This was not the first such plume of smoke she had seen since the Erinin began to flow along the border of Cairhien, nor the first such village. At least this time there were no bodies in sight. Captain Ellisor sometimes had to sail close to the Cairhienin shore because of mudflats — he said they shifted in this part of the river — but however close he came, she had not seen a single living person.
The village and the smoke plume slipped away behind the ship, but already another column of smoke was coming into view ahead, further from the river. The forest was thinning, ash and leatherleaf and black elder giving way to willow and whitewood and wateroak, and some she did not recognize.
The wind caught her cloak, but she let it stream, feeling the cold cleanness of the air, feeling the freedom of wearing brown instead of any sort of white, though it had not been her first choice. Yet dress and cloak were of the best wool, well cut and well sewn.
Another sailor trotted by, bowing as he went. She vowed to learn at least some of what it was they were doing; she did not like feeling ignorant. Wearing her Great Serpent ring on her right hand made for a good deal of bowing with a captain and crew born mainly in Tar Valon.
She had won that argument with Nynaeve, though Nynaeve had been sure she herself was the only one of the three of them old enough for people to believe she was Aes Sedai. But Nynaeve had been wrong. Egwene was ready to admit that both she and Elayne had received startled looks on boarding the Blue Crane that afternoon at Southharbor, and Captain Ellisor's eyebows had climbed almost to where his hair would have begun had he had any, but he had been all smiles and bows.
“An honor, Aes Sedai. Three Aes Sedai to travel on my vessel? An honor indeed. I promise you a quick journey as far as you wish. And no trouble with Cairhienin brigands. I no longer put in on that side of the river. Unless you wish it, of course, Aes Sedai. Andoran soldiers do hold a few towns on the Cairhienin side. An honor, Aes Sedai.”
His eyebrows had shot up again when they asked for just one cabin among them — not even Nynaeve wanted to be alone at night if she did not have to be. Each could have a cabin to herself at no extra charge, he told them; he had no other passengers, his cargo was aboard, and if Aes Sedai had urgent business downriver, he would not wait even an hour for anyone else who might want passage. They said again that one cabin would be sufficient.
He was startled, and it had been plain from his face that he did not understand, but Chin Ellisor, born and bred in Tar Valon, was not one to question Aes Sedai once they made their intentions clear. If two of them seemed very young, well, some Aes Sedai were young.
The abandoned ruins vanished behind Egwene. The column of smoke drew closer, and there was a hint of another much further still from the riverbank. The forest was turning to low, grassy hills dotted with thickets. Trees that made flowers in the spring had them, tiny white blossoms on snowberry and bright red sugarberry. One tree she did not know was covered in round white flowers bigger than her two hands together. Occasionally a climbing wildrose put swaths of yellow or white through branches thick with the green of leaves and the red of new growth. It was all too sharp a contrast to the ashes and rubble to be entirely pleasant.
Egwene wished she had an Aes Sedai to question herself right then. One she could trust. Brushing her pouch with her fingers, she could barely feel the twisted stone ring of the ter'angreal inside.
She had tried it every night but two since leaving Tar Valon, and it had not worked the same way twice. Oh, she always found herself in Tel'aran'rhiod, but the only thing she saw that might have been any use was the Heart of the Stone again, each time without Silvie to tell her things. There was certainly nothing about the Black Ajah.
Her own dreams, without the ter'angreal, had been filled with images that seemed almost like glimpses of the Unseen World. Rand holding a sword that blazed like the sun, till she could hardly see that it was a sword, could hardly make out that it was him at all. Rand threatened in a dozen ways, none of them the least bit real. In one dream he had been on a huge stones board, the black and white stones as big as boulders, and him dodging the monstrous hands that moved them and seemed to try to crush him under them. It could have meant something. It very probably did, but beyond the fact that Rand was in danger from someone, or two someones — she thought that much was clear — beyond that, she simply did not know. I cannot help him, now. I have my own duty. I don't even know where he is, except that it is probably five hundred leagues from here.
She had dreamed of Perrin with a wolf, and with a falcon, and a hawk — and the falcon and the hawk fighting — of Perrin running from someone deadly, and Perrin stepping willingly over the edge of a towering cliff while saying, “It must be done. I must learn to fly before I reach the bottom.” There had been one dream of an Aiel, and she thought that had to do with Perrin, too, but she was not sure. And a dream of Min, springing a steel trap but somehow walking through it without so much as seeing it. There had been dreams of Mat, too. Of Mat with dice spinning 'round him — she felt she knew where that one came from — of Mat being followed by a man who was not there — she still did not understand that; there was a man following, or maybe more than one, but in some way there was no one there — of Mat riding desperately toward something unseen in the distance that he had to reach, and Mat with a woman who seemed to be tossing fireworks about. An Illuminator, she assumed, but that made no more sense than anything else.
She had had so many dreams that she was beginning to doubt them all. Maybe it had to do with using the ter'angreal so often, or maybe with just carrying it. Maybe she was finally learning what a Dreamer did. Frantic dreams, hectic dreams. Men and women breaking out of a cage, then putting on crowns. A woman playing with puppets, and another dream where the strings on puppets led to the hands of larger puppets, and their strings led to still greater puppets, on and on until the last strings vanished into unimaginable heights. Kings dying, queens weeping, battles raging. Whitecloaks ravaging the Two Rivers. She had even dreamed of the Seanchan again. More than once. Those she shut away in a dark corner; she would not let herself think of them. Her mother and father, every night.
She was certain what that meant, at least, or thought she was. It means I'm off hunting the Black Ajah, and I do not know what my dreams mean or how to make the fool ter'angreal do what it should, and I'm frightened, and... And homesick. For an instant she thought how good it would be to have her mother send her up to bed knowing everything would be better in the morning. Only mother can't solve my problems for me anymore, and father can't promise to chase away monsters and make me believe it. I
