Moiraine left Tar Valon two days after the Black Ajah exposure.
Spencer found her in the Tower stables, supervising the loading of her horse with supplies for hard travel. Lan stood nearby — the Warder's thread pulsed with the particular tension of someone preparing for danger he couldn't fully see.
"You're leaving," Spencer said. It wasn't a question.
"Rand's situation demands attention." Moiraine's voice was cool, professional, but her thread carried urgency that her face didn't show. "The Portal Stone event has left the Hunt party... altered. They need guidance."
"And the Tower?"
"The Tower has Verin. And you." Moiraine turned to face him fully. Her ageless face was unreadable, but her eyes held something that might have been concern. "Continue your work. Identify the remaining cells. The three prisoners will provide intelligence under questioning — coordinate with Siuan to extract what they know."
"Siuan might not be in a position to coordinate much longer."
Moiraine's expression sharpened. "Explain."
"Elaida is building a coalition. The Black Ajah exposure gave her exactly the ammunition she needed. She's positioning herself as the strong leader the Tower requires in this crisis."
"Siuan is Amyrlin. The Hall—"
"The Hall is frightened. Frightened people look for certainty, and Elaida is offering it." Spencer's voice was harder than he intended. "The coup isn't years away anymore. It's months. Maybe weeks."
Moiraine was silent for a long moment. Her thread churned with calculations Spencer couldn't fully read.
"You're certain of this?"
"I have... strong impressions."
"Impressions." Moiraine's eyes searched his face. "You've told me you have impressions about many things, Aldan. Since Winternight, you've demonstrated knowledge you shouldn't have, abilities that don't exist in any record, and insight that borders on prescience. I've been patient. I've given you time. But I still expect the full truth."
"I know."
"When I return, you will tell me everything. No more evasions. No more half-answers." Moiraine's voice carried the weight of command that made Aes Sedai what they were. "If the Tower falls to Elaida while I'm gone, if Siuan is deposed, if the political situation becomes untenable — I need to know what you know. All of it."
Spencer nodded. The promise felt like a chain tightening around his throat.
"When you return."
Moiraine mounted her horse. Lan swung up beside her, his thread already scanning the road ahead for threats.
"Protect yourself, Aldan. And protect Nicola — the novice with the unusual Talents. She's more valuable than the Tower realizes." Moiraine gathered her reins. "I'll send word when I can."
Then she rode through the stable doors, and Spencer was alone.
---
Elaida's coalition grew like a cancer.
Spencer Thread-Traced her movements over the next two days, watching as her thread connected to a spreading web of intent-threads. Red Ajah sisters gathered in her quarters for "consultations." Conservative Browns sought her opinion on "restoring Tower discipline." Ambitious Whites calculated the advantages of early support.
The pattern was unmistakable. Elaida wasn't just positioning herself as an alternative to Siuan — she was actively building the infrastructure for a takeover. Support networks. Information channels. Promises of preferment to sisters who joined early.
She's good at this. Better than I expected.
In the books, she seemed like a blunt instrument. Powerful but not subtle. Here, watching her work in real time, I can see the calculation behind every move.
Spencer fed the intelligence to Verin through their established channels. Verin fed it to Siuan through paths so buried that even Black Ajah couldn't trace them. The information should have prompted immediate action — fortification of Siuan's position, counter-moves against Elaida's coalition, consolidation of loyal supporters.
Instead, Siuan dismissed the urgency.
"She's focused on the interrogations," Verin reported after their latest communication attempt. "The three captured Black Ajah are providing intelligence about their network. Siuan believes that success will solidify her position."
"Success in interrogation won't matter if Elaida deposes her before the intelligence becomes actionable."
"I know. She doesn't."
Spencer pressed his palms against his eyes. The frustration was a physical ache.
"Can we go around her? Build support independent of her approval?"
"Not without revealing sources she'd demand to know." Verin's voice was tired. "Siuan is Amyrlin. She has final authority on Tower politics. If she believes she has time, she won't accept that she doesn't."
"Even if it kills her."
"Siuan Sanche has survived more political storms than either of us has seen. She may be right that she has months."
"She's not right."
Verin's silence acknowledged what neither of them wanted to say: they knew Siuan was wrong, but they couldn't prove it without revealing knowledge they couldn't explain.
---
Spencer found Nicola in the novice gardens that evening.
She sat on a bench beneath a flowering tree, her white dress bright against the deepening shadows. Her thread pulsed with the dual-Talent intensity that made her unique — prophetic resonance and perception overlay woven together in patterns Spencer had never seen on anyone else.
"You look terrible," she said when he sat beside her.
"Long few days."
"I heard about the Black Ajah. Everyone's heard." Nicola's voice dropped to a whisper. "The three they caught — were they on your list?"
"Yes."
"And the ones who escaped?"
"Also yes."
Nicola absorbed this with the intensity that characterized everything she did. Her thread flickered with questions she was deciding whether to ask.
"The prophecy I spoke — it said three would be caught. Exactly three."
"It did."
"Did you try to catch more?"
Spencer remembered the desperate hours of scanning, the exhaustion that had driven him to collapse at his desk, the blanket Verin had draped over his shoulders while he slept.
"I tried. The Pattern had other ideas."
"That's frustrating." Nicola's voice carried genuine sympathy. "Knowing what's going to happen and not being able to change it."
"Sometimes. Sometimes knowing is enough to work with."
"Is it enough now? With whatever's making you look like you haven't slept in a week?"
Spencer considered the question. The Tower was fracturing. Siuan was vulnerable. Moiraine was gone. Elaida was rising. And somewhere south, Rand's thread blazed toward a confrontation that would announce the Dragon Reborn to the world.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I'm doing what I can. It might not be enough."
Nicola reached out and took his hand. The contact was unexpected — her novice-soft palm against his carpenter's calluses, her warmth against his cold.
"My grandmother used to say that 'enough' is just a word people use to feel bad about what they accomplished." She squeezed his hand once and let go. "Three Black Ajah caught. The Tower knows they exist now. That's more than anyone else managed in three thousand years."
"That's what Verin said."
"Smart woman." Nicola stood, brushing grass from her dress. "I should get back before curfew. But Spencer? Whatever's coming — I want to help. Even if it's just... being here. Being someone who sees what you see."
She walked away through the garden's shadows, her dual-Talent thread glowing like a beacon against the Tower's silver storm.
---
That night, Spencer Thread-Traced the Hunt party.
The connection stretched south — hundreds of miles through Pattern-weave toward threads that had stabilized since the Portal Stone displacement. Rand's ta'veren signature blazed brighter than ever before, burning with the intensity of someone approaching a destiny they couldn't escape.
They're close to Falme. Close to the Horn. Close to the moment when everything changes.
Mat's thread pulsed with the Horn's resonance — the ter'angreal was within his reach, perhaps already reclaimed. Perrin's wolf-gold signature burned with a ferocity that suggested his transformation was accelerating. Loial's steady green. Hurin's reliable presence.
They were alive. They were moving. They were about to become legends.
And Spencer was stuck in a Tower that was about to tear itself apart, watching the threads of history weave toward a pattern he'd helped create but couldn't control.
Moiraine is riding south. Siuan is ignoring warnings. Elaida is building her coup.
The Hunt is approaching Falme. The Dragon is about to declare himself.
And I'm standing in the middle of a storm I helped start, wondering if any of my plans were ever more than the Pattern using me to get what it wanted.
The Thread Trace faded. Spencer sat in the darkness of his quarters, listening to the Tower's distant sounds — Aes Sedai moving through corridors, novices settling into dormitories, the vast machinery of an institution that had stood for three thousand years grinding toward a break that might shatter it forever.
Three caught. Ten fled. A Tower about to split.
This is what victory looks like when you're fighting an enemy that's been winning for three thousand years.
Small steps. Incomplete successes. Consequences you didn't predict.
And the knowledge that tomorrow, you have to do it all again.
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