“He was well when I left him.” Moiraine’s voice was serene. “Whether he still is, I do not know. His . . . companion is in some considerable danger, and he may have put himself into it, also.”

“His companion?” Egwene said sharply. “Wha—Who is Perrin’s companion?”

“What sort of danger?” Nynaeve demanded.

“Nothing that need concern you,” the Aes Sedai said calmly. “I will go and see to her as I may, shortly. I have delayed only to show you this, which I found among the ter’angreal and other things of the Power the High Lords collected over the years.” She took something from her pouch and laid it on the table before her. It was a disc the size of a man’s hand, seemingly made of two teardrops fitted together, one black as pitch, the other white as snow.

Mat seemed to remember seeing others like it. Ancient, like this one, but broken, where this was whole. Three of them, he had seen; not all together, but all in pieces. But that could not be; he remembered that they were made of cuendillar, unbreakable by any power, even the One Power.

“One of the seven seals Lews Therin Kinslayer and the Hundred Companions put on the Dark One’s prison when they resealed it,” Elayne said, nodding as if confirming her own memory.

“More precisely,” Moiraine told her, “a focus point for one of the seals. But in essence, you are correct. During the Breaking of the World they were scattered and hidden for safety; since the Trolloc Wars they have been lost in truth.” She sniffed. “I begin to sound like Verin.”

Egwene shook her head. “I suppose I should have expected to find that here. Twice before Rand faced Ba’alzamon, and both times at least one of the seals was present.”

“And this time unbroken,” Nynaeve said. “For the first time, the seal is unbroken. As if that mattered, now.”

“You think it does not?” Moiraine’s voice was dangerous in its quiet, and the other women frowned at her.

Mat rolled his eyes. They kept talking about unimportant things. He did not much like standing not twenty feet from that disc now that he knew what it was, no matter the value of cuendillar, but. . . . “Your pardon?” he said.