole in the rack and took a square wooden box from a shelf. “I suppose now you want to learn how to make the secret powders, yes? Well. I did promise. I am the Guild, now,” she added bitterly, removing the box’s lid. It was an odd box. a solid piece of wood drilled with holes, each of which held a thin stick. She plucked out one and replaced the lid. “I can decide what is secret.”

“Better than that, I want you to come with me. I know somebody who’ll be happy to pay for making as many of your dragons as you want. He can make every bellfounder from Andor to Tear stop casting bells and start casting dragons.” Avoiding Rand’s name did not stop the colors from whirling inside his head and resolving for an instant into Rand-fully clothed, thank the Light-talking with Loial by lamplight in a wood-paneled room. There were other people, but the image focused on Rand, and it vanished too quickly for Mat to make out who they were. He was pretty sure that what he saw was what was actually happening right that moment, impossible as that seemed. It would be good to see Loial again, but burn him. there had to be some way to keep those things out of his head! “And if he isn’t interested.” again the colors came, but he resisted, and they melted away. “I can pay to have hundreds cast myself. A lot of them, anyway.”

The Band was going to end up fighting Seanchan, and most likely Trollocs as well. And he would be there when it happened. There was no getting around the fact. Try to avoid it how he would, that bloody ta’veren twisting would put him right in the bloody middle. So he was ready to pour out gold like water if it gave him a way to kill his enemies before they got close enough to poke holes in his hide.

Aludra tilted her head to one side, pursing her rosebud lips. “Who is this man with such power?”

“It’ll have to be a secret between us. Thorn and Juilin know, and Egeanin and Domon, and the Aes Sedai, Teslyn and Joline at least, and Van in and the Redarms, but nobody else, and I want to keep it that way.” Blood and bloody ashes, far too many people knew already. He waited for her curt nod before saying, “The Dragon Reborn.” The colors swirled and despite his fighting them again became Rand and Loial for a moment. This was not going to be as easy as it had seemed.

“You know the Dragon Reborn.” she said doubtfully.

“We grew up in the same village,” he growled, already fighting the colors. This time, they nearly coalesced before vanishing. “If you don’t believe me. ask Teslyn and Joline. Ask Thorn. But don’t do it around anyone else. A secret, remember.”

“The Guild has been my life since I was a girl.” She scraped one of the sticks quickly down the side of the box, and the thing sputtered into flame! It smelled of sulphur. “The dragons, they are my life now. The dragons, and revenge on the Seanchan.” Bending, she touched the flame to a dark length of fuse that ran under the canvas. As soon as the fuse caught, she shook the stick until the fire went out, then dropped it. With a crackling hiss the flame sped along the fuse. “I think me I believe you.” She held out her free hand. “When you leave, I will go with you. And you will help me make many dragons.”

For a moment, as he shook her hand, he was sure the dice had stopped, but a heartbeat later they were rattling again. It must have been imagination. After all, this agreement with Aludra might help the Band, and incidentally Mat Cauthon. stay alive, yet it could hardly be called fateful. He would still have to fight those battles, and however you planned, however well-trained your men were, luck played its part, too. bad as well as good, even for him. These dragons would not change that. But were the dice bouncing as loudly? He thought not, yet how could he be sure? Never before had they slowed without stopping. It had to be his imagination.

A hollow thump came from inside the enclosure, and acrid smoke billowed over the canvas wall. Moments later the nightflower bloomed in the darkness above Runnien Crossing, a great ball of red and green streaks. It bloomed again and again in his dreams that night and for many nights after, but there it bloomed among charging horsemen and massed pikes, rending flesh as he had once seen stone rent by fireworks. In his dreams, he tried to catch the things with his hands, tried to stop them, yet they rained down in unending streams on a hundred battlefields. In his dreams, he wept for the death and destruction. And somehow it seemed that the rattling of the dice in his head sounded like laughter. Not his laughter. The Dark One’s laughter.

The next morning, with the sun just rising toward a cloudless sky, he was sitting on the steps of his green wagon, carefully scraping at the bowstave with a sharp knife-you had to be careful, almost delicate: a careless slice could ruin all your work-when Egeanin and Domon came out. Strangely, they seemed to have dressed with special care, in their best, such as it was. He was not the only one to have bought cloth in Jurador, but without promises of Mat’s gold to speed them, the seamstresses were still sewing for Domon and Egeanin. The blue-eyed Seanchan woman wore a bright green dress heavily embroidered with tiny white and yellow flowers on the high neck and all down the sleeves. A flowered scarf held her long black wig in place. Domon, looking decidedly odd with a head of very short hair and that Illianer beard that left his upper lip bare, had brushed his worn brown coat till it actually had some semblance of neatness. They squeezed past Mat and hurried off without a word, and he thought no more of it until they returned an hour or so later to announce that they had been into the village and gotten Mother Darvale to marry them.