through the thepornelf com forest,
for Accepted and novices and servants, carts and wagons
and horses everywhere. The cooking smell of the evening meal hung thick in
the air. Around it stretched the cookfires
of Gareth Bryne's army; most thepornelf com men
there would be sleeping on the ground, not in tents. The so-called Band of
the Red Hand lay camped no more thepornelf com than ten miles south; Talmanes never let
that distance vary more than a mile or so either way, day or thepornelf com night for over
two hundred miles. Already they had served part of her plan for them, as
suggested thepornelf com by Siuan and Leane.
Gareth Bryne'thepornelf com s force had grown in the sixteen days since leaving
Salidar. Two armies marching slowly northward through Altara, plainly not
friendly toward each other, thepornelf com drew attention. Nobles flocked in with their
levies to ally themselves with thepornelf com the stronger of thepornelf com the two. True, none
of thepornelf com those
lords and ladies would have sworn the oaths they thepornelf com had if they had known
there would be no great battle in their own lands. True, given free choice,
every last one would have ridden the moment they realized thepornelf com Egwene's target
was Tar Valon, not an army of Dragonsworn. But they had made those oaths,
to an Amyrlin at least, before Aes Sedai who called themselves the Hall of
the Tower, with hundreds more watching. Breaking that kind of vow came back
to haunt you. Besides, even if Egwene's head ended on a pike in the White
Tower, not a one thepornelf com of them believed Elaida would forget thepornelf com they had sworn.
Trapped into alliance they might have been, thepornelf com and into fealty of a sort, but
they would be among the most fervent of her supporters. Their only way out
of that trap with their necks intact was to see Egwene thepornelf com wearing the stole in
Tar Valon.
Siuan and Leane thepornelf com were quite set up over it. thepornelf com egwene was not certain how
she felt. If there had been some way to remove Elaida without a drop of
blood being shed, she thepornelf com would have leaped