Six people, Egwene thought, and how many secrets? They all shared more than one, secrets that would have to be kept, perhaps, even in the White Tower. Life was simpler back home.

“Nynaeve, do you think Rand is all right? And Perrin?” she added hastily. She could not afford to pretend any longer that one day she would marry Rand; pretending would be all it was, now. She did not like that—she was not entirely reconciled to it—but she knew it.

“Your dreams? Have they been troubling you again?” Nynaeve sounded concerned, but Egwene was in no mood to accept sympathy.

She made her voice sound as everyday as she could manage. “From the rumors we heard, I can’t tell what might be going on. They have everything I know about so twisted, so wrong.”

“Everything has been wrong since Moiraine came into our lives,” Nynaeve said brusquely. “Perrin and Rand. . . .” She hesitated, grimacing. Egwene thought Nynaeve believed everything that Rand had become was Moiraine’s doing. “They will have to take care of themselves for now. I’m afraid we have something to worry about ourselves. Something is not right. I can . . . feel it.”

“Do you know what?” Egwene asked.

“It feels almost like a storm.” Nynaeve’s dark eyes studied the morning sky, clear and blue, with only a few scattered white clouds, and she shook her head again. “Like a storm coming.” Nynaeve had always been able to foretell the weather. Listening to the wind, it was called, and the Wisdom of every village was expected to do it, though many really could not. Yet since leaving Emond’s Field, Nynaeve’s ability had grown, or changed. The storms she felt sometimes had to do with men rather than wind, now.

Egwene bit her underlip, thinking. They could not afford to be stopped or slowed, not after coming so far, not so close to Tar Valon. For Mat’s sake, and for reasons that her mind might tell her were more important than the life of one village youth, one childhood friend, but that her heart could not rate so high. She looked at the others, wondering if any of them had noticed something.

Verin Sedai, short and plump and all in shades of brown, rode apparently lost in thought, the hood of her cloak pulled forward till it all but hid her face, in the lead but letting her horse amble at its own pace. She was of the Brown Ajah, and the Brown sisters usually cared more for seeking out knowledge than for anything in the world around them. Egwene was not so sure of Verin’s detachment, though. Verin had put herself hip-deep in the affairs of the world by being with them.