Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to walk over and pull back the sheet, revealing Celark’s and Mazone’s lifeless faces—Celark’s, unfortunately, sitting beside his body, separated from it at the neck.

“You did well, men,” he said. “I’ll see that your families know that you saved the life of the Amyrlin.” It made him angry to lose such good men.

Burn those Seanchan, he thought. Egwene is right about them. Something needs to be done.

He glanced to the side, to where the three assassins lay beneath sheets of their own, black-slippered feet sticking out the bottom. Two women and a man.

I wonder… he thought, then crossed to where they lay. Guards glanced at him as he pulled back the sheet, but nobody forbade him.

The ter’angreal were easy to pick out, though only because he’d been told what to look for. Identical black stone rings, worn on the middle fingers of their right hands. The rings were carved in the shape of a vine with thorns. Apparently none of the Aes Sedai had recognized them for what they were, at least not yet.

Gawyn slipped all three rings off, then tucked them into his pocket.

Lan could feel something, a distinct difference to the emotions in the back of his mind. He’d grown accustomed to ignoring those, and the woman they represented.

Lately, those emotions had changed. More and more, he was certain that Nynaeve had taken his bond. He could identify her by the way she felt. How could one not know her, that sense of passion and kindness? It felt…remarkable.

He stared down the roadway. It twisted around the side of a hill before turning straight toward a distinctive fortress ahead. The border between Kandor and Arafel was marked by the Silverwall Keeps, a large fortification built on two sides of Firchon Pass. It was an extremely impressive fortress—really two of them, each one built up the straight wall of the narrow canyonlike pass. Like two sides of an enormous doorway.

Getting through the pass required traveling a considerable distance between large stone walls pocked with arrowslits, and it would be effective at stopping armies moving in either direction.

They were all allies, the Borderlanders were. But that didn’t stop the Arafellin from wanting a nice fortress blocking the way up to Shol Arbela. Camped in front of that fortress was a gathering of thousands of people, clustered in smaller groups. The flag of Malkier—the Golden Crane—flew over some of the groups. Others flew flags of Kandor or Arafel.

“Which of you broke your oath?” Lan asked, looking back at the caravan.

The men there shook their heads.

“Nobody needed to break his oath,” Andere said. “What else would you do? Cut through the Broken Lands? The Uncapped Hills? It is here or nowhere. They know this. And so they wait for you.”

Lan growled. It was probably true. “We are a caravan,” he said loudly. “Remember, if any ask, you may admit that we are Malkieri. You may say you wait for your king. That is truth. You may not mention that you have found him.”