“The loan of the dream ter’angreal will be enough,” Egwene said dryly. “Not everything has to be a bargain.”
“To them, it often does,” Nynaeve said. “But that’s beside the point. You’re bringing Windfinders to this meeting to lure Mesaana?”
“Not exactly,” Egwene said. “I’ll see the Windfinders at the same time, in a different place. And some Wise Ones as well. Enough to hint to Mesaana—assuming she’s got spies watching the other groups of women who can channel—that she really wants to spy on us in Tel’aran’rhiod that day.
“You and Siuan will hold a meeting in the Hall of the Tower, but it will be a decoy to draw Mesaana or her minions out of hiding. With wards—and some sisters watching from hidden places—we’ll be able to trap them. Siuan will send for me as soon as the trap is sprung.”
Nynaeve frowned. “It’s a good plan, save for one thing. I don’t like you being in danger, Mother. Let me lead this fight. I can manage it.”
Egwene studied Nynaeve, and Siuan saw some of the real Egwene. Thoughtful. Bold, but calculating. She also saw Egwene’s fatigue, the weight of responsibility. Siuan knew that feeling well.
“I’ll admit you have a valid concern,” Egwene said. “Ever since I let myself get captured by Elaida’s cronies outside of Tar Valon, I’ve wondered if I become too directly involved, too directly in danger.”
“Exactly,” Nynaeve said.
“However,” Egwene said, “the simple fact remains that I am the one among us who is most expert at Tel’aran’rhiod. You two are skilled, true, but I have more experience. In this case, I am not just the leader of the Aes Sedai, I am a tool that the White Tower must use.” She hesitated. “I dreamed this, Nynaeve. If we do not defeat Mesaana here, all could be lost. All will be lost. It is not a time to hold back any of our tools, no matter how valuable.”
Nynaeve reached for her braid, but it now came only to her shoulders. She gritted her teeth at that. “You might have a point. But I don’t like it.”
“The Aiel dreamwalkers,” Siuan said. “Mother, you said you’ll be meeting with them. Might they be willing to help? I’d feel much better about having you fight if I knew they were around to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes,” Egwene said. “A good suggestion. I will contact them before we meet and make the request, just in case.”
“Mother,” Nynaeve said. “Perhaps Rand—”
“This is a matter of the Tower, Nynaeve,” Egwene said. “We will manage it.”
“Very well.”
“Now,” Egwene continued, “we need to figure out how to spread the right rumors so that Mesaana won’t be able to resist coming to listen…”
Perrin hit the nightmare running. The air bent around him, and the city houses—this time of the Cairhienin flat-topped variety—disappeared. The road became soft beneath his feet, like mud, then turned to liquid.
He splashed in the ocean. Water again? he thought with annoyance.
Deep red lightning crashed in the sky, throwing waves of bloody light across the sea. Each burst revealed shadowed creatures lurking beneath the waves. Massive things, evil and sinuous in the spasming red lightning.
People clung to the wreckage of what had once been a ship, screaming in terror and crying out for loved ones. Men on broken boards, women trying to hold their babies above the water as towering waves broke over them, dead bodies bobbing like sacks of grain.
The things beneath the waves struck, snatching people from the surface and dragging them into the depths with splashes of fins and sparkling, razor-sharp teeth. The water was soon bubbling red that didn’t come from the lightning.
Whoever had dreamed this particular nightmare had a singularly twisted imagination.
Perrin refused to let himself be drawn in. He squelched his fear, and did not swim for one of those planks. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.
Despite his understanding, part of him knew that he was going to die in these waters. These terrible, bloody waters. The moans of the others assaulted him, and he yearned to try to help them. They weren’t real, he knew. Just figments. But it was hard.
Perrin began to rise from the water, the waves turning back into ground. But then he cried out as something brushed his leg. Lightning crashed, breaking the air. A woman beside him slipped beneath the waves, tugged by unseen jaws. Panicked, Perrin was suddenly back in the water, there in a heartbeat, floating in a completely different place, one arm slung over a piece of wreckage.
This happened sometimes. If he wavered for a moment—if he let himself see the nightmare as real—it would pull him in and actually move him, fitting him into its terrible mosaic. Something moved in the water nearby, and he splashed away with a start. One of the surging waves raised him into the air.
It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real.
The waters were so cold. Something touched his leg again, and he screamed, then choked off as he gulped in a mouthful of salty water.
IT ISN’T REAL!
He was in Cairhien, leagues from the ocean. This was a street. Hard stones beneath. The smell of baked bread coming from a nearby bakery. The street lined with small, thin-trunked ash trees.
With a bellowing scream, he clung to this knowledge as the people around him held to their flotsam. Perrin knotted his hands into fists, focusing on reality.
There were cobblestones under his feet. Not waves. Not water. Not teeth and fins. Slowly, he rose from the ocean again. He stepped out of it and set his foot on the surface, feeling solid stone beneath his boot. The other foot followed. He found himself on a small, floating circle of stones.
Something enormous surged from the waters to his left, a massive beast part fish and part monster, with a maw so wide that a man could walk into it standing upright. The teeth were as large as Perrin’s hand, and they glittered, dripping blood.
It was not real.
The creature exploded into mist. The spray hit Perrin, then dried immediately. Around him, the nightmare bent, a bubble of reality pressing out from him. Dark air, cold waves, screaming people ran together like wet paint.
There was no lightning—he did not see it light his eyelids. There was no thunder. He could not hear it crashing. There were no waves, not in the middle of landlocked Cairhien.
Perrin snapped his eyes open, and the entire nightmare broke apart, vanishing like a film of frost exposed to the spring sunlight. The buildings reappeared, the street returned, the waves retreated. The sky returned to the boiling black tempest. Lightning that was bright and white flashed in its depths,
