serpent eating its own tail. Aes Sedai, or at least a woman trained in Tar Valon by Aes Sedai. None else would wear that ring. Either way made no difference to him. He looked away before she could notice his watching, and almost immediately he spotted another woman swathed from head to toe in black and wearing a Great Serpent ring. The two witches gave no sign that they knew each other. In the White Tower they sat like spiders in the middle of a web, pulling the strings that made kings and queens dance, meddling. Curse them all to death eternal! He realized that he was grinding his teeth. If numbers must dwindle — and they must, before the Day — there were some who would be missed even less than Tinkers.
A chime sounded, a single, shivering note that came from everywhere at once and cut off all other sounds like a knife.
The tall doors at the far end of the chamber swung open, and two Trollocs stepped into the room, spikes decorating the black mail that hung to their knees. Everyone shied back. Even the man who called himself Bors.
Head and shoulders taller than the tallest man there, they were a stomachturning blend of man and animal, human faces twisted and altered. One had a heavy, pointed beak where his mouth and nose should have been, and feathers covered his head instead of hair. The other walked on hooves, his face pushed out in a hairy muzzle, and goat horns stuck up above his ears.
Ignoring the humans, the Trollocs turned back toward the door and bowed, servile and cringing. The feathers on the one lifted in a tight crest.
A Myrddraal stepped between them, and they fell to their knees. It was garbed in black that made the Trollocs' mail and the humans' masks seem bright, garments that hung still, without a ripple, as it moved with a viper's grace.
The man who called himself Bors felt his lips drawing back over his teeth, half snarl and half, he was shamed to admit even to himself, fear. It had its face uncovered. Its pasty pale face, a man's face, but eyeless as an egg, like a maggot in a grave.
The smooth white face swiveled, regarding them all one by one, it seemed. A visible shiver ran through them under that eyeless look. Thin, bloodless lips quirked in what might almost have been a smile as, one by one, the masked ones tried to press back into the crowd, milling to avoid that gaze. The Myrddraal's look shaped them into a semicircle facing the door.
The man who called himself Bors swallowed. There will come a day, Halfman. When the Great Lord of the Dark comes again, he will choose his new Dreadlords, and you will cower before them. You will cower before men. Before me! Why doesn't it speak? Stop staring at me, and speak!
“Your Master comes.” The Myrddraal's voice rasped like a dry snake skin crumbling. “To your bellies, worms! Grovel, lest his brilliance blind and burn you!”
Rage filled the man who called himself Bors, at the tone as much as the words, but then the air above the Halfman shimmered, and the import drove home. It can't be! It can't...! The Trollocs were already on their bellies, writhing as if they wanted to burrow into the floor.
Without waiting to see if anyone else moved, the man who called himself Bors dropped facedown, grunting as he bruised himself on the stone. Words sprang to his lips like a charm against danger — they were a charm, though a thin reed against what he feared — and he heard a hundred other voices, breathy with fear, speaking the same against the floor.
“The Great Lord of the Dark is my Master, and most heartily do I serve him to the last shred of my very soul.” In the back of his mind a voice chattered with fear. The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound... Shivering, he forced it to silence. He had abandoned that voice long since. “Lo, my Master is death's Master. Asking nothing do I serve against the Day of his coming, yet do I serve in the sure and certain hope of life everlasting.” ...bound in Shayol Ghul, bound by the Creator at the moment of creation. No, I serve a different master now. “Surely the faithful shall be exalted in the land, exalted above the unbelievers; exalted above thrones, yet do I serve humbly against the