“Why—?”
Demandred raised a hand. “Let us wait until we are all here, Mesaana, and I will not have to repeat myself.”
She felt the first spinning of saidar a moment before the glowing line appeared and became a gateway. Graendal stepped out, for once unaccompanied by half-clad servants, and let the opening vanish as quickly as Demandred had. She was a fleshy woman with elaborately curled red-gold hair. Somewhere she had actually managed to find streith for her high-necked gown. High-necked, but mirroring her mood—the fabric was transparent mist. At times Mesaana wondered whether Graendal really took note of anything beyond her sensual pleasures.
“I wondered whether you would be here,” the new arrival said lightly. “You three have been so secretive.” She gave a gay, slightly foolish laugh. No, it would be a dire mistake to take Graendal at surface value. Most who had taken her for a fool were long since dead, victims of the woman they disregarded.
“Is Sammael coming?” he asked.
Graendal waved a beringed hand dismissively. “Oh, he doesn’t trust you. I don’t think the man trusts himself anymore.” The streith darkened; a concealing fog. “He’s marshaling his armies in Illian, moaning over not having shocklances to arm them. When he isn’t doing that, he’s searching for a usable angreal or sa’angreal. Something of decent strength, of course.”
Their eyes all went to Mesaana, and she drew a deep breath. Any of them would have given—well, almost anything, for a suitable angreal or sa’angreal. Each was stronger than any of these half-trained children who called themselves Aes Sedai today, but enough half-trained children linked together could crush them all. Except, of course, that they no longer knew how, and no longer had the means in any case. Men were needed to take a link beyond thirteen, more than one to go beyond twenty-seven. In truth, those girls—the oldest seemed girls to her; she had lived over three hundred years, quite aside from her time sealed in the Bore, and had only been considered just into her middle years—those girls were no real danger, but that did not lessen the desire of anyone here for angreal, or better yet the more powerful sa’angreal. With those remnants from their own time, they could channel amounts of the Power that would have burned them to ash without. Any of them would risk much for one of those prizes. But not everything. Not with no real need. That lack did not still the desire, though.
Automatically Mesaana dropped into a lecturing tone. “The White Tower now has guards and wards on their strongrooms, inside and out, plus they count everything four times each day. The Great Hold in the Stone of Tear is also warded, with a nasty thing that would have held me fast had I tried to pass through or untie it. I don’t think it can be untied except by whoever wove it, and until then it is a trap for any other woman who can channel.”
“A dusty jumble of useless rubbish, so I’ve heard,” Demandred said in dismissal. “The Tairens gathered anything with even a rumored connection to the Power.”
Mesaana suspected he had more than hearsay to go on. She also suspected there was a trap for men woven around the Great Hold, too, or Demandred would have had his sa’angreal and launched himself at Rand al’Thor long since. “No doubt there are some in Cairhien and Rhuidean, but even if you do not walk right into al’Thor, both are full of women who can channel.”
“Ignorant girls.” Graendal sniffed.
“If a kitchen girl puts a knife in your back,” Semirhage said coolly, “are you less dead than if you fall in a sha’je duel at Qal?”
Mesaana nodded. “That leaves whatever might he buried in ancient ruins or forgotten in an attic. If you want to count on finding something by chance, do so. I will not. Unless someone knows the location of a stasis box?” There was a certain dryness to that last. The stasis boxes should have survived the Breaking of the World, but that upheaval had likely as not left them on the bottom of an ocean or buried beneath mountains. Little remained of the world they had known beyond a few names and legends.
Graendal’s smile was all sweetness. “I always thought you should be a teacher. Oh. I am sorry. I forgot.”
Mesaana’s face darkened. Her road to the Great Lord began when she was denied a place in the Collam Daan all those years ago. Unsuited for research, they had told her, but she could still teach. Well, she had taught, until she found how to teach them all!
“I am still waiting to hear what the Great Lord said,” Semirhage murmured.
“Yes. Are we to kill al’Thor?” Mesaana realized she was gripping her skirt with both hands and let go. Strange. She never let anyone get under her skin. “If all goes well, in two months, three at most, he will be where I can safely reach him, and helpless.”
“Where you can safely reach him?” Graendal arched an eyebrow quizzically. “Where have you made your lair? No matter. Bare as it is, it’s as good a plan as I’ve heard lately.”
Still Demandred kept silent, stood there studying them. No, not Graendal. Semirhage and her. And when he did speak, half to himself, it was to they two. “When I think where you two have placed yourselves, I wonder. How much has the Great Lord known, for how long? How much of what has happened has been at his design all along?” There was no answer to that. Finally, he said, “You want to know what the Great Lord told me? Very well. But it stays here, held close. Since Sammael chose to stay away, he learns nothing. Nor do the others, whether alive or dead. The first part of the Great Lord’s message was simple. ‘Let the Lord of Chaos rule.’ His words, exact.” The corners of his mouth twitched, as close to a smile as Mesaana had ever seen from him. Then he told them the rest.
Mesaana found herself shivering and did not know whether she did so from excitement or fear. It could work; it could hand them everything. But it required luck, and gambling made her uncomfortable. Demandred was the gambler. He was right about one thing; Lews Therin had made his own luck as a mint made coin. In her opinion it seemed that so far Rand al’Thor did the same.
Unless. . . . Unless the Great Lord had a plan beyond the one he had revealed. And that frightened her more than any other possibility.
The gilt-framed mirror reflected the room, the disturbingly patterned mosaics on the walls, the gilded furnishings and fine carpets, the other mirrors and the tapestries. A palace room without a window—or a door. The mirror reflected a woman striding up and down in a dark blood-red gown, her beautiful face a combination of rage and disbelief. Still, disbelief. It reflected his own face, too, and that interested him far more than the woman. He could not resist touching his nose and mouth and cheeks for the hundredth time to make sure they were real. Not young, but younger than the face he had worn on first waking from the long sleep, with all its endless nightmares. An ordinary face, and he had always hated being ordinary. He recognized the sound in his throat as a budding laugh, a giggle, and stifled it. He was not mad. Despite ev