He looked around before answering. Not that he had need; there was little traffic on the path—an occasional ox-drawn cart, a few folk in farm clothes or rougher, here and there a man on a horse—and no one seemed willing to come any closer to him than they had to. He appeared a man who might cut somebody’s throat on a whim. “The blue woman gave us a name in Jehannah, and said we were to wait there until she sent instructions, but the woman in Jehannah was dead and buried when we arrived. An old woman. Died in her sleep, and none of her relatives had ever heard the blue woman’s name. Then Masema started talking to people, and . . . Well, there was no point staying there for orders we’d never hear if they did come. We stay close to Masema because he slips us enough to live on, though none except Bartu and Nengar listen to his trash.” The grizzled topknot swung as he shook his head in irritation.

Suddenly Nynaeve realized that there had not been a single obscene word in that. He looked about to swallow his tongue. “Perhaps if you cursed only occasionally?” She sighed. “Maybe once every other sentence?” The man smiled at her so gratefully that she wanted to throw up her hands in exasperation. “How is it that Masema has money when the rest of you do not?” She remembered Masema: a dark sour man who liked no one and nothing.

“Why, he’s the bloody Prophet they’ve all come to hear. Would you like to meet him?” He gave the impression of counting his sentences. Nynaeve breathed deeply; the man was going to take her literally. “He might find you a flaming boat, if you want one. In Ghealdan, what the Prophet wants, the Prophet usually gets. No, he always flaming gets it in the end, one way or another. The man was a good soldier, but who’d have ever thought he would turn out like this?” His frown took in all the rude villages and the people, even the shows and the city ahead.

Nynaeve hesitated. The dreaded Prophet, rousing mobs and riots, was Masema? But he did preach the coming of the Dragon Reborn. They were almost to the town gate, and there was time yet before she must stand up and let Birgitte shoot arrows at her. Luca had been more than disappointed that the woman insisted on being called Maerion. If Masema could find a boat heading downriver . . . Today, maybe. On the other hand, there were the riots. If rumor inflated them tenfold, then only hundreds had died in towns and cities farther north. Only hundreds.