The Dragon Reborn - By Robert Jordan Page 0,316

for that matter, so did Bain and Chiad. Women are odd, but Aiel women make odd seem normal!

The great table in the middle of the room, ornately carved and gilded on edges and thick legs, had been meant for gatherings of the High Lords. Moiraine sat in one of the throne like chairs, with the Crescent Banner of Tear worked into its towering back in gilt and polished carnelian and pearlshell. Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne sat close by her.

“I still cannot believe Perrin is here in Tear,” Nynaeve was saying. “Are you sure he is all right?”

Mat shook his head. He would have expected Perrin to have been up in the Stone last night; the blacksmith had always been braver than anyone with good sense.

“He was well when I left him.” Moiraine’s voice was serene. “Whether he still is, I do not know. His . . . companion is in some considerable danger, and he may have put himself into it, also.”

“His companion?” Egwene said sharply. “Wha—Who is Perrin’s companion?”

“What sort of danger?” Nynaeve demanded.

“Nothing that need concern you,” the Aes Sedai said calmly. “I will go and see to her as I may, shortly. I have delayed only to show you this, which I found among the ter’angreal and other things of the Power the High Lords collected over the years.” She took something from her pouch and laid it on the table before her. It was a disc the size of a man’s hand, seemingly made of two teardrops fitted together, one black as pitch, the other white as snow.

Mat seemed to remember seeing others like it. Ancient, like this one, but broken, where this was whole. Three of them, he had seen; not all together, but all in pieces. But that could not be; he remembered that they were made of cuendillar, unbreakable by any power, even the One Power.

“One of the seven seals Lews Therin Kinslayer and the Hundred Companions put on the Dark One’s prison when they resealed it,” Elayne said, nodding as if confirming her own memory.

“More precisely,” Moiraine told her, “a focus point for one of the seals. But in essence, you are correct. During the Breaking of the World they were scattered and hidden for safety; since the Trolloc Wars they have been lost in truth.” She sniffed. “I begin to sound like Verin.”

Egwene shook her head. “I suppose I should have expected to find that here. Twice before Rand faced Ba’alzamon, and both times at least one of the seals was present.”

“And this time unbroken,” Nynaeve said. “For the first time, the seal is unbroken. As if that mattered, now.”

“You think it does not?” Moiraine’s voice was dangerous in its quiet, and the other women frowned at her.

Mat rolled his eyes. They kept talking about unimportant things. He did not much like standing not twenty feet from that disc now that he knew what it was, no matter the value of cuendillar, but. . . . “Your pardon?” he said.

They all turned to stare at him as if he were interrupting something important. Burn me! Break them out of a prison cell, save their lives half a dozen times between them before the night is done, and they glower as hard as the bloody Aes Sedai! Well, they did not thank me then, either, did they? You’d have thought I was sticking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted then, too, instead of keeping some bloody Defender from putting a sword through one of them. Aloud, he said mildly, “You do not mind if I ask a question, do you? You have all been talking this Aes Sedai . . . uh . . . business, and no one has bothered to tell me anything.”

“Mat?” Nynaeve said warningly, tugging her braid, but Moiraine said, in a calm only just touched with impatience, “What is it that you wish to know?”

“I want to know how all of this can be.” He meant to keep his tone soft, but despite himself he picked up intensity as he went along. “The Stone of Tear has fallen! The Prophecies said that would never happen till the People of the Dragon came. Does that mean we are the bloody People of the Dragon? You, me, Lan, and a few hundred bloody Aiel?” He had seen the Warder during the night; there had not seemed to be much edge between Lan and the Aiel as to who was the more deadly. As Rhuarc straightened to stare at