At last the Whitecloaks turned and rode back into the village. Alindaer was a very large village, practically a town, with brick houses of two or even three stories roofed in blue tiles, where they showed through the snow, and its own inns and shops and markets. The blanket of white made it appear clean and peaceful. For long moments, the Whitecloaks vanished. Only when they appeared in a gap between two buildings, on a street heading north, did Steler heel his mount into motion. His gauntleted hand rested on his sword hilt and his head swiveled constantly, searching the streets ahead, as they rode down the final length of the bridge. Where there was one group of Whitecloaks, there might be another. Moiraine felt suddenly very grateful for the presence of Steler and his men. A dagger would not be much use against a Whitecloak’s arrow. None of her preparations were turning out to be very useful.
When they reached the edge of the town, Siuan again thumped her gray up beside the bannerman, still so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she rode with something approaching…not grace, certainly, but at least steadiness. “Bannerman Steler.” Her tone combined firmness with civility, and a strong element of certainty. It was very much a voice of command. Steler turned his head to her, blinking in surprise. “You know why we are here, of course,” she went on, and barely waited for his nod. “The women most likely to leave before hearing of the bounty are those in the camps most distant from the city. Visiting them yesterday would have entailed some danger, but the Amyrlin has reports that the Aiel are retreating.” Light, she sounded for all the world as though the Amyrlin regularly shared reports with her! “The Amyrlin has expressed her unwillingness to let any of these women slip away without receiving the bounty, Bannerman, so I strongly suggest that we follow the Amyrlin’s urging and begin with the more distant camps.” Her gesture might have seemed vague to anyone other than Moiraine, but it just happened to point straight at Dragonmount. “The Amyrlin Seat will wish it.”
Moiraine held her breath. Could Siuan have found the key?
“There’s not an Aiel this side of the Erinin, so I hear,” Steler replied in an agreeable voice. The next moment, he dashed her hopes. “But I was told the camps closest the river, so that’s what it’ll be. And I was told if anybody made a fuss, I was to take her right back to the Tower. You’re not making a fuss, are you? I thought not.”
Reining her mount in to let Moiraine catch up, Siuan fell in alongside Arrow. She was not scowling, but her stare at the bannerman’s back was blue ice. The glow of saidar abruptly surrounded her.
“No, Siuan,” Moiraine said quietly.
Siuan frowned at her. “I could just be trying to see further ahead, you know. In case there are more Whitecloaks.”
Moiraine arched an eyebrow, and Siuan blushed, the light around her vanishing. She had no right to look so surprised. After six years practically in one another’s belt pouches, Moiraine knew at a glance when her friend was thinking of mischief. For someone as intelligent as she was, Siuan was blind sometimes.
“I don’t see how you can stand this,” the taller woman muttered, half rising in her stirrups. Moiraine had to put out a hand to keep her from toppling to the ground. “If the camp is much further, I’ll need a sister for Healing.”
“I have an ointment,” Moiraine said, patting the scrip hanging from her saddle with a touch of satisfaction. The penknife and the dagger might be useless, but at least she had thought of the ointment.
“Now if only you had a carriage in there,” Siuan grumbled, but Moiraine only smiled.
Alindaer lay empty and still. The village had been burned at least three times in the Trolloc Wars, once more near the end of the War of the Second Dragon, and twice during the twenty-year siege of Tar Valon by Artur Hawkwing’s armies, and it seemed the inhabitants had expected the same again. Here a chair sat in the snow-covered street, there a table, a child’s doll, a cookpot, all dropped by people hurrying to get inside the city with whatever they could take with them. Then again, every window appeared to be shuttered tightly, every door closed and no doubt locked, whatever remained behind kept safe against the people’s return. But the stink of burning was stronger here than on the bridge, and the only sounds were the creak of swinging inn signs and the dull clop of the horses’ hooves on the paving stones beneath the snow. The place no longer seemed so pristine; it seemed…dead.
Moiraine felt a great relief when they left the village behind, even if they were riding south and away from Dragonmount. The countryside was supposed to be quiet, and the smell of burning faded the farther they went. Siuan plainly was not relieved. From time to time she looked over her shoulder toward the great black peak of Dragonmount—half the time, she needed a steadying hand from Moiraine to keep her in her saddle—and more than once she ground her teeth audibly. They had often discussed what Ajah they might join, and Moiraine had long since settled on the Blue for herself, but she thought Siuan might well end choosing Green.
The first camp they came to, two miles below Alindaer, was a cookfire-dotted sprawl of wagons and carts and tents in every size and state of repair mixed with rude shelters made of brush. Hammers rang on anvils at three different forges, and children ran shouting and playing in trampled, dirty snow as though unaware that there had been a battle or that their fathers might be dead. Perhaps they were. It would be a mercy. The horselines were nearly empty, and aside from the blacksmiths, few men were in evidence, but a long line of women—well above fifty!—stood in front of a canvas pavilion where an Accepted was seated at a table with four Tower Guards arrayed behind her, so Steler did not so much as slow down. Moiraine embraced the Source briefly and felt Siuan do the same. Just to better see who it was, of course. A multitude of thin Taraboner braids surrounded the distant Accepted’s face. Sarene was the most beautiful woman in the Accepted’s quarters, except perhaps for Ellid, though she seemed completely unconscious of it, which Ellid definitely was not, but she had remarkably little tact for a shopkeeper’s daughter. Her mother must have been glad to see Sarene’s sharp tongue go off to Tar Valon.
“I hope it doesn’t get her in hot water this time,” Siuan said softly, just as if she could read Moiraine’s thoughts. But then, they both knew Sarene all too well. A friend, but a nettlesome one at times. Her saving grace was that she seemed as unaware of what she had said wrong as she was of her face.
A hundred paces later, the light around Siuan vanished, and Moiraine released the Power, too. A sister might see them, after all.
The next camp, less than a mile farther south, was even larger and more disorderly, and without anyone taking names. It was noisier, as well, with six forges working, and twice as many children rushing about shouting. The relative absence of men was the same, and the nearly bare horselines, but surprisingly, a number of closed coaches dotted the camp. Moiraine winced when she heard the Murandian accents as they rode in. Murandians were a quarrelsome lot, prickly over points of honor no one else could see, always fighting duels. But when Steler announced the purpose of their visit in a bellow that would have frightened a bull, no one wanted to quarrel in the least. In short order two weedy young men in worn cloaks carried out a table and a pair of stools for Moiraine and Siuan. They placed the table in the open, but two other youths brought three-legged braziers that they set at either end of the table. This might not be too unpleasant after all.
Chapter
5
The Human Heart
Once Moiraine was seated on one of the stools with her lapdesk open on the table in front of her, she changed her mind about the unpleasantness. The warmth of the braziers dissipated rapidly in the open air, barely lessening the chill, and eddies of the thin gray smoke drifted into her face, stinging her eyes and sometimes making her cough. Stout shoes and extra stockings or not, her feet had grown quite cold on the ride; resting on the trampled snow, they quickly became frigid. And what appeared to be close to a hundred women, the greater number clutching infants, formed a crowd around the table, all clamoring at once for their names to be taken fir
st. Most wore plain, thick woolens, but half a dozen or so were in silks or at least ornately embroidered dresses of fine cut that indicated wealth or nobility or both. They shouted as loudly as anyone, though. Noblewomen, shouting along with the commoners! Murandians had little sense of proper behavior.
Helmet held on his hip, Steler bellowed till his face turned dark for everyone to be quiet and form a line, and no one took any notice at all. Two of the Guardsmen moved as if to begin pushing the women back, until a sharp motion from the bannerman halted them, and well that it did. That sort of thing could start a riot. Moiraine stood up to try putting things to rights, though she was uncertain how. She had never had to face the like on any of her estates; she doubted any of her stewards had, for that matter, and people were more outspoken with a steward than with the lady of the estate. But Siuan was ahead of her, climbing atop her stool with a scowl. She gripped the edges of her cloak as though to keep from shaking her fists.
The light of saidar enveloped her, and she wove Air and Fire. It was a simple weave using tiny amounts of the Power, but when she spoke, her voice boomed like thunder. “Be quiet!” It was simply a command, if impressively delivered, without anger, yet startled women shrank back, suddenly as hushed as stones. Even the ring of hammers on anvils ceased. The entire camp grew still, so that Moiraine could hear picketed horses stamping hooves. Steler gave Siuan a look of approbation—bannermen approved of leather lungs, in Moiraine’s experience—and the women around the table a glare. A number of babies began crying shrilly, though, and when Siuan went on, it was without the weave. Still in a loud, firm voice that carried, however. “If you want to see a penny, you’ll line up and keep yourselves orderly. The White Tower does not treat with mobs of unruly children. Behave as grown women, or you’ll wish you had.” She nodded once, for emphasis, then frowned at the mass of women to see whether they had taken her words in. They had.
As she climbed down from the stool, the women rushed to form two lines in front of the table, with only a little elbowing and jostling that Moiraine could see. The more finely dressed women were at the front, of course, with serving women carrying their babes, yet they were not above trying to push ahead of one another and exchanging scowls. Maybe they were merchants, though what trade they could find here was beyond her. Once, she had seen two well-dressed, seemingly dignified Murandian merchants get into a fistfight in the street, bloodying noses and rolling in the gutter. Despite the petty scuffling, no one spoke a word, and those with crying children seemed to be making every effort to soothe them. A cluster of girls, perhaps ten or twelve years old, gathered off to one side, huddling in their cloaks, pointing at her and Siuan and whispering excitedly. She thought she heard Aes Sedai mentioned. Another young woman, three or four years older, about the age she had been when she came to Tar Valon, stood nearby pretending that she was not watching avidly. Many girls dreamed of becoming Aes Sedai; few had the nerve to take the first step beyond dreaming. Tossing back her cloak on the right side, Moiraine uncapped her ink jar and picked up a pen. She kept her gloves on; the thin leather did not provide a great deal of protection against the chill, yet it was better than nothing.
“Your name, my Lady?” she said. The plump, smiling woman wore a high-necked green riding dress that was not of the best silk, but it was silk, as was her fur-lined blue cloak, embroidered in red and gold. And she wore a jeweled ring on every finger. Perhaps she was not a noble, even so, yet flattery cost nothing. “And your babe’s?”
“I am the Lady Meri do Ahlan a’Conlin, a direct descendant of Katrine do Catalan a’Coralle, the first Queen of Murandy.” The plump woman’s smile remained, but her voice was frosty with pride. It carried those lilting Murandian accents that made you think they must be peaceable people until you learned better. With one hand, she pulled forward a stout woman in dark wool who had a heavy shawl wrapped around her head and a gurgling infant in her arms, swaddled so that only its face showed. “This is my son, Sedrin. He was born just a week ago. I refused to stay behind when my husband rode to war, of course. I’ll have the coins mounted in a frame, so Sedrin will always know he was honored by the White Tower.”
Moiraine forbore to mention that Sedrin would share that honor with hundreds of others, perhaps thousands, if the other camps were anything like this. Light, she had never expected so many women to have given birth! Keeping her face smooth, she studied the infant for an instant. She was not an innocent—she had observed horse-breeding and helped at foaling; if you did not know how a thing was done, how could you know whether your servants did it properly?—but she had no experience with babies. The child could have been ten days old, or a month or two for all of her. Steler and his soldiers were keeping watch a short distance from the table against any further outbreaks, but they were no help here. At least, she could not bring herself to ask. If Lady a’Conlin was lying, a full sister would have to sort it out. Moiraine glanced sideways. The woman in front of Siuan was holding a larger child, but Siuan was writing.
Dipping her pen, she saw a woman walk past with an infant feeding at her breast. Half hidden in the woman’s cloak, the child looked no larger than Sedrin, yet she was ignoring the line quite pointedly. “Why is that woman not in line? Is her babe too old?”
Lady a’Conlin’s smile faded, and her eyebrows rose. The temperature of her voice dropped. “I’m not accustomed to keeping track of every brat born in the camp.” She pointed imperiously at the paper on the table. The ring on that finger mounted a large but visibly flawed firedrop. “Put down my name. I want to return to the warmth of my tent.”
“I will write your name, and the other information we require, just as soon as you tell me about that woman,” Moiraine said, trying for that voice of command that Siuan used.
The attempt did not work very well. Meri a’Conlin’s brows knitted in a frown, and her lips bunched belligerently. She appeared on the point of bursting. Or striking out. Before she could do either, the round-faced serving woman spoke up hurriedly, ducking in the semblance of a curtsy every few words.
“Careme’s girl is the same age as Lord Sedrin to the day, begging your pardon for speaking, my Lady, begging your pardon, Aes Sedai. But the fellow Careme wanted to marry, he run off thinking to become a Warder, and she don’t like who she did marry half so well.” She gave an emphatic shake of her head. “Oh, she wants nothing from the White Tower, Careme don’t.”
“Even so, she will receive the bounty,” Moiraine said firmly. Tamra had said to get every name, after all. She wondered whether Careme’s love had achieved his goal. Few men possessed the necessary skills. A Warder did not simply use weapons, he was a weapon, and that was only the first requirement. “What is her full name? And the child’s.”
“She’s Careme Mowly, Aes Sedai, and her girl’s Ellya.” Wonder of wonders, Lady a’Conlin appeared content to let her serving woman answer. Not only that, her scowl had vanished, and she was studying Moiraine warily. Perhaps a firm tone was all that was needed. That and being thought Aes Sedai.
“From what town or village?” Moiraine asked, writing.
“And where exactly was your girl born?” she heard Siuan saying. Siuan had doffed her gloves, a nameday present from Moiraine, to protect them from ink stains. The impatient silk-clad woman in front of her might have been a beauty if not for an unfortunate nose. She was also quite tall, nearly a hand taller than Siuan. “In a haybarn a mile west of here? No, not the place you’d expect to give birth to your heir. Perhaps you shouldn’t have been out riding so close to your term, not to mention the fighting that was going on. Now, do you know any woman who’s had a child in the last sixteen days and isn’t here? What is her name? No backtalk, my Lady. Just answer the question.” The lady did, with no further complaint. But then, Siuan’s manner allowed for no complaints or difficulties. She neither raised her voice nor spoke harshly; she was just obviously in charge. How did she do it?
Whatever thoughts Moiraine had of adventure in hunting for the Dragon Reborn faded in
short order, along with the thrill of being outside the city walls. Asking the same questions over and over and writing down the answers, carefully setting aside the filled pages to dry and starting anew on a fresh sheet, soon became boring drudgery. The only breaks in the routine were pauses to warm her hands over the brazier at her end of the table. An indescribable pleasure under the circumstances, with her fingers aching from the cold, yet hardly anything to thrill over. The only surprise was the number of women who were not Murandian. Soldiers gone to war, it seemed, frequently acquired foreign-born wives. The anvils started up again after a time, and some fellows working on a wagon began hammering away as well, trying to force a new wheel into place. The clanging threatened to give her a headache. It was all quite miserable.
She made a special effort not to take out her discontent on the women she spoke to, though a handful did try to give her cause. Some of the noblewomen had to be dissuaded from reciting their complete lineage back to Artur Hawkwing’s day and beyond, and a few of the plainly clad women wanted to argue against giving the father’s name or telling where they came from, glowering suspiciously as though this might be some sort of trick to bilk them of the coins, but it took no more than a level look to quell most. Not even Murandians wanted to go too far with women they thought Aes Sedai, a notion that was spreading fast. It made the lines move a little more smoothly, if not in any way that could be called swift.
Her eyes kept drifting to the women she saw walking by who were great with child. Some paused to look at the table as though thinking of their turn to stand in line. One of them might be the mother of the Dragon Reborn, at least if she chose to journey to Dragonmount to give birth for some reason. The only two infants born that day, after Gitara’s Foretelling, were girls and, like every other newborn, birthed within a mile of the camp. Some other Accepted was going to find the boychild without knowing what she had found. She herself likely would not hear of it for years. Light, but it hardly seemed fair. She knew, and it meant nothing.
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