“I would not have visited you in this way, Mat, except that I was here in the . . . in the White Tower—” She smiled as if the name amused her—“for another purpose, and I wanted to see all of you.” Mat’s face reddened again, and he tugged the blanket around him tighter, but she seemed not to have been teasing him. More graceful than a swan, she glided to the table. “You are hungry. That’s to be expected, the way they do things. Make sure you eat all they give you. You will be surprised at how quickly you put weight back and regain strength.”

“Pardon,” Mat said diffidently, “but do I know you? Meaning no offense, but you seem . . . familiar.” She looked at him until he began to shift uneasily. A woman like her would expect to be remembered.

“You may have seen me,” she said finally. “Somewhere. Call me Selene.” Her head tilted slightly; she appeared to be waiting for him to recognize the name.

It tugged at the edges of memory. He thought he must have heard it before, but he could not say when or where. “Are you an Aes Sedai, Selene?”

“No.” The word was soft but surprisingly emphatic.

For the first time, he studied her, able now to see more than her beauty. She was almost as tall as he was, slender and, he suspected from the way she moved, strong. He was not sure of her age—a year or two older than he, or maybe as much as ten—but her cheeks were smooth. Her necklace of smooth white stones and woven silver matched her wide belt, but she did not wear a Great Serpent ring. The absence should not have surprised him—no Aes Sedai would ever say right out that she was not—yet it did. There was an air about her—a self-confidence, a surety in her own power to match any queen’s, and something more—that he associated with Aes Sedai.

“You aren’t by any chance a novice, are you?” He had heard that novices wore white, but he could not really believe it of her. She makes Elayne look like a cringer. Elayne. Another name drifting into his head.

“Hardly that,” Selene said with a wry twist to her mouth. “Let us just say that I am someone whose interests coincide with yours. These . . . Aes Sedai mean to use you, but you will like it, in the main, I think. And accept it. There is no need to convince you to seek out glory.”

“Use me?” The memory returned to him of thinking that, but about Rand, that the Aes Sedai meant to use Rand, not him. They’ve no bloody use for me. Light, they can’t have! “What do you mean? I’m no one important. I am no use to anyone but myself. What kind of glory?”

“I knew that would pull you. You, above all.”