“Seeing things again, are you?” the Amyrlin said. “Well, I can certainly make use of that ability of yours. I could have used it all the months you were gone. But we’ll not talk of that. What’s done is done. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills.” She smiled a tight smile. “But if you do it again, I’ll have your hide for gloves. Stand up, girl. Leane forces enough ceremony on me in a month to last any sensible woman a year. I don’t have time for it. Not these days. Now, what did you just see?”

Min straightened slowly. It was a relief to be back with someone who knew of her talent, even if it was the Amyrlin Seat herself. She did not have to hide what she saw from the Amyrlin. Far from it. “You were.… You weren’t wearing any clothes. I … I don’t know what it means, Mother.”

Siuan barked a short, mirthless laugh. “No doubt that I’ll take a lover. But I have no time for that, either. There’s no time for winking at the men when you’re busy bailing the boat.”

“Maybe,” Min said slowly. It could have meant that, though she doubted it. “I just do not know. But, Mother, I’ve been seeing things ever since I walked into the Tower. Something bad is going to happen, something terrible.”

She started with the Aes Sedai in the entry hall and told everything she had seen, as well as what everything meant, when she was sure. She held back what Gawyn had said, though, or most of it; it was no use telling him not to anger the Amyrlin if she did it for him. The rest she laid out as starkly as she had seen it. Some of her fear came out as she dredged it all up, seeing it all again; her voice shook before she was done.

The Amyrlin’s expression never changed. “So you spoke with young Gawyn,” she said when Min finished. “Well, I think I can convince him to keep quiet. And if I remember Sahra correctly, the girl could do with some time working in the country. She’ll spread no gossip hoeing a vegetable patch.”

“I don’t understand,” Min said. “Why should Gawyn keep quiet? About what? I told him nothing. And Sahra…? Mother, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. Aes Sedai and Warders are going to die. It has to mean a battle. And unless you send a lot of Aes Sedai and Warders off somewhere—and servants, too; I saw servants dead and injured, too—unless you do that, that battle will be here! In Tar Valon!”

Tor Books by Robert Jordan

The Wheel of Time®

By Robert Jordan

New Spring: The Novel

The Eye of the World

The Great Hunt

The Dragon Reborn

The Shadow Rising

The Fires of Heaven

Lord of Chaos

A Crown of Swords