The river hills on which the city of Cairhien stood gave way to flatter lands and forests when Rand and the others had ridden half a day, the Shienarans still with their armor on the packhorses. There were no roads where they went, only a scattering of cart tracks, and few farms or villages. Verin pressed for speed, and Ingtar - grumbling constantly that they were letting themselves be tricked, that Fain would never have told them where he was really going, yet grumbling at the same time about riding in the opposite direction from Toman Head, as if part of him believed and Toman Head were not months away except by the way they took - Ingtar obliged her. The Gray Owl banner flew on the wind of their passage.

Rand rode with grim determination, avoiding conversation with Verin. He had this thing to do-this duty, Ingtar would have called it-and then he could be free of Aes Sedai once and for all. Perrin seemed to share something of his mood, staring straight ahead at nothing as they rode. When they finally stopped for the night at the edge of a forest, with full dark almost on them, Perrin asked Loial questions about the stedding. Trollocs would not enter a stedding; would wolves? Loial replied shortly that it was only creatures of the Shadow that were reluctant to enter stedding. And Aes Sedai, of course, since they could not touch the True Source inside a stedding, or channel the One Power. The Ogier himself appeared the most reluctant of all to go to Stedding Tsofu. Mat was the only one who seemed eager, almost desperately so. His skin looked as if he had not seen the sun in a year, and his cheeks had begun to go hollow, though he said he felt ready to run a footrace. Verin put her hands on him for Healing before he rolled into his blankets, and again before they mounted their horses in the morning, but it made no difference in how he looked. Even Hurin frowned when he looked at Mat.

The sun stood high on the second day when Verin suddenly sat up straight in her saddle and looked around. Beside her, Ingtar gave a start.

Rand could not see anything different about the forest now surrounding them. The undergrowth was not too thick; they had found an easy way under the canopy of oak and hickory, blackgum and beech, pierced here and there by a tall pine or leatherleaf, or the white slash of a paperbark. But as he followed them, he suddenly felt a chill pass through him, as though he had leaped into a Waterwood pond in winter. It flashed through him and was gone, leaving behind a feeling of refreshment. And there was a dull and distant sense of loss, too, though he could not imagine of what.

Every rider, as he reached that point, gave a jerk or made some exclamation. Hurin's mouth dropped open, and Uno whispered, "Bloody, flaming . . . ." Then he shook his head as if he could not think of anything else to say. There was a look of recognition in Perrin's yellow eyes.

Loial took a deep, slow breath and let it out. "It feels . . . good . . . to be back in a stedding,"

Frowning, Rand looked around. He had expected a stedding to be somehow different, but except for that one chill, the forest was the same as what they had been riding through all day. There was the sudden sense of being rested, of course. Then an Ogier stepped out from behind an oak.

She was shorter than Loial - which meant she stood head and shoulders taller than Rand - but with the same broad nose and big eyes, the same wide mouth and tufted ears. Her eyebrows were not so long as Loial's, though, and her features seemed delicate beside his, the tufts on her ears finer. She wore a long green dress and a green cloak embroidered with flowers, and carried a bunch of silverbell blossoms as if she had been gathering them. She looked at them calmly, waiting.

Loial scrambled down from his tall horse and bowed hastily. Rand and the others did the same, if not so quickly as Loial; even Verin inclined her head. Loial gave their names formally, but he did not mention the name of his stedding.

For a moment the Ogier girl - Rand was sure she was no older than Loial - studied them, then smiled. "Be welcome to Stedding Tsofu." Her voice was a lighter version of Loial's, too; the softer rumble of a smaller bumblebee. "I am Erith, daughter of Iva daughter of Alar. Be welcome. We have had so few human visitors since the stonemasons left Cairhien, and now so many at once. Why, we even had some of the Traveling People, though, of course, they left when the .... Oh, I talk too much. I will take you to the Elders. Only. . . ." She searched among them for the one in charge, and settled finally on Verin. "Aes Sedai, you have so many men with you, and armed. Could you please leave some of them Outside? Forgive me, but it is always unsettling to have very many armed humans in the stedding at once."

"Of course, Erith," Verin said. "Ingtar, will you see to it?"

Ingtar gave orders to Uno, and so it was that he and Hurin were the only Shienarans to follow Erith deeper into the stedding.

Leading his horse like the others, Rand looked up as Loial came closer, with many glances at Erith up ahead with Verin and Ingtar. Hurin walked midway between, staring around in amazement, though Rand was not sure at what exactly. Loial bent to speak quietly. "Is she not beautiful, Rand? And her voice sings."

Mat snickered, but when Loial looked at him questioningly, he said, "Very pretty, Loial. A little tall for my taste, you understand, but very pretty, I'm sure. "

Loial frowned uncertainly, but nodded. "Yes, she is." His expression lightened. "It does feel good to be back in a stedding. Not that the Longing was taking me, you understand. "

"The Longing?" Perrin said. "I do not understand, Loial."

"We Ogier are bound to the stedding, Perrin. It is said that before the Breaking of the World, we could go where we wished for as long as we wished, like you humans, but that changed with the Breaking. Ogier were scattered like every other people, and they could not find any of the stedding again. Everything was moved, everything changed. Mountains, rivers, even the seas."

"Everybody knows about the Breaking," Mat said impatiently. "What does it have to do with this - this Longing?"

"It was during the Exile, while we wandered lost, that the Longing first came on us. The desire to know the stedding once more, to know our homes again. Many died of it." Loial shook his head sadly. "More died than lived. When we finally began to find the stedding again, one at a time, in the years of the Covenant of the Ten Nations, it seemed we had defeated the Longing at last, but it had changed us, put seeds in us. Now, if an Ogier is Outside too long, the Longing comes again; he begins to weaken, and he dies if he does not return."

"Do you need to stay here awhile?" Rand asked anxiously. "There's no need to kill yourself to go with us."

"I will know it when it comes." Loial laughed. "It will be long before it is strong enough to cause harm to me. Why, Dalar spent ten years among the Sea Folk without ever seeing a stedding, and she came safely home."

An Ogier woman appeared out of the trees, pausing a moment to speak with Erith and Verin. She looked Ingtar up and down and seemed to dismiss him, which made him blink. Her eyes swept across Loial, flicked over Hurin and the Emond's Fielders, before she went off into the forest again; Loial seemed to be trying to hide behind his horse. "Besides," he said, peering cautiously across his saddle after her, "it is a dull life in the stedding compared to traveling with three ta'veren. "

"If you are going to start that again," Mat muttered, and Loial spoke up quickly. "Three friends, then. You are my friends, I hope."

"I am," Rand said simply, and Perrin nodded.

Mat laughed. "How could I not be friends with somebody who dices so badly?" He threw up his hands when Rand and Perrin looked at him. "Oh, all right. I like you, Loial. You're my friend. Just don't go on about . . . . Aaah! Sometimes you're as bad to be around as Rand." His voice sank to a mutter. "At least we're safe here in a stedding."

Rand grimaced. He knew what Mat meant. Here in a stedding, where I can't channel.

Perrin punched Mat's shoulder, but looked sorry that he had when Mat grimaced at him with that gaunt face.

It was the music Rand became aware of first, unseen flutes and fiddles in a jolly tune that floated through the trees, and deep voices singing and laughing.

"Clear the field, smooth it low.

Let no weed or stubble stand.

Here we labor, here we toil,

here the towering trees will grow."

Almost at the same moment he realized that the huge shape he was seeing through the trees was itself a tree, with a ridged, buttressed trunk that must have been twenty paces thick. Gaping, he followed it up with his eyes, up through the forest canopy, to branches spreading like the top of a gigantic mushroom a good hundred paces above the ground. And beyond it were taller still.

"Burn me," Mat breathed. "You could build ten houses from just one of those. Fifty houses."

"Cut down a Great Tree?" Loial sounded scandalized, and more than a little angry. His ears were stiff and still, his long eyebrows down on his cheeks. "We never cut down one of the Great Trees, not unless it dies, and they almost never do. Few survived the Breaking, but some of the largest were seedlings during the Age of Legends."

"I'm sorry," Mat said. "I was just saying how big they are. I won't hurt your trees." Loial nodded, seeming mollified.

More Ogier appeared now, walking among the trees. Most seemed intent on whatever they were about; though all looked at the newcomers, and even gave a friendly nod or a small bow, none stopped or spoke. They had a curious way of moving, in some manner blending a careful deliberateness with an almost childlike carefree joyfulness. They knew and liked who and what they were and where they were, and they seemed at peace with themselves and everything around them. Rand found himself envying them.

Few of the Ogier men were any taller than Loial, but it was easy to pick out the older men; one and all they wore mustaches as long as their dangling eyebrows and narrow beards under their chins. All of the younger were smooth-shaven, like Loial. Many of the men were in their shirtsleeves, and carried shovels and mattocks or saws and buckets of pitch; the others wore plain coats that buttoned to the neck and flared about their knees like kilts. The women seemed to favor embroidered flowers, and many wore flowers in their hair, too. The embroidery was limited to the cloaks of the younger women; the older women's dresses were embroidered, as well, and some women with gray hair had flowers and vines from neck to hem. A handful of the Ogier, women and girls for the most part, did seem to take special notice of Loial; he walked staring straight ahead, ears twitching more wildly the further they went.

Rand was startled to see an Ogier apparently walking up out of the ground, out of one of the grassy, wildflower-covered mounds that lay scattered all among the trees here. Then he saw windows in the mounds, and an Ogier woman standing at one apparently rolling a piecrust, and realized he was looking at Ogier houses. The window frames were stone, but they not only seemed natural formations, they appeared to have been sculpted by wind and water over generations.

The Great Trees, with their massive trunks and spreading roots as thick as horses, needed a great deal of room between them, but several grew right in the town. Dirt ramps took the paths over the roots. In fact, aside from the pathways, the only way to tell town from forest at a glance was a large open space in the center of the town, around what could only be the stump of one of the Great Trees. Nearly a hundred paces across, its surface was polished as smooth as any floor, and there were steps built up to it at several places. Rand was imagining how tall that tree had been when Erith spoke loudly enough for them all to hear.

"Here come our other guests."

Three human women came walking around the side of the huge stump. The youngest was carrying a wooden bowl.

"Aiel," Ingtar said. "Maidens of the Spear. As well I did leave Masema with the others." Yet he stepped away from Verin and Erith, and reached over his shoulder to loosen his sword in its scabbard.

Rand studied the Aiel with an uneasy curiosity. They were what too many people had tired to tell him he was. Two of the women were mature, the other little more than a girl, but all three were tall for women. Their short-cut hair ranged from a reddish brown to almost golden, with a narrow, shoulder-length tail left long at the back. They wore loose breeches tucked into soft boots, and all their clothes were some shade of brown or gray or green; he thought the garments would fade into rock or woods almost as well as a Warder's cloak. Short bows poked over their shoulders, quivers and long knives hung at their belts, and each carried a small, round shield of hide and a cluster of spears with short shafts and long points. Even the youngest moved with a grace that suggested she knew how to use the weapons she carried.

Abruptly the women became aware of the other humans; they seemed as startled at being startled as they did at the sight of Rand and the others, but they moved like lightning. The youngest one shouted, "Shienarans!" and turned to set the bowl carefully behind her. The other two quickly lifted brown cloths from around their shoulde............