Egwene started to ask why she emphasized the name so, then abruptly realized that "Marigan’s" necklace was a match for the bracelet on Nynaeve’s wrist. She could not help staring. The woman certainly did not look anything like she expected one of the Forsaken to look. She said as much, and Nynaeve laughed.

"Watch, Egwene."

She did more than watch; she nearly leaped out of her chair, and she did embrace saidar. As soon as Nynaeve spoke, the glow had surrounded "Marigan." Only for an instant, but before it faded, the woman in the plain wool dress changed completely. Actually they were rather small changes, but they added up to a different woman, handsome rather than beautiful but not at all worn, a woman who was proud, even regal. Only the eyes remained the same, glittering, but no matter how they shifted, Egwene could believe this woman was Moghedien.

"How?" was all she said. She listened carefully as Nynaeve and Elayne explained about weaving disguises and inverting weaves, but she watched Moghedien. She was proud, and full of herself, full of being herself again.

"Put her back," Egwene said when the explanations were done. Again the glow of saidarlasted only moments, and once it faded, there were no weaves that she could see. Moghedien was plain and worn again, a country woman who had led a hard life and looked older, than her years. Those black eyes glittered at Egwene, filled with hate, and maybe self-loathing as well.

Realizing she still held saidar, Egwene felt foolish for a moment. Neither Nynaeve nor Elayne had embraced the Source. But then, Nynaeve was wearing that bracelet. Egwene stood, never taking her gaze from Moghedien, and held out her hand. If anything, Nynaeve seemed eager to have the thing off her wrist, which Egwene could understand.

Handing the bracelet over, Nynaeve said, "Put the tray on the table, Marigan. And be on your best behavior. Egwene has been living with the Aiel."

Egwene turned the silver band over in her hands and tried not to shiver. Cunning work, segmented so cleverly it almost appeared solid. She had been on the other end of an a’damonce. A Seanchan device, with a silver leash connecting necklace and bracelet, but still the same. Her stomach roiled as it had not facing the Hall or the crowd; it stewed as though trying to make up for being still before. Deliberately she closed the length of silver around her wrist. She had some idea of what to expect, but she still almost jumped. The other woman’s emotions were laid out before her, her physical state, all gathered in one fenced-off portion of Egwene’s mind. Mainly there was pulsing fear, but the self-loathing she had thought she saw swelled nearly as strongly. Moghedien did not like her present appearance. Maybe she especially did not like it after a short return to her own.

Egwene thought of who it was she was looking at; one of the Forsaken, a woman whose name had been used to frighten children for centuries, a woman whose crimes deserved death a hundred times over. She thought of the knowledge in that head. She made herself smile. It was not a pretty smile; she did not mean it to be, but she did not think she could have made it one if she tried. "They’re right. I have been living with the Aiel. So if you expect me to be as gentle as Nynaeve and Elayne, put it out of your mind. Set just one foot wrong with me, and I’ll make you beg for death. Only, I won’t kill you. I will just find some way to make that face permanent. On the other hand, if you do more than put a foot wrong... " She widened her smile, until it was just showing teeth.

The fear leaped so high it drowned everything else and bulged against the fence. Standing in front of the table, Moghedien clutched her skirts white-knuckle tight and trembled visibly. Nynaeve and Elayne were looking at Egwene as if they had never seen her before. Light, did they expect her to be polite to one of the Forsaken? Sorilea would stake the woman out in the sun to bring her to heel, if she did not simply slit her throat out of hand.

Egwene moved closer to Moghedien. The other woman was taller, but she cowered back against the table, knocking over the winecups on their tray and rocking the pitcher. Egwene made her voice cold; it did not have far to go. "The day I detect one lie out of you is the day I execute you myself. Now. I have considered traveling from one place to another by boring a hole, so to speak, from here to there. A hole through the Pattern, so there’s no distance between one end and the other. How well will that work?"

"Not at all, for you or any woman," Moghedien said, breathless and quick. The fear that boiled inside was plain on her face now. "That is how men Travel." The capital was plain; she was speaking of one of the lost Talents. "If you try, you will be sucked into... I don’t know what it is. The space between the threads of the Pattern, maybe. I don’t think you would live very long. I know you would never come back."

"Traveling," Nynaeve muttered disgustedly. "We never thought of Traveling!"

"No, we didn’t." Elayne sounded no more pleased with herself. "I wonder what else we never thought of."

Egwene ignored them. "Then how?" she asked softly. A quiet voice was always better than shouting.

Moghedien flinched as though she had shouted anyway. "You make the two places in the Pattern identical. I can show you how. It takes a little effort, because of the... the necklace, but I can – "

"Like this?" Egwene said, embracing saidar, and wove flows of Spirit. This time she was not trying to touch the World of Dreams, but she expected something much the same if it worked. What she got was quite different.

The thin curtain she wove did not produce the shimmering effect, and it lasted only a moment before snapping together in a vertical line that was suddenly a slash of silvery blue light. The light itself widened quickly – or perhaps turned; it looked that way to her – into... something. There in the middle of the floor was a... a doorway, not at all the misty view she had had of Tel’aran’rhiodfrom her tent, a doorway opening onto a sun-blasted land that made the worst of the drought here look lush. Stone spires and sharp cliffs loomed over a dusty yellow-clay plain cut by fissures and dotted with a few scrub bushes that had a thorny look even at a distance.

Egwene very nearly stared. That was the Aiel Waste halfway between Cold Rocks Hold and the valley of Rhuidean, a spot where it was very unlikely there would be anyone to see – or be hurt; Rand’s precautions with his special room in the Sun Palace had suggested she take some too – but she had only hoped to reach it, and she had been sure it would be seen through a shimmering curtain.

"Light!" Elayne breathed. "Do you know what you’ve done, Egwene? Do you? I think I can do it. If you repeat the weave again, I know I’ll remember."

"Remember what?" Nynaeve practically wailed. "How did she do it? Oh, curse this cursedblock! Elayne, kick my ankle. Please?"

Moghedien’s face had gone very still; uncertainty rolled through the bracelet almost as heavily as fear. Reading emotions was hardly like reading words on a page, but those two were clear. "Who...?" Moghedien licked her lips. "Who taught you that?"

Egwene smiled as she had seen Aes Sedai smile; at least, she hoped it conveyed mystery. "Never be too sure I don’t already know the answer," she said coolly. "Remember. Lie to me once." Suddenly it occurred to her how this must sound to Nynaeve and Elayne. They had captured the woman, held her captive in the most impossible circumstances, pried all sorts of information out of her. Turning to them, she gave a small, rueful laugh. "I am sorry. I didn’t mean to just take over."

"Why should you be sorry?" Elayne wore a broad smile. "You are supposedto take over, Egwene."