A/N: I hate Perrin. Not really, but I think some part of me does, and that part of me infected the rest and now I don't like him. He's such a baby, absolutely terrified for Faile so that it's all he can think about. It's painful for me to read from his point of view whenever Faile is in danger. Maybe it's because I'm a guy. Girls, do you like his devotion? Us guys will continue to think it's disgusting until we worry about our own wives. Answer in your reviews, I read every one. :)

"Faile is safe, Perrin," the blacksmith had been a wreak since learning that Colavaere had taken the Sun Throne and I had said the same thing seven times since. "She is one of Colavaere's attendants, and has been busy trying to incriminate her in the deaths of the nobles just before you left." He didn't relax at all, but some of the tension in his eyes left and I nodded to myself. Making him relax had been frustrating, and I wondered how Faile put up with him.

"And what should I do Taylor?" Rand asked, "You know what I do in your version of the future, if I do different what will happen?"

"If you do anything because I tell you to it is bound to make you want to know exactly what you should do from here on out. I'm not going to be waiting on you hand and foot to tell you what you should do, if I change things I just have to live with it!" The Aes Sedai looked shocked that I was speaking to him that way, well they were shocked at the expression I had on my face behind the warding against eavesdroppers. Min had avoided me the entire ride back to Cairhien, but stared at me whenever I wasn't looking in her direction. Apparently the images floating around me were either bad, or troublesome.

Rand smiled, his smiles never reached his eyes now, and dropped the ward of Saidin. He rode back to Min and before he warded their conversation I saw her say something to him and then point at something all around me. Something troublesome indeed.

The procession into the Palace was followed by stares, Aiel's considering ones, and the commoners outright gawking ones. Colavaere had said the Dragon Reborn had gone away for a time, and from what I remembered she had said that he would not be coming back any time soon. Trailing behind the group going with Rand, walking behind the Maidens, I stared at the city. Everything was designed so that no nature was left in it, roads went through hills instead of around or over, buildings were angular and dark colored. Ebou Dar was probably the exact opposite of Cairhien, all white with domes and curves everywhere. The Sun Palace was massive, but the still unfinished Topless Towers of Cairhein would overshadow the Palace when they were completed.

One of the Far Dareis Mai fell in beside me and I decided to ask a question that had bothered me for a while, "Why do you call the Cairhienen treekillers? It was Laman that cut down Avendoraldera and the Aiel turned back after Laman was dead. The nation of Cairhien didn't cut it down, so why?"

"They are treekillers," and that was all she was going to say on that. The Maiden was dangerously close to being as tall as me, there were a few that were as tall or taller than me but that didn't bother me much. With her hair cut short except for the tail that the Maidens kept, a pale reddish gold color, it exposed her pretty face. We walked in silence for a while, it was a long way from the gate to the Palace. "I asked Perrin Aybarra, but he told me to ask you." I looked at her but she wasn't looking at me, her cheeks were faintly colored. "I did not want to shame you but, why did you cry for the Maiden?"

All of the Maidens close enough to overhear weren't speaking anymore, apparently it was on all their minds. "I remember several Maidens asking that, none actually asked me but they were close enough so that I would have had to be deaf to hear it. I seem to recall some talk of making bridal wreaths for me, of giving up the spear, but I must have been imagining things." The Maiden beside me blushed more, I didn't remember the voices but she might have been the one who said that. After a sigh I continued, "You haven't shamed me, one of you was right though. I fought the Shaido at Cairhien but I wasn't standing in the bodies, that was the first time I've ever been around so much death. I lived in a place where I always heard about people dying, but I never saw it. When I came here I saw people die around me, but never like that. I don't think I will ever be able to see death like that without, well I don't think I will cry next time, but I won't ever see something like that without feeling terrible. If I can look at a battlefield and not feel sorrow for so much death, I won't be human anymore."

The nameless Maiden rejoined her spear-sisters, it was strange to examine what I felt so openly with women I had never spoken with before.

Cairhien was decked out for a celebration though, people in the streets looked as though they had been up late and there were decorations in windows and in the streets. The closer we got to the Sun Palace the more decorations there were, but I noticed that the decorations were the only happy things in the streets even if the commoners had been celebrating the night before. Most stared and pointed at Rand, many had seen him before and more knew what a group of Aiel guarding a man meant. The Aiel in the streets knew as well.

The Royal Palace of Cairhien, the Sun Palace, the Palace of the Rising Sun in Splendor, Cairhienin were great ones for names, each more extravagant than the last, stood atop the highest hill in the city, a dark mass of square stone with stepped towers looming over everything. The street, the Way of the Crown, became a long broad ramp rising toward the palace, and stared up at the tall spires. Perrin watched the Palace with grim intensity, Faile was up there and he wouldn't be happy unless she was in his arms.

The guards on the great, open bronze gates watched their slow approach and exchanged glances. They were colorful for Cairhienin soldiers, ten men with the Rising Sun in gold on their dark breastplates and scarves in House Saighan's colors tied below the heads of their halberds. It was easy to see what they were thinking. Thirteen men on horseback, but in no hurry, and only two wearing armor, one in Mayener red. Any trouble would come from Caraline Damodred and Toram Riatin, and Mayeners had no place in that. And there was a woman, and an Ogier. Surely they intended no trouble. Still, three dozen or so Maidens trotting ahead of the horses hardly looked as though they were coming for tea. For an instant all hung balanced. Then a Maiden veiled herself. The guards jerked as if goosed, and one slanted his halberd and darted for the gates. Two steps he took, and stopped, rigid as a statue. Every guard stood stiff; nothing moved but their heads. The Asha'man had wrapped them in flows of the Power, they knew how to wield the Power well.

"Good" Rand murmured. "Now tie off the flows and leave them for later."

There were no more soldiers after we entered the courtyard, the Asha'man had restrained several more guards before we made it to this point. Liveried servants came out to take the horses, and I followed the small army into the Palace at it's rear. I didn't want to be beside Perrin when he started asking everyone who moved about Faile, it only made me think how I would react if Moiraine was in danger.

"Where is Colavaere?" Rand asked. There had been talking ahead but I wasn't really paying attention, Rand was going to strip the former Queen of Cairhien of everything she had soon, and she would hang herself later. There was nothing good about what happened today except that no one would die before the sun set. I hope that at least.

The group moved on, more talking had taken place and I watched from the background. The women of the 'societies' had joined Rand's group, the Maidens looked disgusted and Perrin looked ready to use his axe on someone. Rand and Min walked behind the society nobles, and half the Maidens, but Rand seemed alone amidst all of them. Alone, standing against the might of evil. He, Perrin, and Mat would stand together at the Last Battle and defeat the Dark One but it would be Rand who would do it. Lews Therin Kinslayer reborn.

Colavaere's guards at the doors to the Grand Hall dropped to their knees when they saw Rand, "So I am loved." I didn't hear him say it, but I knew he did when he patted Min's hand. He was granite, and I was going to help Cadsuane soften him enough to cry and laugh again. I would do that if it killed me, he had to survive not me.

Just like in the book, I thought to myself. Everything was happening just as it did in the books. It was still suprising that despite everything I had done, and would do, that the Pattern wove things just as I knew them.

The Grand Hall of the Sun was immense, with an angle-vaulted ceiling a full fifty paces high at its peak and great golden lamps hung on gilded chains thick enough to move the gates of a fortress. It was immense, and it was full, people crowding among massive square columns of blue-black veined marble that stood in two rows to either side of the center aisle. The folk at the rear noticed the newcomers first. In long coats and short, some in bright colors or embroidered, some travel-worn, they stared curiously. Intently. The few women in the back of the hall wore riding dresses and had faces as hard as the men, gazes as direct.

Hunters for the Horn, Dobraine had said that every noble who could be there would, and most Hunters were nobly born, or claimed to be. Whether or not they recognized Rand, they sensed something, hands feeling for swords and daggers that were not there this evening. More Hunters than not sought adventure and a place in the histories along with the Horn of Valere. Even if they did not know the Dragon Reborn, they knew danger when they saw it.

The others in the Grand Hall were less attuned to danger, or rather, more to intrigues and plots than to open hazard. Perrin was a third of the way down the long center aisle, close on Rand's heels, before gasps ran through the chamber like a wind. Pale Cairhienin lords with colorful slashes across the chests of their dark silk coats, some with the front of their heads shaved and powdered; Cairhienin ladies with stripes on their dark highnecked gowns and lace falls covering their hands, their hair in intricate towers that often added a good foot of height. Tairen High Lords and Lords of the Land with oiled beards trimmed to points, in velvet hats and coats of red and blue and every color, with puffy, satin-striped sleeves; Tairen ladies in even more colorful gowns, with wide lace ruffs and close caps studded with pearls and moonstones, firedrops and rubies. They knew Perrin, and they knew Dobraine and even Havien and Min, but most importantly, they knew Rand. A ripple of knowing that kept pace up the Hall with him. Eyes widening, jaws dropping, they went so stiff Perrin almost thought the Asha'man had bound them like the guards outside the palace. The chamber was a sea of sweet perfumes, and beneath that undercurrents of salty sweat, but through it oozed fear, a quivering sort of smell.

At the far end of the Hall, on the deep blue marble dais where the Sun Throne stood, shining like its namesake with gilt, the wavy-rayed Rising Sun huge atop the high back stood Colavaere. Colavaere rose slowly, peering down the aisle over Rand's head. Her nearly black dress bore not a single stripe of nobility, but the great mass of curls rising above her head had to have been dressed around the crown she wore, the Rising Sun in gold and yellow diamonds. Seven young women flanked the Sun Throne in dark bodiced gowns with lace snugged under their chins and skirts striped vertically in Colavaere's yellow and red and silver. It seemed that Cairhienin fashion was different for the Queen, and for the Queen's attendants.

Rand touched Sulin's sleeve. "Wait here," he said. Scowling, the scar on her leathery face standing out as white as her hair, she scanned his face, then nodded with obvious reluctance. Her free hand gestured anyway, and another gasp ran through the chamber as the Maidens veiled. It was almost laughable; the eight men in black coats, trying to watch everywhere at once, could probably kill them all before the first Maiden drove home a spear, but no one knew who or what they were. No one looked at them twice, a handful of men with their swords sheathed. Only at the Maidens. And Rand. Hadn't they noticed that the Asha'man and myself were sweating as little as Rand?

Making my way through the Maidens that were waiting I stood beside Perrin, "Faile thinks you are being controlled by Aes Sedai, that's why she is so nervous. I suggest you don't mention Berelain at all, it will make things easier."

Perrin only nodded, I guessed that he had decided I knew everything that was going on and didn't question me at all.

I watched the nobles as Rand and Colavaere spoke, I watched how he broke and made the Sun Crown whole again, then went back to watching the assembled Lords and Ladies. They were all terrified, some were hiding it quite well, most were doing their best to remain somewhat composed.

"Annoura, advise me. Come, Annoura! Advise me!"

The woman who stepped from behind the throne did not wear the striped skirts of an attendant. A broad face with a wide mouth and a beak of a nose regarded Rand from beneath dozens of long thin dark braids. An ageless face. "I cannot do this, Colavaere," the Aes Sedai said in a Taraboner accent, shifting her gray-fringed shawl. "I fear I have allowed you to misperceive my relationship to you." One of the Asha'man wove a shield around her. Drawing a deep breath, she added, "There ... there is no need for this, Master al'Thor." Her voice became slightly unsteady for a moment. "Or my Lord Dragon, if you prefer. I assure you, I harbor no ill intentions toward you. If I did, I would have struck before you knew I was here."

"You might well have died if you had," Rand's voice was icy steel; his face made it seem soft. "I'm not who has you shielded, Aes Sedai. Who are you? Why are you here? Answer me! I don't have much patience with... your kind. Unless you want to be hauled out to the Aiel camp? I wager the Wise Ones can make you speak freely."

Annoura Larisen explained herself to the Dragon Reborn, Rand al'Thor was not standing before the Sun Throne and the pained look on Min's face confirmed that she wanted nothing more than to take him away and make him his old self again. Colavaere Saighan denied, then tried to deny, then begged for mercy for her crimes before the Dragon Reborn. I watched Rand struggle before stripping the woman of everything she held dear, and I saw Rand catch her as she fainted. It was good to know it was him who had caught her, he wasn't as hard as the Asha'man behind him. Not yet.

"This audience is at an. end," Rand said. "I will forget every face that departs now."

Those at the front, the highest-ranking, the most powerful, began their progress toward the doors without too much haste, avoiding the Maidens and the Asha'man standing in the aisle, while the rest waited their turn. Every mind must have been turning over what Rand had said, though. What precisely did he mean by "now"? Purposeful strides quickened, skirts were lifted. Hunters, nearest the doors, began slipping out, first one at a time, then in a flood, and seeing them, lesser nobles among the Cairhienin and Tairens darted ahead of the higher. In moments it was a milling mass at the doors, men and women pushing and elbowing to get out. Not one looked back at the woman stretched out before the throne she had held so briefly.

Rand passed through the crowd on the way to his rooms, the flood of bodies pressing to get out parted for him as if by magic but it was only fear of the Dragon that did it. I followed behind, I had rooms here if they hadn't been taken and I wouldn't mind a good nights sleep after the nightmares I had at Dumai's Wells.

I did have nightmares, but not the kind I had expected. I saw Morgase, or at least an older Elayne, being tortured by two men. There wasn't a mark on her when the one man was done with her, Asunawa of the Questioners, but Valda took her to his bed. It made me scream in fury because I couldn't do anything, I could only watch. When Valda was done with Morgase, I knew it was her because the same thing happened in the books, her eyes found mine in the darkness.

Lifeless eyes held my own, her mouth opened and I read the word she spoke on her lips rather than hearing it, "Tomorrow."

This would happen tomorrow? And if I went to the Dome of Truth and found that it had already happened? Light! I didn't get any sleep after that.

A/N: N/A