Verin continued to look up at him, pursing her lips.

Urien looked at the sky as though he was trying to remember it. “Will you slay me now, Aes Sedai?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Will you slay me now? One of the old prophecies says that if ever we fail the Aes Sedai again, they will slay us. I know your power is greater than that of the Wise Ones.” The Aiel laughed suddenly, mirthlessly. There was a wild light in his eyes. “Bring your lightnings, Aes Sedai. I will dance with them.”

The Aiel thought he was going to die, and he was not afraid. Perrin realized his mouth was open and closed it with a snap.

“What would I not give,” Verin murmured, gazing up at Urien, “to have you in the White Tower. Or just willing to talk. Oh, be still, man. I won't harm you. Unless you mean to harm me, with your talk of dancing.”

Urien seemed astounded. He looked at the Shienarans, sitting their horses all around, as if he suspected some trick. “You are not a Maiden of the Spear,” he said slowly. “How could I strike at a woman who has not wedded the spear? It is forbidden except to save life, and then I would take wounds to avoid it.”

“Why are you here, so far from your own lands?” she asked. “Why did you come to us? You could have remained in the rocks, and we would never have known you were there.” The Aiel hesitated, and she added, “Tell only what you are willing to say. I do not know what your Wise Ones do, but I'll not harm you, or try to force you.”

“So the Wise Ones say,” Urien said dryly, “yet even a clan chief must have a strong belly to avoid doing as they want.” He seemed to be picking his words carefully. “I search for ... someone. A man.” His eye ran across Perrin, Mat, the Shienarans, dismissing them all. “He Who Comes With the Dawn. It is said there will be great signs and portents of his coming. I saw that you were from Shienar by your escort's armor, and you had the look of a Wise One, so I thought you might have word of great events, the events that might herald him.”

“A man?” Verin's voice was soft, but her eyes were as sharp as daggers. “What are these signs?”

Urien shook his head. “It is said we will know them when we hear of them, as we will know him when we see him, for he will be marked. He will come from the west, beyond the Spine of the World, but be of our blood. He will go to Rhuidean, and lead us out of the Threefold Land.” He took a spear in his right hand. Leather and metal creaked as soldiers reached for their swords, and Perrin realized he had taken hold of his axe again, but Verin waved them all to stillness with an irritated look. In the dirt Urien scraped a circle with his spearpoint, then drew across it a sinuous line. “It is said that under this sign, he will conquer.”

Ingtar frowned at the symbol, no recognition on his face, but Mat muttered something coarsely under his breath, and Perrin felt his mouth go dry. The ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai.

Verin scraped the marking away with her foot. “I cannot tell you where he is, Urien,” she said, “and I have heard of no signs or portents to guide you to him.”

“Then I will continue my search.” It was not a question, yet Urien waited until she nodded before he eyed the Shienarans proudly, challengingly, then turned his back on them. He walked away smoothly, and vanished into the rocks without looking back.

Some of the soldiers began muttering. Uno said something about “crazy bloody Aiel,” and Masema growled that they should have left the Aiel for the ravens.

“We have wasted valuable time,” Ingtar announced loudly. “We will ride harder to make it up.”

“Yes,” Verin said, “we must ride harder.”

Ingtar glanced at her, but the Aes Sedai was staring at the smudged ground, where her foot had obliterated the symbol. “Dismount,” he ordered. “Armor on the packhorses. We're inside Cairhien, now. We do not want the Cairhienin thinking we have come to fight them. Be quick about it!”

Mat leaned close to Perrin. “Do you ... ? Do you think he was talking about Rand? It's crazy, I know, but even Ingtar thinks he's Aiel.”

“I don't know,” Perrin said. “Everything has been crazy since we got mixed up with Aes Sedai.”

Softly, as to herself, Verin spoke, still staring at the ground. “It must be a part, and yet how? Does the Wheel of Time weave threads into the Pattern of which we know nothing? Or does the Dark One touch the Pattern again?”

Perrin felt a chill.

Verin looked up at the soldiers removing their armor. “Hurry!” she commanded with more snap than Ingtar and Uno combined. “We must hurry!”

Chapter 29

(InsectLike, Horned Helmet)

Seanchan

Geofram Bornhald ignored the smell of burning houses and the bodies that lay sprawled on the dirt of the street. Byar and a whitecloaked guard of a hundred rode into the village at his heels, half the men he had with him. His legion was too scattered for his liking, with Questioners having too many of the commands, but his orders had been explicit: Obey the Questioners.

There had been but slight resistance here; only half a dozen dwellings gave off columns of smoke. The inn was still standing, he saw, whiteplastered stone like almost every structure on Almoth Plain.

Reining up before the inn, his eyes went past the prisoners his soldiers held near the village well to the long gibbet marring the village green. It was hastily made, only a long pole on uprights, but it held thirty bodies, their clothes ruffled by the breeze. There were small bodies hanging among their elders. Even Byar stared at that in disbelief.

“Muadh!” he roared. A grizzled man trotted away from those holding the prisoners. Muadh had fallen into the hands of Darkfriends, once; his scarred face took even the strongest aback. “Is this your work, Muadh, or the Seanchan?”

“Neither, my Lord Captain.” Muadh's voice was a hoarse, whispered growl, another leaving of the Darkfriends. He said no more.

Bornhald frowned. “Surely that lot did not do it,” he said, gesturing to the prisoners. The Children did not look so neat as when he had brought them across Tarabon, but they seemed ready to parade compared with the rabble that crouched under their watchful eyes. Men in rags and bits of armor, with sullen faces. Remnants of the army Tarabon had sent against the invaders on Toman Head.

Muadh hesitated, then said carefully, “The villagers say they wore Taraboner cloaks, my Lord Captain. There was a big man among them, with gray eyes and a long mustache, that sounds twin to Child Earwin, and a young lad, trying to hide a pretty face behind a yellow beard, who fought with his left hand. Sounds almost like Child Wua