“What has happened here?” Liandrin demanded. “Who are you, and what—?” Suddenly the memory flashed into her head. A Darkfriend, a servant in Tanchico who had continually gotten above herself. “Gyldin!” she snapped. This servant had followed them in some fashion and obviously was trying to pass herself off as a Black courier with some dire news. “You have overstepped yourself too far this time.” She reached to embrace saidar, yet even as she did the glow surrounded the other woman, and Liandrin’s reach ran into a thick invisible wall shutting her away from the Source. It hung there like the sun, tantalizingly out of reach.

“Stop gaping, Liandrin,” the woman said calmly. “You look like a fish. It is not Gyldin, but Moghedien. This tea needs more honey, Temaile.” The slender, fox-faced woman darted to take the cup, breathing heavily.

It had to be so. Who else could have so cowed the others? Liandrin looked at them standing around the walls. Round-faced Eldrith Jhondar, for once not looking vague at all despite an ink smudge on her nose, nodded vigorously. The others seemed afraid to twitch. Why one of the Forsaken—they were not supposed to use that name, but usually did, among themselves—why Moghedien would have masqueraded as a servant, she could not understand. The woman had or could have everything that she herself wanted. Not just knowledge of the One Power beyond her dreams, but power. Power over others, power over the world. And immortality. Power for a lifetime that would never end. She and her sisters had speculated on dissension among the Forsaken; there had been orders at odds with each other, and orders given to other Darkfriends at odds with theirs. Perhaps Moghedien had been hiding from the rest of the Forsaken.

Liandrin spread her divided riding skirts as best she could in a deep curtsy. “We welcome you, Great Mistress. With the Chosen to lead us, we shall surely triumph before the Day of the Great Lord’s Return.”

“Nicely said,” Moghedien said dryly, taking the cup back from Temaile. “Yes, this is much better.” Temaile looked absurdly grateful, and relieved. What had Moghedien done?

Suddenly a thought came to Liandrin, an unwelcome one. She had treated one of the Chosen as a servant. “Great Mistress, in Tanchico I did not know that you—”