"At least no one has done anything, shall we say, drastic," Thom said, "though I thought it was close when Elayne let slip that she had made Birgitte her first Warder."

‘The Hunter?" Mat exclaimed. Several of the locals looked at him hard, and he lowered his voice. "She’s a Warder as well? Elayne’s Warder?" That certainly explained a few things.

Thom and Juilin exchanged looks over the rims of their mugs.

"She will be gratified to know you puzzled out that she is a Hunter for the Horn," Thom said, wiping ale from his mustaches. "Yes, she is, and a right set-to it nearly caused, too. Jaem took to her right away like a younger sister, but Vandene and Adeleas... " He sighed heavily. "Neither was very pleased Elayne had already chosen a Warder – apparently most Aes Sedai go years before finding one – and they especially were not pleased she chose a woman. And their not being pleased has Elayne’s back up even more."

"They don’t seem to like doing things that have not been done before," Juilin added.

"A woman Warder," Nalesean muttered. "I knew everything would change with the Dragon Reborn, but a woman Warder?"

Mat shrugged. "I suppose she’ll do well enough as long as she really can shoot that bow. Down the wrong hole?" he asked Juilin, who had begun choking on his ale. "Give me a good bow over a sword any day. Better a quarterstaff, but a bow is just fine. I only hope she doesn’t try to get in my way when it’s time to take Elayne to Rand."

"I think she can shoot it." Thom leaned across the table to slap Juilin on the back. "I think she can, Mat."

But if Nynaeve and the others had any thoughts of hair-pulling – and Mat would not want to be within ten miles of that, foxhead or no – they showed none of it to him. All he saw was a solid front, and more attempts to channel at him, beginning while he was saddling Pips the morning after the first attempt. Luckily, he was busy fending off Nerim, who thought saddling Mat’s horse was his job and implied he could do it better, and the flash of cold lasted only a moment, so Mat gave no outward indication that he had noticed anything at all. That, he determined, would be his response. No stares, no glares, no accusations. He would ignore them and let them cook in their own broth.

He had plenty of opportunity to ignore them. The silver medallion went cold twice more before they found the road, then several times more during the day, that evening, and every day and evening thereafter. Sometimes it came and went in two blinks of an eye, and sometimes he was sure it went on for an hour. He could never tell which one was responsible, of course. Or usually not. Once, when the heat had given him a rash on his back and the scarf around his neck seemed about to saw his head off, he caught Nynaeve looking at him when the medallion grew cold. She was scowling so hard that a passing farmer, who was poking his ox with a stick, trying to make the animal lumber faster, peered over his shoulder at her as though he feared that gaze might turn on him any moment and maybe kill his ox in the cart shafts. Only when Mat scowled back at her, she gave a jump and almost fell out of her saddle, and the chill vanished. For the rest, he just could not say. At times he might see two or three of them watching him, including Aviendha, who was still walking and leading her horse. Others, by the time he peeked, were talking among themselves or looking at an eagle drifting across the cloudless sky or a great black bear, half again as tall as a man, standing among the trees on a steep hillside in sight of the road. The only truly good thing in it was that he got the impression Elayne was not pleased. He did not know why, and he did not care. Inspecting his men. Patting him on the head with compliments. If he had been the kind of man to do that sort of thing, he would have kicked her.

In truth, though, he began to feel more than a little smug. Whatever they were doing, it had no effect on him that a touch of one of Nerim’s ointments rubbed onto his chest could not cure. Nerim assured him it was not frostbite. He felt smug until the fourth afternoon. He was making his way from stabling Pips to The Southern Hoop, a scruffy two stories of white-plastered bricks in a scruffy village of white-plastered bricks and flies called So Tehar, when something soft hit him squarely between the shoulders. With the smell of horse dung in his nostrils he spun around, ready to chew a hole in a stableboy or one of So Tehar’s sullen-eyed louts, knife or no knife. There was no stable-boy and no lout. Only Adeleas, busily scribbling away in her little book and nodding to herself. Her hands were quite clean.

Mat went inside and called for punch from the innkeeper, then changed his mind and had her bring brandy instead, a cloudy liquid the lanky woman insisted was made from plums, but which tasted as if it might remove rust. Juilin contented himself with a sniff, and Thom would not even do that. Even Nalesean only took one sip before asking for punch, and Nalesean would drink anything. Mat lost count of how many of the tiny pewter cups he emptied, but however many it was, it took Nerim and Lopin together to get him to bed. He had never really let himself think whether the foxhead had any limits. He had proof and more than enough that it would stop saidar, but if all they had to do was pick something up with the Power and throw it at him... Better than nothing, he kept telling himself, lying on his lumpy mattress and watching moonshadows crawl across the ceiling. A lot better than nothing. But if he had been able to stand by himself, he would have gone back down for more brandy.

Which was why he was in a vile temper, with a tongue that seemed coated with feathers and a head that had drummers pounding away inside and sweat pouring down him from the sun overhead, when the road topped a rise on the fifth day to reveal Ebou Dar spread out below, straddling the broad River Eldar with a great bay full of ships beyond.

His first impression of the city was white. White buildings, white palaces, white towers and spires. Domes like sharp white turnips or pears often bore bands of crimson or blue or gold, but mainly the city was white, and reflected sunlight till it almost hurt his eyes. The gate the road led to was a broad tall pointed arch in a white-plastered wall so thick that he rode in shade for twenty paces before emerging into the sun again. It seemed to be a city of squares and canals and bridges, large squares full of people with fountains or statues in the center, canals broad and narrow with men poling barges along them, bridges in every size, some low, some arching high, some big enough that shops lined their sides. Palaces with thick columned porticos stood alongside shops displaying rugs and cloth; houses of four stories with huge arched windows hidden behind louvered shutters stood beside stables and cutlers and fishmongers.

It was in one of those squares that Vandene drew rein to confer with Adeleas while Nynaeve frowned at them and Elayne stared as if icicles should have been hanging from her nose and chin. At Elayne’s urging, Aviendha had climbed onto her lanky dun for the entry to the city, but now she scrambled down again as awkwardly as she had climbed on. She looked about almost as curiously as Olver, who had been wide-eyed since the city first came into view. Birgitte seemed to be trying to heel Elayne in imitation of Jaem with Vandene.

Mat took the opportunity to fan himself with his hat and look around.

The largest palace he had seen yet filled one entire side of the square, all domes and spires and colonnades three and four stories above the ground. The other three sides mixed great houses with inns and shops, each as white as the next. A statue of a woman in flowing robes, taller than an Ogier, stood on an even taller pedestal in the middle of the square, one arm raised to point south toward the sea. There were only a handful of people walking across the pale paving stones, and no wonder in that heat. A few were eating their midday meal on the lowest step of the pedestal, and pigeons and seagulls flocked about fighting for scraps. It was a picture of tranquility. Mat did not understand why he suddenly felt the dice rolling in his head.