That would still leave gateways, of course. Sometimes he wondered why one of the Forsaken did not pour a few thousand Trollocs into the Palace by a gateway. Ten thousand, or twenty. He would be hard pressed to stop that, if he could stop it at all. It would be a slaughter at best. Well, he could do nothing about a gateway unless he was there. He could do something about the Waygates.

Haman exchanged looks with Covril. They drew aside, speaking in a whisper, and for a wonder, it was low enough that all he heard was a buzz like a huge swarm of bees on the roof. He must be right about her having some importance. A Speaker; he had heard the capital. He considered seizing saidin– he would be able to hear, them – and rejected it disgustedly. He had not sunk to eavesdropping yet. Erith divided her attention evenly between her elders and Rand, all the while unconsciously smoothing her skirts.

Rand hoped they did not inquire why he had not asked his question of the Council of Elders in Stedding Tsofu. Alar, Eldest of the Elders there, had been very firm; the Stump was meeting, and nothing so odd – so peculiar as to never have been thought of before – as handing control of the Waygates to a human could be done unless the Slump concurred. Who he was hardly seemed to matter to her any more than it did to these three.

Finally Haman came back frowning and gripping the lapels of his coat. Covril was frowning too. "This is all very hasty, very hasty," Haman said in slow tones like gravel sliding. "I wish I could discuss it with... Well, I cannot. Shadowspawn, you say? Um. Um. Very well, if there must be haste, there must be haste. Never let it be said that Ogier cannot move quickly when needs require, and perhaps they do now. You must understand, The Council of Elders in any steddingmay tell you no, and so may the Stump."

"Maps!" Rand shouted, so loudly that all three Ogier jumped. "I need maps!" He spun around looking for one of the servants who always seemed to be about, for a gai’shain, anyone. Sulin put her head into the courtyard through a doorway. She would be nearby, after everything he had told her. "Maps," he barked at her. "I want every map in the Palace. And a pen, and ink. Now! Quickly!" She looked al him almost disparagingly – Aiel did not use maps, indeed claimed not to need them – and turned away. "Run, Far Dareis Mail" he snapped. She looked over her shoulder al him – and ran. He wished he knew how his face looked, so he could recall it for use again.

Haman appeared as though he would be wringing his hands if his dignity had been just a little smaller. "Really, there is very little we can possibly tell you that you don’t already know. Every steddinghas one just Outside." The first Waygates could not have been made inside, with the ability to channel blocked by the steddingitself; even when Ogier were given the Talisman of Growing, and could themselves make the Ways grow to a new Waygate, the Power was still involved, if not channeling. "And all your cities that have Ogier groves. Though it does seem the city here has grown overthe grove. And in Al’cair’rahienallen... " He trailed off, shaking his head.

The trouble could be summed up by that name. Three thousand years ago, near enough, there had been a city called Al’cair’rahienallen, built by Ogier. Today it was Cairhien, and the grove the Ogier builders planted to remind them of their steddingwas part of an estate that had belonged to the same Barthanes whose palace now housed Rand’s school. Nobody but Ogier and maybe some Aes Sedai remembered Al’cair’rahienallen. Not even Cairhienin.

Whatever Haman believed, much could change in three thousand years. Great Ogier-built cities had ceased to exist, some leaving not so much as a name behind. Great cities had risen that the Ogier had had no hand in. Amador, begun after the Trolloc Wars, was one, so Moiraine had told him, and Chachin in Kandor, and Shol Arbela in Arafel, and Fal Moran in Shienar. In Arad Doman, Bandar Eban had been built on the ruins of a city destroyed in the War of the Hundred Years, a city Moiraine knew three names for, each suspect, and itself built on the ruins of a nameless city that had vanished in the Trolloc Wars. Rand knew of a Waygate in Shienar, in the countryside near a moderate town that had kept part of the name of the huge city leveled by Trollocs, and another inside the Blight, in Shadow-murdered Malkier. Other places there had simply been change, or growth, as Haman himself had pointed out. The Waygate here in Caemlyn sat in a basement now. A well-guarded basement. Rand knew there was a Waygate in Tear, out in the great pastureland where the High Lords ran their famous horse herds. There should be one somewhere in the Mountains of Mist, where Manetheren had once stood, wherever that was. As far as steddingwent, he knew where to find Stedding Tsofu. Moiraine had not considered steddingor Ogier a vital part of his education.

"You don’t know where the steddingare?" Haman said incredulously when Rand finished explaining. "Is this Aiel humor? I have never understood Aiel humor."

"For Ogier," Rand said gently, "it has been a long time since the Ways were made. For humans, it has been a very long time."

"But you do not even rememberMafal Dadaranell, or Ancohima, or Londaren Cor, or...?"

Covril put a hand on Haman’s shoulder, but the pity in her eyes was directed at Rand. "He does not remember," she said softly. "Their memories are gone." She made it sound the greatest loss imaginable. Erith, hands clasped to her mouth, appeared ready to cry.

Sulin returned, quite deliberately not running, followed by a fat cluster of gai’shain, their arms filled to overflowing with rolled maps of all sizes, some long enough to drag on the courtyard paving stones. One white-robed man carried an ivory-inlaid writing box. "I have set gai’shainlooking for more," she said stiffly, "and some of the wetlanders."

"Thank you," he told her. A little of the tautness went from her face.

Squatting down, he began spreading maps right there on the paving stones, sorting them. A number were of the city, and many of parts of Andor. He quickly found one showing the whole stretch of the Borderlands, and the Light knew what that was doing in Caemlyn. Some were old and tattered, showing borders that no longer applied, naming countries that had faded away hundreds of years before.

Borders and names were enough to rank the maps by age. On the oldest, Hardan bordered Cairhien to the north; then Hardan was gone and Cairhien’s borders swept halfway to Shienar before creeping back as it became clear the Sun Throne simply could not hold on to that much land. Maredo stood between Tear and Illian, then Maredo was gone, and Tear and Illian’s borders met on the Plains of Maredo, slowly falling back for the same reasons as Cairhien’s. Caralain vanished, and Almoth, Mosara and Irenvelle, and others, sometimes absorbed by other nations, most often eventually becoming unclaimed land and wilderness. Those maps told a story of fading since Hawkwing’s empire crumbled, of humanity in slow retreat. A second Borderland map showed only Saldaea and part of Arafel, but it showed the Blightborder fifty miles farther north too. Humanity retreated, and the Shadow advanced.

A bald, skinny man in ill-fitting Palace livery scurried into the courtyard with another armload, and Rand sighed and went on selecting and discarding.

Haman gravely examined the writing box that was held out to him by the gai’shain, then produced one almost as large, though quite plain, from a capacious coat pocket. The pen he took from it was polished wood, rather fatter than Rand’s thumb and long enough to look slender. It fit the Ogier’s sausage-thick fingers perfectly. He got down on hands and knees, crawling among the maps as Rand sorted, occasionally dipping his pen in the gai’shain’s inkpot, annotating in a handwriting that seemed too large until you realized that for him it was very small. Covril followed, peering over his shoulder even after he asked the second time whether she really thought he would make a mistake.