Crossroads of Twilight

without faceguards and seven breastplates with dents that made them vulnerable. Their mounts were not bad, though hairy with their winter coats, but even huddled as their riders were in thick cloaks, she could see that eight were unlikely to need to shave above once in a week, if that. The men Master Ros had described as being experienced had wrinkled faces and bony hands and probably not a full set of teeth between them. He had not been lying or trying to stint; Aedmun would have gathered all the fit men in the area to take with him and outfitted them in the best he had. The story had been the same everywhere. Apparently a great number of hale and hearty men scattered the length of Andor were trying to reach her in Caemlyn. And none of them likely to get into the city until all was decided, now. She could search every day without finding a single band. Still, this little bunch held their halberds as if they knew how to use them. Then again, that was not hard to do sitting a saddle at rest with the halberd’s butt tucked in your stirrup. She could have managed that.

“We have visited nineteen of these manors, sister,” Aviendha said softly, moving closer until their shoulders touched, “and counting these, we have gathered two hundred and five boys too young to be blooded and old men who should have laid down the spear long ago. I have not asked before. You know your people and your ways. Is this worth the time you give it?”

“Oh, yes, sister.” Elayne kept her voice just as low, so the one-legged former soldier and the servants could not overhear. The best of people could turn muleheaded if they realized you wanted them to behave a certain way. Particularly if they realized that the help they had painfully gathered and offered, and you had accepted, was not what you were after at all. “Everyone in that village down by the river knows I’m here by now, and so do half the farms for miles. By noon, the other half will know, and by tomorrow, the next village over, and more farms. News travels slowly in winter, especially in this country. They know I’ve spoken my claim to the throne, yet if I gain the throne tomorrow or die tomorrow, they might not learn of it before the middle of spring, maybe not even until summer. But today they know that Elayne Trakand is alive that she visited the manor in silks and jewels and summoned men to her banner. People twenty miles from here will claim they saw me and touched my hand. Few people can say that without speaking in favor of whoever they claim to have seen, and when you speak in favor of someone, you convince yourself to favor them. There are men and women in nineteen places around Andor talking about how they saw the Daughter-Heir just this last week, and every day the area that talk covers spreads like an inkblot.

If I had time, I’d visit every village in Andor. It won’t make a hair of difference in what happens in Caemlyn, but it may make all the difference after I win.” She would not admit to any possibility other than winning. Especially not given who would take the throne if she failed. “Most Queens in our history spent the first years of their rule gathering the people solidly behind them, Aviendha, and some never did, but harder times than these are coming. I may not have one year before I need every Andoran to stand behind me. I can’t wait until I have the throne. Harder times are coming, and I have to be ready. Andor has to be ready, and I must make it so,” she finished firmly.

Smiling, Aviendha touched Elayne’s cheek. “I think I will learn a great deal about being a Wise One from you.”

To her mortification, Elayne blushed in embarrassment. Her cheeks felt on fire! Maybe the swings in humor were worse than the cosseting. Light, she had months of this to look forward to! Not for the first time, she found a kernel of resentment toward Rand. He had done this to her — all right, she had helped him, instigated the doing, in fact, but that was beside the point — he had done this and walked away with a smug grin on his face. She doubted his grin had really been smug, but she could picture it all too easily. Let him dart from giddy to weepy every other hour and see how he liked it! I can’t think in a straight line, she thought irritably. That was his fault, too.

The grooms finally deemed Fireheart and Aviendha’s Siswai meek enough to be mounted by ladies, and Aviendha climbed to her saddle from the stone mounting block with a good deal more grace than she once had shown, arranging her bulky undivided skirts to cover as much of her dark-stockinged legs as possible. She still believed that her own legs were superior to any horse, yet she had become a passable rider. Though she did have a tendency to look surprised when the horse did as she wanted. Fireheart tried to dance once Elayne was on his back, but she reined him in smartly, and a bit more sharply than she would have normally. Her teetering moods had taken her to a sudden sense of dread for Rand, and if she could not ensure his safety, there was one male at hand she could make certain did exactly as he was supposed to.

Six of the Guardswomen led the way down the road from the manor at a slow walk, all the depth of snow would allow, with the rest following her and Aviendha in smart columns, the last horsewomen in line leading the pack animals. The local men trailed behind raggedly with their own packhorse, a shaggy creature tied about with cookpots and rough bundles and even half a dozen live chickens. A few cheers greeted them as they rode through the thatch-roofed village and across the stone bridge that crossed a snake-curved frozen stream, loud cries of “Elayne of the Lily!” and “Trakand! Trakand!” and “Matherin stands!” But she saw a woman crying on her husband’s chest, and tears on his face, too, and another woman who stood with her back to the riders and her head down, refusing even to look. Elayne hoped she would send their sons home to them. There should be little fighting at Caemlyn, unless she blundered badly, but there would be some, and once the Rose Crown was hers, battles lay ahead. To the south lay the Seanchan, and to the north, Myrddraal and Trollocs waiting to descend for Tarmon Gai’don. Andor would bleed sons in the days to come. Burn her, she was not going to cry!

Beyond the bridge, the road slanted up again, a steep climb through pine and fir and leatherleaf, but it was no more than a long mile to the mountain meadow they sought. The snow shining beneath the midmorning sun still bore the marks of hooves coming from where a gateway had left a deep furrow in the snow. It could have been nearer the manor, but the possibility of someone standing where your gateway opened was always the danger.

The glow of saidar surrounded Aviendha as they rode into the meadow. She had made the gateway to come here from their last stop yesterday afternoon, a manor a hundred miles north, so she would weave the gateway to go to Caemlyn, but the sight of Aviendha shining with the Power made Elayne go broody. Whoever made the gateway to leave Caemlyn always ended up making all the others until they returned, since she learned the ground at each place her gateway touched, but on each of their five trips, Aviendha had asked to make that first gateway. She might simply have wanted the practice, as she claimed, though Elayne hardly had more practice than she did, but another possibility had come to mind. Maybe Aviendha wanted to keep her from channeling, in any considerable amount at least. Because she was pregnant. The weave that had made them sisters of the same mother could not have been used if either of them had been with child, because the unborn child would have shared in the bond, a thing it could not be strong enough to survive, but surely one of the Aes Sedai in the palace would have said something if channeling was to be avoided in pregnancy. Then again, very few Aes Sedai ever bore children. They might not know. She was aware there were many things Aes Sedai did not know, however much they might pretend otherwise to the rest of the world — she herself had taken advantage of that presumption from time to time — but it seemed very strange that they might be ignorant of something so important to most women. It was as though a bird knew how to eat every seed and grain except barley, so supposedly knew, because if it did not know how to eat barley, what else might it be ignorant of? Wise Ones bore children, though, and they had said nothing about —

Abruptly concerns over her babe and channeling and what Aes Sedai might or might not know were pushed right out of her head. She could feel someone channeling saidar. Not Aviendha, not someone on one of the surrounding mountains, not anyone near as close as that. This was distant, like a beacon blazing on a far mountaintop in the night. A very distant mountain. She could not imagine how much of the One Power was needed for her to feel channeling at that distance. Every woman in the world who could channel must be able to sense this. To point straight to it. And the beacon lay to the west. Nothing had changed in the bond with Rand, she could not have said exactly where he was within a hundred miles, but she knew.

“He’s in danger,” she said. “We must go to him, Aviendha.”

Aviendha gave herself a shake and stopped staring westward. The glow remained around her, and Elayne could feel that she had drawn on the Source as deeply as she could. But even as Aviendha turned to her, she felt the amount of saidar the other woman held dwindle. “We must not, Elayne.”

Aghast, Elayne twisted in Fireheart’s saddle to stare at her. “You want to abandon him? To that!” No one could handle so much of saidar, not the strongest circle, not unaided. Supposedly a sa’angreal existed, greater than anything else ever made, and if what she had heard was correct, that might be able to handle this. Maybe. But from what she had