The drums came at midnight.
Spencer was already on his feet when the first boom echoed across Fal Dara — not because of any Codex warning, but because he'd been waiting, counting hours, knowing exactly when the attack would begin. He pulled on boots and grabbed Thom's spare knife in the time it took the second drum to sound.
Then the screaming started.
---
The corridor outside Spencer's room was chaos.
Shienaran soldiers ran past in organized confusion, their steel-gray threads pulsing with the trained readiness of men who'd drilled for this their entire lives. Servants pressed against walls, trying to stay clear. And somewhere to the north, the sound of combat — metal on metal, guttural Trolloc roars, the high keen of dying horses.
Spencer moved toward the sound.
Not to fight. To position. To be where I need to be when this is over.
Thread Sight showed him the battle's shape: clusters of combat-threads around the northern wall, where Trollocs had breached; defensive lines forming in the inner corridors; a knot of intense activity near Lord Agelmar's command post. The fortress was responding exactly as it should — years of preparation translating into coordinated defense.
But Spencer also saw what the Shienarans couldn't: dark threads moving through the fortress's lower levels, avoiding the main battle, heading straight for the vault that held the Horn of Valere.
Fain's people. The Darkfriends who'll open the vault from inside.
This is happening. Right now. And I'm letting it happen.
He turned a corner and nearly collided with three Trollocs.
---
The creatures were huge — goat-headed, massive, carrying weapons that looked like they'd been forged in nightmare. Their dull-red construct threads pulsed with the artificial wrongness Spencer had learned to recognize in Shadar Logoth and the Blight.
There was no time to think.
Warder Positioning activated before Spencer's conscious mind caught up with his body. He was moving — not toward the Trollocs, but sideways, finding the angle that put a stone pillar between him and the nearest beast's axe swing. The weapon bit into stone where his head had been half a second earlier.
Spencer's knife was in his hand. Not a weapon against creatures this size — but Lan's training hadn't been about killing. It had been about surviving.
Back to the wall. Make them come at you one at a time. Stay mobile. Don't let them surround you.
The first Trolloc recovered from its missed swing and lunged. Spencer dropped low, feeling the creature's momentum carry it past him, and slashed at the back of its knee as it stumbled. The knife bit through tendon and the Trolloc roared, going down.
The second Trolloc was smarter. It advanced cautiously, its goat-eyes fixed on Spencer with predatory intelligence, its weapon — a curved sword nearly as long as Spencer was tall — held in a guard position.
Spencer backed away. The wall was behind him now. Nowhere left to go.
This is it. This is where I find out if all the training was worth anything.
The Trolloc raised its sword for a killing blow—
And Lan appeared from the intersecting corridor, his blade a blur of motion that separated the Trolloc's head from its shoulders before Spencer could process what had happened.
The third Trolloc turned to face the new threat and died two seconds later, Lan's sword opening its throat with surgical precision.
"On your feet," Lan said, stepping over the bodies. "Stay behind me."
Spencer scrambled up, his knife still clutched in his hand. His arm was bleeding — a gash across the forearm where the first Trolloc's weapon had grazed him during the initial exchange. He hadn't even felt it until now.
"The Horn," Spencer gasped. "They're going for the Horn."
Lan's pale eyes met his for one fraction of a second. Then the Warder was moving, and Spencer was following, and the night dissolved into a blur of combat and corridors and the desperate mathematics of survival.
---
They were too late.
The vault doors hung open when they arrived, shattered from inside by whatever treachery Fain's Darkfriends had arranged. The space within was empty — pedestal bare, the unique gold-white thread of the Horn of Valere already distant, moving fast through underground passages Spencer hadn't known existed.
Spencer had tracked Fain through the chaos, watching the corrupted thread escape while he fought for his life in the corridors above. He could have intercepted — maybe. Could have reached the vault in time to see the theft happen, perhaps even delay it.
He hadn't. He'd positioned himself to survive, not to prevent.
The Horn is gone. Mat's dagger is gone. Everything is exactly where it needs to be.
And only I know I chose to let it happen.
Lan stood at the empty pedestal, his thread burning with cold fury. "The breach was from inside. Someone opened the vault for them."
"Darkfriends," Spencer said. "They've been preparing for days."
"How do you know?"
Because I watched it happen through Thread Sight. Because I could have warned someone and didn't.
"Impressions. The way threads move before violence — I felt something building. I should have said something sooner."
Lan's gaze was sharp, assessing. But there was no accusation in his thread — only the pragmatic calculation of a soldier who'd seen too many battles to waste time on blame.
"You held position in the corridor. You didn't panic. You bought time for me to reach you." Lan's nod was brief, almost invisible. "You did well."
The praise felt like ash in Spencer's mouth.
---
Dawn revealed the full scope of the night's damage.
Thirty-seven Shienaran soldiers dead. Twelve civilians caught in the crossfire. The northern wall breached in three places, though the Trollocs had retreated before sunrise. And the Horn of Valere — the hope of the world, the artifact that could call the Heroes back from the grave — gone south with Padan Fain and his Darkfriend allies.
Lord Agelmar declared the Great Hunt before the sun fully cleared the horizon.
"Ingtar," Agelmar said, his weathered face carved from grief and duty. "You will lead. Twenty men, chosen for speed and skill. The Horn must be recovered."
"It will be, my lord. Or I will not return."
Spencer watched the Hunt party assemble from the fortress battlements. Ingtar's steel-gray thread pulsed with determination — and something else, something darker that Spencer didn't have time to analyze. Rand's golden thread blazed as he prepared to ride, Mat beside him with the silver of his healed corruption, Perrin's green-gold wolf-touched signature completing the trio of ta'veren.
They're going south. Into the adventure that will define them.
And I'm going west.
The choice had been made hours ago, in the quiet darkness before the drums. Spencer would travel to Tar Valon with the embassy, as planned. The Black Ajah was the bigger threat — or at least, the threat he could address while others handled Fain and the Horn.
That's what I tell myself. That's the strategic justification.
The truth is simpler: I let the Horn get stolen because canon demanded it, and now I'm running away from the consequences.
---
Moiraine found Spencer as the Hunt party mounted.
"You're not riding with them," she said. It wasn't a question.
"The Black Ajah won't expose themselves. I need to be in Tar Valon. I need to be close enough to identify them systematically." Spencer kept his voice steady. "The Horn will be recovered. Rand and Mat and Perrin will see to that. But the Shadow's infiltration of the Tower — that's a longer war. And someone needs to fight it."
Moiraine's thread churned with calculation. She didn't trust his reasoning completely — her suspicion had never fully faded — but she couldn't argue with the logic.
"Verin will be watching you."
"I know."
"Liandrin will be watching you."
"I know that too."
"And I will be pursuing my own objectives. We may not see each other for months." Moiraine's ageless face held something that might have been concern. "Whatever you do in Tar Valon, do not expose yourself before you're ready. The Black Ajah has survived for three thousand years by being patient. You will not defeat them through recklessness."
"I understand."
The Hunt party began to move — horses flowing through Fal Dara's southern gate like water finding its natural course. Spencer watched Rand's golden thread disappear into the distance, Mat's silver beside it, Perrin's green-gold bringing up the rear with Loial's massive Ogier signature.
Be safe. All of you. Do what you need to do.
I'll do what I need to do.
---
The embassy departed three hours later.
Spencer rode in the group's middle, surrounded by Aes Sedai and their Warders, heading west toward Tar Valon. His arm throbbed where the bandage pressed against the Trolloc wound — his first real combat injury, earned in a battle he'd let himself lose.
Verin fell into pace beside him an hour into the ride, her round face pleasant and curious.
"A difficult night," she said. "I understand you acquitted yourself well against the Shadowspawn."
"I survived. Lan did the actual fighting."
"Survival is its own skill." Verin's thread pulsed with the layered calculation Spencer had come to recognize. "I've been thinking about our conversation. About the theoretical ability to identify... certain individuals."
"And?"
"I believe I may have some research materials that would interest you. Historical accounts, fragmentary but suggestive. We'll have three weeks on the road — plenty of time to discuss them."
Spencer nodded, keeping his expression neutral. Ahead of them, Liandrin's red-cloaked figure rode in isolated silence, her corrupted thread extending feelers toward everyone in the group.
Three weeks with a Black Ajah member who knows someone can identify Darkfriends. Three weeks with Verin, who's testing me for reasons I can't fully understand. Three weeks until we reach the White Tower.
Plenty of time for everything to go wrong.
But for now, he had a destination. A purpose. A war to fight that didn't involve swords or Trollocs or battles he could never win.
The road stretched west toward Tar Valon, and somewhere in the White Tower's thousand-year-old walls, thirteen Black Ajah sisters went about their business, never suspecting that the carpenter with the unusual Talent was coming to hunt them all.
Spencer gripped his horse's reins with his wounded arm and let the pain remind him what the stakes were.
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