A child's body. The Great Lord, for all his supremacy... a child's body! Briallan toed the ground sullenly as she paused by a Tar Valon corner, her ragged shoe leaving a scuff mark on the cobblestone. A woman selling ribbons and pins on a tray shot her a dirty look and moved one step away from her. Briallan didn't blame her. She was filthy, dusty from where she had Travelled from. Her cheeks were caked with dirt and smeared with sweat; her cheeks were hollow for want of food and her eyes too big for her face -- in appearance a wild street-child, and in reality so much more. Before coming she had done this to herself -- had procured these rags, had deigned to dirty herself! -- as a disguise. She was one of the Chosen, perhaps, but she felt... as if she had been... pieced together. Knowledge swam in her head; the creation of Trollocs, the ways of Tel'aran'rhiod; Briallan was a patchwork quilt of the Chosen, soul and mind clobbered together and clothed in the flesh of a Cairhien child. But I am Briallan, now. Briallan. No one knew her name. Mothers still used Lanfear's and Rand al'Thor's to frighten their children. One day they would use hers. But for now 'Briallan' would strike fear in nobody's heart... until one day, hundreds of years later, the Browns' histories (should there be a Tower left standing, Briallan thought, her head tilting to follow the ivory span of the White Tower) would record that a child named Briallan came to the Tower, and broke it into pieces between her little children's fingers.

She padded forward again, darting in and out of the crowd and she ignored the yells and clips on her ear as she passed. They were unimportant, these non-channelers, these people who could not sense saidar. They were mere bitemes in the Pattern, if they even registered. No. Channelers would mould the world, and these... humans... were but modelling clay. She was not quite sure where her contempt for non-channelers came from, but it was a logical contempt, after all; non-channelers had no power. Who could fashion thrones and melt crowns? The Amyrlin Seat, no queen or king. Sapphira Calren. Yes, that one Briallan had to be wary of.

Briallan continued up the dream-city of Tar Valon and very soon the gates of the Towers rose up above her head, and to either side of her were guards, stone-faced but fluid-handed. Tower Guards. She very nearly snorted. What kind of defense is this? Sword and steel? What can they do to guard against lightning, or fire? Why do the Towers even play at the farce of using these Warders...? It was a simple thing to creep past them, a mere suggestion using a weave to turn their gazes from her, and then she was in the Towers' gardens, a little girl gazing hungrily at the sweeping gardens and fountains around her, and, ever present, the grand marble steps up to the White Tower.

She needed a cover. She needed someone to take her in. She was in the full view of scurrying novices and Accepted trying to imitate an Aes Sedai's sweeping grace; there was the occasional Soldier, a passing recruit, but these were the gates to the White Tower, not the Black, nor the Garrison. She needed someone's protection, someone's rooms, a base she could work from. She needed heartstrings to pull. She embraced saidar, but it sparked no outrage -- Briallan could not help a tiny smirk forming on her lips. So there! I can Mask the Glow properly, after all. All of Miaseia's taunting! Why, one day I'll show her, her and her half-tamed wolf both.

She took a few tottering steps up the marble stairs. Petitioners streaming past her gave her looks -- some curious, others impatient -- and she collapsed at one side of the stairs, folded into herself in a filthy pitiful heap, and cried into her hands in gulping, hysterical sobs.