“I took the oath and received the blessing in the Great Square of Tammaz, in Illian. Perhaps I was the youngest, but in that crowd, with all the trumpets and drums and cymbals and shouting. . . . A six-year-old could have taken the oath, and none would have noticed. There were over a thousand of us, perhaps two, and every one with an idea of where to find the Horn of Valere. I have mine—it still may be the right one—but no Hunter can afford to pass up a strange trail. The Horn will certainly lie at the end of a strange trail, and I have never seen one any stranger than the trail you four make. Where are you bound? Illian? Somewhere else?”

“What was your idea?” he asked. “About where the Horn is?” Safe in Tar Valon, I hope, and the Light send I never see it again. “You think it’s in Ghealdan?”

She frowned at him—he had the feeling she did not give up a scent once she had raised it, but he was ready to offer her as many side trails as she would take—then said, “Have you ever heard of Manetheren?”

He nearly choked. “I have heard of it,” he said cautiously.

“Every queen of Manetheren was an Aes Sedai, and the king the Warder bound to her. I can’t imagine a place like that, but that is what the books say. It was a large land—most of Andor and Ghealdan and more besides—but the capital, the city itself, was in the Mountains of Mist. That is where I think the Horn is. Unless you four lead me to it.”

His hackles stirred. She was lecturing him as if he were an untaught village lout. “You’ll not find the Horn or Manetheren. The city was destroyed during the Trolloc Wars, when the last queen drew too much of the One Power to destroy the Dreadlords who had killed her husband.” Moiraine had told him the names of that king and queen, but he did not remember them.

“Not in Manetheren, farmboy,” she said calmly, “though a land such as that would make a good hiding place. But there were other nations, other cities, in the Mountains of Mist, so old that not even Aes Sedai remember them. And think of all those stories about it being bad luck to enter the mountains. What better place for the Horn to be hidden than in one of those forgotten cities.”