He glared at her, then peered into the room. “A hedgehog. It looks like a hedgehog carved out of wood. Moiraine, tell me what is going on! What has happened? Tell me!”

“A hedgehog,” she murmured. “A hedgehog. Be silent, Perrin. I must think. I felt it trigger. I can sense the residues of the flows woven to set it. Spirit. Pure Spirit, and nothing else. Almost nothing uses pure flows of Spirit! Why does that hedgehog make me think of Spirit?”

“You felt what trigger, Moiraine? What was set? A trap?”

“Yes, a trap,” she said, irritation making tiny cracks in her cool serenity. “A trap meant for me. I would have been first into that room if Zarine had not rushed ahead. Lan and I would surely have gone there to plan and wait for supper. I will not wait on supper now. Be quiet, if you wish me to help the girl at all. Lan! Bring me that innkeeper!” The Warder flowed away down the stairs.

Moiraine paced up and down in the hall, sometimes stopping to peer through the door from the depths of her hood. Perrin could see no sign that Zarine lived. Her breast did not stir. He tried listening for her heartbeat, but even for his ears it was impossible.

When Lan returned, shoving a frightened Jurah Haret ahead of him by the scruff of his fat neck, the Aes Sedai rounded on the balding man. “You promised to keep this room for me, Master Haret.” Her voice was as hard, as precise, as a skinning knife. “To allow not even a serving woman to enter to clean unless I was present. Who did you let enter it, Master Haret? Tell me!”

Haret shook like a bowl of pudding. “O-only the t-two Ladies, mistress. T-they w-wished to leave a surprise for you. I swear, mistress. T-they showed it t-to me. A little h-hedgehog. T-they said you w-would be surprised.”

“I was surprised, innkeeper,” she said softly. “Leave me! And if you whisper a word of this, even in your sleep, I will pull this inn down and leave only a hole in the ground.”

“Y-yes, mistress,” he whispered. “I swear it! I do swear!

“Go!”

The innkeeper fell to his knees in his haste to reach the stairs, and went scrambling down with thumps that suggested he fell more than once as he ran.

“He knows I am here,” Moiraine told the Warder, “and he has found someone of the Black Ajah to set his trap, yet perhaps he thinks I am caught in it. It was a tiny flash of the Power, but perhaps he is strong enough to have sensed it.”

“Then he will not suspect we are coming,” Lan said quietly. He almost smiled.

Perrin stared at them, his teeth bared. “What about her?” he demanded. “What was done to her, Moiraine? Is she alive? I cannot see her breathe!”