“I can't get away from them,” Rand said, “can I?” He balanced the sword in front of him on scabbard point; it looked no different than it had before he knew. “Aes Sedai work.” But Tam gave it to me. My father gave it to me. He refused to think of how a Two Rivers shepherd had come by a heronmark blade. There were dangerous currents in such thoughts, deeps he did not want to explore.

“Do you really want to get away, sheepherder? I'll ask again. Why are you not gone, then? The sword? In five years I could make you worthy of it, make you a blademaster. You have quick wrists, good balance, and you don't make the same mistake twice. But I do not have five years to give over to teaching you, and you do not have five years for learning. You have not even one year, and you know it. As it is, you will not stab yourself in the foot. You hold yourself as if the sword belongs at your waist, sheepherder, and most village bullies will sense it. But you've had that much almost since the day you put it on. So why are you still here?”

“Mat and Perrin are still here,” Rand mumbled. “I don't want to leave before they do. I won't ever — I might not see them again for — for years, maybe.” His head dropped back against the wall. “Blood and ashes! At least they just think I'm crazy not to go home with them. Half the time Nynaeve looks at me like I'm six years old and I've skinned my knee, and she's going to make it better; the other half she looks like she's seeing a stranger. One she might offend if she looks too closely, at that. She's a Wisdom, and besides that, I don't think she's ever been afraid of anything, but she ...” He shook his head. “And Egwene. Burn me! She knows why I have to go, but every time I mention it she looks at me, and I knot up inside and ...” He closed his eyes, pressing the sword hilt against his forehead as if he could press what he was thinking out of existence. “I wish ... I wish ...”

“You wish everything could be the way it was, sheepherder? Or you wish the girl would go with you instead of to Tar Valon? You think she'll give up becoming an Aes Sedai for a life of wandering? With you? If you put it to her in the right way, she might. Love is an odd thing.” Lan sounded suddenly weary. “As odd a thing as there is.”

“No.” It was what he had been wishing, that she would want to go with him. He opened his eyes and squared his back and made his voice firm. “No, I wouldn't let her come with me if she did ask.” He could not do that to her. But Light, wouldn't it he sweet, just for a minute, if she said she wanted to? “She gets muley stubborn if she thinks I'm trying to tell her what to do, but I can still protect her from that.” He wished she were back home in Emond's Field, but all hope of that had gone the day Moiraine came to the Two Rivers. “Even if it means she does become an Aes Sedai!” The corner of his eye caught Lan's raised eyebrow, and he flushed.

“And that is all the reason? You want to spend as much time as you can with your friends from home before they go? That's why you're dragging your feet? You know what's sniffing at your heels.”

Rand surged angrily to his feet. “All right, it's Moiraine! I wouldn't even be here if not for her, and she won't as much as talk to me.”

“You'd be dead if not for her, sheepherder,” Lan said flatly, but Rand rushed on.

“She tells me ... tells me horrible things about myself” — his knuckles whitened on the sword. That I'm going to go mad and die!—“and then suddenly she won't even say two words to me. She acts as if I'm no different than the day she found me, and that smells wrong, too.”

“You want her to treat you like what you are?”

“No! I don't mean that. Burn me, I don't know what I mean half the time. I don't want that, and I'm scared of the other. Now she's gone off somewhere, vanished...”

“I told you she needs to be alone sometimes. It isn't for you, or anyone else, to question her actions.”

“... without telling anybody where she was going, or when she'd be back, or even if she would be back. She has to be able to tell me something to help me, Lan. Something. She has to. If she ever comes back.”

“She's back, sheepherder. Last night. But I think she has told you all she can. Be satisfied. You've learned what you can from her.” With a shake of his head, Lan's voice became brisk. “You certainly aren't learning anything standing there. Time for a little balance work. Go through Parting the Silk, beginning from Heron Wading in the Rushes. Remember that that Heron form is only for practicing balance. Anywhere but doing forms, it leaves you wide open; you can strike home from it, if you wait for the other man to move first, but you'll never avoid his blade.”

“She has to be able to tell me something, Lan. That wind. It wasn't natural, and I don't care how close to the Blight we are.”

“Heron Wading in the Rushes, sheepherder. And mind your wrists.”

From the south came a faint peal of trumpets, a rolling fanfare slowly growing louder, accompanied by the steady thrumthrumTHRUMthrum of drums. For a moment Rand and Lan stared at each other, then the drums drew them to the tower wall to stare southward.

The city stood on high hills, the land around the city walls cleared to ankle height for a full mile in all directions, and the keep covered the highest hill of all. From the tower top, Rand had a clear view across the chimneys and roofs to the forest. The drummers appeared first from the trees, a dozen of them, drums lifting as they stepped to their own beat, mallets whirling. Next came trumpeters, long, shining horns raised, still calling the flourish. At that distance Rand could not make out the huge, square banner whipping in the wind behind them. Lan grunted, though; the Warder had eyes like a snow eagle.

Rand glanced at him, but the Warder said nothing, his eyes intent on the column emerging from the forest. Mounted men in armor rode out of the trees, and women on horseback, too. Then a palanquin borne by horses, one before and one behind, its curtains down, and more men on horseback. Ranks of men afoot, pikes rising above them like a bristle of long thorns, and archers with their bows held slanted across their chests, all stepping to the drums. The trumpets cried again. Like a singing serpent the column wound its way toward Fal Dara.

The wind flapped the banner, taller than a man, straight out to one side. As big as it was, it was close enough now for Rand to see clearly. A swirl of colors that meant nothing to him, but at the heart of it, a shape like a pure white teardrop. His breath froze in his throa