When pale light finally appeared at the windows, a gai’shain slipped silently into the room with a cloth-covered silver tray. Seeing Rand awake, he did not speak, only bowed and left just as quietly. With the Power in him, Rand smelled cool sweetberry tea and warm bread, butter and honey, the hot porridge Aiel ate mornings, all as if his nose were in the tray. Releasing the Source, he dressed and buckled on his sword. He did not touch the cloth covering the food; he did not much feel like eating. Holding the Dragon Scepter in the crook of his elbow, he left his apartments.

The Maidens were back in the wide corridor with Sulin, and Urien and his Red Shields, but not alone. People crowded the hallway shoulder to shoulder beyond the guards. And some inside the ring. Aviendha stood among a delegation of Wise Ones, Amys and Bair and Melaine, Sorilea of course, Chaelin, a Smoke Water Miagoma with touches of gray in her dark red hair, and Edarra, a Neder Shiande who looked not much older than himself, though she already had an apparently unshakable calm in her blue eyes and a straight-backed presence to match the others. Berelain was with them, too, but not Rhuarc or any of the other clan chiefs. What he had had to say to them had been said, and Aiel did not draw things out. But then, why were the Wise Ones there? Or Berelain? The green-and-white dress she wore this morning showed a pleasant expanse of pale bosom.

Then there were the Cairhienin, outside the ring of Aiel. Colavaere, strikingly handsome in her middle years, dark hair an elaborate tower of curls and horizontal slashes coloring her gown from high gold-embroidered collar to below her knees, more slashes than anyone else present. Solid, square-faced Dobraine, the front of his mostly gray hair shaved soldier fashion and his coat worn from the straps of a breastplate. Maringil, straight as a blade, white hair touching his shoulders; he had not shaved his forehead, and his dark silk coat, striped like Dobraine’s nearly to his knees, was fit for a ball. Two dozen or more clustered behind, mostly younger men and women, few wearing horizontal stripes even as low as the waist. “Grace favor the Lord Dragon,” they murmured, bowing hand to heart or curtsying, and, “Grace honors us with the Lord Dragon’s presence.”