Knife of Dreams

“Better that than dying down here of thirst,” Faile replied, her voice harsher than she wanted. She would never see Perrin again, then. If Seva

“I might spend all day trying to embrace the Source and never succeed,” the sun-haired woman said in dull tones. She stood slumped, staring at nothing. Her face suggested that she saw an abyss beneath her feet. “And if I do embrace it, I can almost never weave anything.”

Faile loosened her grip on Maighdin and smoothed her hair instead. “I know it’s difficult,” she said soothingly. “Well, in truth, I don’t know. I’ve never done it. But you have. And you can do it again. Our lives depend on you, Maighdin. I know the strength that’s in you. I’ve seen it time and again. There is no surrender in you. I know you can do it, and so do you.”

Slowly, Maighdin’s back straightened, and despair slid off her face. She might still see the abyss, but if she fell, she would fall without flinching. “I’ll try,” she said.

For a long while she stared up at the scarf, then shook her head dejectedly. “The Source is there, like the sun just beyond the edge of sight,” she whispered, “but every time I try to embrace it, it’s like trying to catch smoke with my fingers.”

Faile hastily pulled the gai’sbain robes from her basket and another. careless of the gold belts and collars falling to the stone floor. “Sit down,” she said, arranging the robes in a pile. “Make yourself comfortable. I know you can do it, Maighdin.” Pressing the other woman down, she folded her legs and sat beside her.

“You can do it.” Alliandre said softly, sitting down on Maighdin’s other side.

“Yes, you can,” Lacile whispered, joining them.

“I know you can.” Arrela said as she lowered herself to the floor.

Time passed, with Maighdin staring at the scarf. Faile whispered encouragement and held onto hope hard. Suddenly the scarf went rigid, as if something had pulled it taut. A wondrous smile appeared on Maighdin’s face as the scarf began to swing back and forth like a pendulum. Six, seven, eight times it swung. Then it fluttered in the breeze and fell limp.

“That was marvelous,” Faile said.

“Marvelous,” Alliandre said. “You re going to save us, Maighdin.”

“Yes.” Arrela murmured, “you’re going to save us, Maighdin.”

There were many kinds of battle. Sitting on the floor, whispering encouragement, Maighdin fighting to find what she could seldom find. they fought for their lives while the scarf swung, then fell to the breeze, swung and fell limp. But they fought on.

Galina kept her head down and tried not to hurry as she made her way out of Maiden, past the streams of white-clad men and women carrying empty buckets into the town and full buckets back out. She did not want to attract attention, not without that cursed belt and necklace. She had do

She did hate leaving Therava alive, but if anyone had entered the woman’s tent and found her with a knife through her heart. Galina would have been the first suspect. Besides… Images rose in her head, of her bending stealthily over the sleeping Therava, the woman’s own belt knife in hand, of Therava’s eyes snapping open, meeting hers in the darkness, of her screaming, of her hand opening nervelessly to drop the knife, of her begging, of Therava… No. No! It would not have been that way. Certainly not! She had left Therava alive of necessity, not because she was… Not for any other reason.

Suddenly wolves howled, wolves in every direction, a dozen or more. Her feet stopped of their own accord. A motley collection of tents surrounded her, walled tents, peaked tents, low Aiel tents. She had walked right through the gai’shain portion of the camp without realizing it. Her eyes rose to the ridge west of Maiden, and she flinched. Thick fog curled along the whole length of it. concealing the trees as far as she could see in either direction. The town walls hid the ridge to the east, yet she was sure there would be thick fog there, too. The man had come! The Great Lord preserve her, she had been just in time. Well, he would not find his fool wife even if he managed to survive whatever he was about to try. nor would he find Galina Casban.

Thanking the Great Lord that Therava had not forbidden her to ride-the woman had much preferred dangling the possibility that she might be allowed, if she groveled sufficiently-Galina hurried toward her hidden stores. Let the fools who wanted to die here, die. She was free. Free!

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Last Knot

Perrin stood just below the ridgetop, near the edge of the fog, and studied the encampment and stone-walled town below. Two hundred paces of fairly steep slope sparsely dotted with low brush down to level ground, perhaps seven hundred more of cleared ground to the first tents, then better than a mile to the town. It seemed so close, now. He did not use his looking glass. A glint off the lens from the sun just peeking over the horizon, a fingernail edge of golden-red, might ruin everything. The grayness around him curled but did not really move with the breeze, even when it gusted and made his cloak stir. The dense mist on the far ridge, obscuring the windmill there, seemed too still as well, if you studied it a while. How long before someone among those tents noticed? There was nothing to be done for it. The fog felt like any fog, damp and a little cool, but somehow Neald had fixed these mists in place before he went off to his other tasks. The sun would not burn them off even at noonday, or so the Asha’man claimed. Everything would be done by noon, one way or another. but Perrin hoped the man was right. The sky was clear, and the day looked to be warm for early spring.

Only a few Shaido seemed to be outside in the camp, relatively speaking, but thousands of white-clad figures bustled about among the tents. Tens of thousands. His eyes ached to find Faile among them, his heart ached to see her, but he could as well try to pick out one particular pin from a barley-basket of them spilled on the ground. Instead, he stared at the town’s gates, standing wide open as they had every time he had gazed on them. Invitingly wide. They called to him. Soon, Faile and her companions would know it was time to head for those gates, and the towered fortress that bulked at the north end of the town. She might be at chores, if the Maidens were right about how the prisoners would be treated as gai’shain, but she would know to slip away and go to the fortress. She and her friends, and likely Alyse as well. Whatever her scheme with the Shaido, the Aes Sedai would not want to remain on a battleground. A second sister in the fortress might come in handy. The Light send it did not come to that.

He had pla