“We did do what we came for,” Gregorin insisted. “Light’s mercy, do you think to take Ebou Dar itself?”

Take Ebou Dar, Rand thought. Why not? No one would expect that. A total surprise, for the Seanchan and everybody else.

“Times are, you seize the advantage and ride on,” Bashere growled. “Other times, you take your winnings and go home. I say it’s time to go home.”

I would not mind you in my head, Lews Therin said, sounding almost sane, if you were not so dearly mad.

Ebou Dar. Rand tightened his hand on the Dragon Scepter, and Lews Therin cackled.

Chapter 24

(Dragon)

A Time for Iron

A dozen leagues east of Ebou Dar, raken glided in out of the cloudstreaked sunrise to land in a long pasture marked as the fliers’ field by colored streamers on tall poles. The brown grasses had been trampled and scored days since. All of the creatures’ grace in the air was lost as soon as their claws touched the ground in a lumbering run, leathery pinions thirty paces or more wide held high as if the animal wanted to sweep itself back upward. There was little beauty, either, in the raken that ran awkwardly down the field beating ribbed wings, fliers crouching in the saddle as if to pull the beast up by main force, ran on until at last they stumbled into the air, wingtips barely clearing the tops of the olive trees at the end of the field. Only as they gained height and turned toward the sun, soared toward the clouds, did the raken regain dignified grandeur. Fliers who landed did not bother to dismount. While a groundling held a basket up for the raken to gulp whole shriveled fruits by the doublehandful at a time, one of the fliers would hand down their scouting report to a still more senior groundling, and the other bent on the other side to receive new orders from a flier too senior to handle reins personally very often. Almost that quickly after coming to a halt, the creature was reined around to waddle over to where four or five others waited their turn to make that long, ungainly run to the sky.

At a dead run, dodging between moving formations of cavalry and infantry, messengers carried the scouting reports to the huge redbannered command tent. There were haughty Taraboner lancers and stolid Amadician pikemen in wellordered squares, breastplates striped horizontally in the colors of the regiments they were attached to. Altaran light horse in disordered bunches made their mounts prance, vain of the red slashes crisscrossing their chests, so different from the markings anyone else wore. The Altarans did not know those indicated irregulars of doubtful reliability. Among the Seanchan soldiers, named regiments with proud honors were represented, from every corner of the Empire, paleeyed men from Alqam, honeybrown men from N’Kon, men black as coal from Khoweal and Dalenshar. There were morat’torm on their sinuous bronzescaled mounts that made horses whicker and dance in fright, and even a few morat’grolm with their squat, beakmouthed charges, but one thing that always accompanied a Seanchan army was conspicuous by it absence. The sul’dam and damane were still in their tents. CaptainGeneral Kennar Miraj thought of sul’dam and damane a great deal.

From his seat on the dais he could see the map table clearly, where helmetless underlieutenants checked the reports and placed markers to represent the forces in the field. A small paper banner stood above each marker, inked symbols giving the size and composition of the force. Finding decent maps in these lands was next to impossible, but the map copied atop the large table was sufficient. And worrying, in what it told him. Black discs for outposts overrun or dispersed. Far too many of those, dotting the whole eastern half of the Venir range. Red wedges, for commands on the move, marked the western end as thickly, all pointed back toward Ebou Dar. And scattered among the black discs, seventeen stark white. As he watched, a young officer in the brownandblack of a morat’torm carefully placed an eighteenth. Enemy forces. A few might be the same group seen twice, but for the most part they were much too far apart, the timing of the sightings wrong.

Along the walls of the tent, clerks in plain brown coats, marked only with insignia of rank among clerks on the wide collars, waited at their writing tables, pens in hand, for Miraj to issue orders that they would copy out for distribution. He had already given what orders he could. There were as many as ninety thousand enemy soldiers in the mountains, nearly twice what he could muster here even with the native levies. Too many for belief, except that scouts did not lie; liars had their throats slit by their fellows. Too many, springing out of the ground like trapworms in the Sen T’jore. At least they had a hundred miles of mountain yet to cover if they intended to threaten Ebou Dar. Almost two hundred, for the white discs furthest east. And hill country after that for another hundred miles. Surely the enemy general could not mean to let his dispersed forces be confronted one by one. Gathering them together would take more time. Time alone was on his side, right then.

The entry flaps of the tent swept open, and the High Lady Suroth glided in, black hair a proud crest spilling down her back, pleated snowwhite gown and richly embroidered overrobe somehow untouched by the mud outside. He had thought her still in Ebou Dar; she must have flown out by to’raken. She was accompanied by a small entourage, for her. A pair of Deathwatch Guards with black tassels on their sword hilts held the tentflaps, and more were visible outside, stonefaced men in redandgreen. The embodiment of the Empress, might she live forever. Even the Blood took note of them. Suroth sailed past as if they were as much servants as the lushly bodied da’covale in slippers and a nearly transparent white robe, her honeyyellow hair in a multitude of thin braids, who carried the High Lady’s gilded writing desk a meek two paces behind. Suroth’s Voice of the Blood, Alwhin, a glowering woman in green robes with the left side of her head shaved and the remainder of her pale brown hair in a severe braid, followed close on her mistress’s heels. As Miraj stepped down from the dais, he realized with shock that the second da’covale behind Suroth, short and darkhaired and slim in her diaphanous robe, was damane! A damane garbed as property was unheard of, but odder still, it was Alwhin who led her by the a’dam!

He let none of his amazement show as he went to one knee, murmuring, “The Light be upon the High Lady Suroth. All honor to the High Lady Suroth.” Everyone else prostrated themselves on the canvas groundcloth, eyes down. Miraj was of the Blood, if too low to shave the sides of his scalp like Suroth. Only the nails of his little fingers were lacquered. Much too low to register surprise if a High Lady allowed her Voice to continue acting as sul’dam after being raised to the so’jhin. Strange times in a strange land, where the Dragon Reborn walked and marath’damane ran wild to kill and