The color faded, but as she opened her mouth again, a knock came at the door. Rand bounded to his feet. No one would recognize Lanfear, yet if a woman were discovered in his room, a woman whom none of the Maidens below had seen enter, questions would be asked and he had no answers.

But Lanfear already had a gateway open, to somewhere full of white silk hangings and silver. “Remember that I am your only hope of surviving, my love.” It was a very cool voice in which to call someone that. “Beside me, you need fear nothing. Beside me, you can rule—everything that is or will be.” Lifting her snowy skirts, she stepped through, and the gateway winked shut.

The knock sounded again before he could make himself push away saidin and haul open the door.

Enaila peered past him suspiciously, muttering, “I thought perhaps Isendre. . . .” She gave him an accusing look. “Spear-sisters are searching everywhere for you. No one saw you return.” With a shake of her head, she straightened; she always tried to stand as tall as possible. “The chiefs have come to speak with the Car’a’carn,” she said formally. “They wait below.”

They waited on the columned portico, as it turned out, being men. The sky was still dark, but the first glimmers of dawn lined the mountains to the east. If they felt any impatience with the two Maidens who stood between them and the tall doors, it did not show on their shadowed faces.

“The Shaido are moving,” Han barked as soon as Rand appeared. “And the Reyn, the Miagoma, the Shiande. . . . Every clan!”

“Joining Couladin, or me?” Rand demanded.

“The Shaido are moving toward the Jangai Pass,” Rhuarc said. “For the others, it is too early to tell. But they are on the march with every spear not needed to defend the holds, herds and flocks.”

Rand only nodded. All of his determination not to let anyone else dictate what he would do, and now this. Whatever the other clans intended, Couladin had to plan a crossing into Cairhien. So much for his grand schemes of imposing peace, if the Shaido ravaged Cairhien even further while he sat in Rhuidean waiting for the other clans.

“Then we move for the Jangai, too,” he said finally.

“We cannot catch him if he means to cross,” Erim cautioned, and Han added sourly, “If any of the others are joining him, we will be caught strung out like blindworms in the sun.”

“I won’t sit here until I find out,” Rand said. “If I can’t catch Couladin, I mean to be right behind him into Cairhien. Rouse the spears. We leave as soon after first light as you can manage.”

Giving him that odd Aiel bow used only on the most formal occasions, one foot forward and one hand extended, the chiefs departed. Only Han said anything. “To Shayol Ghul itself.”

CHAPTER
7

A Departure