It dawned on her that she was being foolish. Running was useless. If Amys or Melaine had found her, she would be somewhere else already. For that matter, she could be racing right toward them. The rush of lights by her did not slow, it simply stopped dead. That was the way here.

Vexed, she considered what to do next. Aside from teaching herself what she could of Tel’aran’rhiod, her main purpose here was to glean a few scraps of events in the world. At times it seemed the Wise Ones would not tell her whether the sun was up if she could not see for herself. They said she must not become agitated. How could she avoid it, fretting over what she did not know? That was what she had been doing in the White Tower; trying to pick up some hint of Elaida’s intentions. And Alviarin’s. Hints were the best she had been able to find, and few of those. She hated not knowing; ignorance was like suddenly going blind and deaf.

Well, the whole Tower was off her list now; it had to be when she could no longer be certain which parts were safe. The rest of Tar Valon had been struck off already, after the fourth time she nearly walked into a copper-skinned woman, this time nodding in satisfaction as, of all things, she studied a stable that seemed freshly painted blue. Whoever she was, she had not dreamed herself into Tel’aran’rhiodfor a moment by accident; she did not vanish, the way a casual dreamer did, and she appeared made of mist. Using a ter’angreal, obviously, which meant she was almost certainly Aes Sedai. Egwene knew of only one ter’angrealthat allowed access to the World of Dreams without channeling, and Nynaeve and Elayne had that. The willowy woman had not been Aes Sedai long, though. Quite beautiful – and wearing a scandalously thin dress – she appeared Nynaeve’s age, not ageless.

Egwene might have tried following her – she might be Black Ajah, after all; they had stolen dream ter’angreal– but balancing the risk of being found out, even captured, against the fact that she could tell no one anything she learned, not until she could talk to Nynaeve and Elayne again, not unless she discovered something so dire that everything depended on it... After all, the Black Ajah was Aes Sedai business; quite aside from any other reasons for keeping secrets, she could not tell just anyone. It was no choice at all.

Absently, she studied the nearest lights in the blackness. She did not recognize any of them. They held absolutely still around her, shimmering stars frozen in clear black ice.

There were too many strangers in the World of Dreams lately to suit her peace of mind. Two, but that was two too many. The copper-skinned woman and another, a sturdily pretty woman who moved with a purposeful stride, blue-eyed and with a determined face. The determined woman, as Egwene thought of her, must be able to enter Tel’aran’rhiodon her own – she seemed solid, not carved from fog – and whoever she was, for whatever reason she was there, she was about the Tower more often than Nynaeve and Elayne and Sheriam and the rest put together. She seemed to appear everywhere. In addition to the Tower, she had nearly surprised Egwene on her last trip to Tear. Not on a meeting night, of course; the woman had been stalking about the Heart of the Stone muttering to herself angrily. And she had been in Caemlyn on Egwene’s last two trips.

The chances the determined woman was Black Ajah were as great as with the other, but then again, either could be from Salidar. Or both, though Egwene had never seen them together, or with anyone from Salidar. For that matter, either could be from the Tower itself. Divisions enough there for one side to be spying on another, and sooner or later the Tower Aes Sedai would learn of Tel’aran’rhiodif they had not already. The two strangers presented nothing but questions without answers. The only thing Egwene could think to do was avoid them.

Of course, she tried to avoid everyone in the World of Dreams of late. She had taken to looking over her shoulder, to thinking somebody was sneaking up behind her, to seeing things. She thought she had caught glimpses of Rand, of Perrin, even Lan, half-seen out of the corner of her eye. Imagination, of course, or maybe the chance touch of their dreams, but on top of everything else, it had her jumpy as a cat in a dogyard.

She frowned – or would have, had she a face. One of those lights looked... Not familiar; she did not know it. But it seemed to... attract her. Wherever her gaze shifted, it came back to that same sparkling pinpoint.

Perhaps she could try finding Salidar again. That meant waiting for Nynaeve and Elayne to leave Tel’aran’rhiod– she knew their dreams by sight, of course; in her sleep, she thought with a silent giggle – and so far, a dozen attempts to locate Salidar that way had produced as much result as trying to get through the ward around Rand’s dreams. Distance and location here really bore no relation to anything in the waking world; Amys said there was no distance or location here. On the other hand, it was as good as any —

Startlingly, the pinpoint her gaze kept returning to began to drift toward her, swelling until what had been a distant star quickly became a full white moon. A spark of fear lit inside her. Touching a dream, peeking inside, was easy – a finger to the surface of water, a touch so light that the water rose to the finger but the surface was never broken – yet it was all supposed to be at her volition. A dreamwalker sought the dream; the dream did not seek her. She willed it to go away, willed the starry scape to move. Only that one light moved, expanding to fill her vision with white light.

Frantically she tried to pull away. White light. Nothing but white light, absorbing her...

She blinked, staring in amazement. Around her stretched a forest of great white columns. Most of it seemed fuzzy, indistinct, especially what was far away, but one thing sharp and real was Gawyn, trotting across the white-tiled floor toward her in a plain green coat, anxiety and relief mingled on his face. It was nearly Gawyn’s face, anyway. Gawyn might not be as gorgeous as his half-brother Galad, but he was still a handsome man, yet this face seemed... ordinary. She tried to move and could not, not to any extent. Her back was to one of the columns, and chains held her wrists above her head.

This must be Gawyn’s dream. Out of all of those countless points of light, she had stopped near his. And somehow been drawn in. How was a question for later. Now she wanted to know why he would dream of holding her captive. Firmly she fixed the truth in her mind. This was a dream, someone else’s dream. She was herself, not whatever it was he wanted her to be. She did not accept the reality of anything here. Nothing here touched the true her. Those truths repeated like a chant in her head. It made thinking of anything else difficult, but so long as she held them hard she could risk staying. At least, long enough to find out what peculiar oddities the man had rolling around in his head. Holding her captive!

Abruptly a huge gout of flame bloomed on the floor tiles, and acrid yellow smoke billowed. Rand stepped out of that inferno garbed in gold-embroidered red like a king, facing Gawyn, and the fire and smoke vanished. Only it hardly seemed Rand at all. The real Rand was of a height and size with Gawyn, but this image overtopped Gawyn by a head. The face was just vaguely Rand’s, coarser and harder than it should be, the cold face of a murderer. This man wore a sneer. "You will not have her," he snarled.

"You will not keep her," Gawyn replied calmly, and suddenly both men held swords.

Egwene gaped. Not Gawyn holding her prisoner. He dreamed of rescuing her! From Rand! Time to leave this madness. She concentrated on being outside, back in the darkness, looking at this from the outside. Nothing happened.