The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,261

people here cared to try any longer. They were moving, working, but most of them had given up. Few as much as glanced at three women riding where everyone else walked.

The men wore baggy breeches, usually tied at the ankle. Only a handful wore coats, long, dark garments that fit arms and chest tightly, then became looser below the waist. There were more men in low shoes than in boots, but most went barefoot in the mud. A good many wore no coat or shirt at all, and had their breeches held up by a broad sash, sometimes colored and often dirty. Some had wide, conical straw hats on their heads, and a few, cloth caps that sagged down one side of the face. The women’s dresses had high necks, right up to their chins, and hems that stopped at the ankle. Many had short aprons in pale colors, sometimes two or three, each smaller than the one beneath it, and most wore the same straw hats as the men, but dyed to complement the aprons.

It was on a woman that she first saw how those who wore shoes dealt with the mud. The woman had small wooden platforms tied to the soles of her shoes, lifting them two hands out of the mud; she walked along as if her feet were planted firmly on the ground. Egwene saw others wearing the platforms after that, men as well as women. Some of the women went barefoot, but not as many as the men.

She was wondering which shop might sell those platforms, when Nynaeve suddenly turned her black down an alleyway between a long, narrow two-story house and a stone-walled potter’s shop. Egwene exchanged glances with Elayne—the Daughter-Heir shrugged—and then they followed. Egwene did not know where Nynaeve was going or why—and she meant to have words with her about it—but she did not mean to become separated, either.

The alley suddenly let into a small yard behind the house, fenced in by the buildings around it. Nynaeve had already dismounted and tied her reins to a fig tree, where the stallion could not reach the green things sprouting in a vegetable patch that took up half the yard. A line of stones had been laid to make a path to the back door. Nynaeve strode to the door and knocked.

“What is it?” Egwene demanded in spite of herself. “Why are we stopping here?”

“Did you not see the herbs in the front windows?” Nynaeve knocked again.

“Herbs?” Elayne said.

“A Wisdom,” Egwene told her as she got down from her saddle and tied Mist alongside the black. Gaidin is no good name for a horse. Does she think I don’t know who she means it for? “Nynaeve has found herself a Wisdom, or Seeker, or whatever they call her here.”

A woman opened the door just enough to look out suspiciously. At first Egwene thought she was stout, but then the woman opened the door the rest of the way. She was certainly well padded, but the way she moved spoke of muscle underneath. She looked as strong as Mistress Luhhan, and some in Emond’s Field claimed Alsbet Luhhan was almost as strong as her husband. It was not true, but it was not far wrong.

“How can I help you?” the woman said in an accent like the Amyrlin’s. Her gray hair was arranged in thick curls that hung down the sides of her head, and her three aprons were in shades of green, each slightly darker than the one below, but even the topmost pale. “Which one of you needs me?”

“I do,” Nynaeve said. “I need something for a queasy stomach. And perhaps one of my companions does, too. That is, if we’ve come to the right place?”

“You’re not Tairen,” the woman said. “I should have known that by your clothes, before you spoke. I’m called Mother Guenna. I am called a Wise Woman, too, but I’m old enough not to trust that to caulk a seam. You come, and I will give you something for your stomach.”

It was a neat kitchen, though not large, with copper pots hanging on the wall, and dried herbs and sausages from the ceiling. Several tall cupboards of pale wood had doors carved with some sort of tall grass. The table had been scrubbed almost white, and the backs of the chairs were carved with flowers. A pot of fishy-smelling soup was simmering atop the stone stove, and a kettle with a spout, just beginning to steam. There