Ynild made a violent retching sound as he beheld the object that had thumped to the grass. The superior sneer on his face wiped completely away in the space of a few heartbeats. Lysabel felt a certain discomfort herself, but the discipline of the White Tower prevented her from showing anything beyond the slightest curl of her lip. The grim borderlander merely looked on expectantly.

 

“You may go,” she told Ynild bluntly. The Custodian straightened up with afronted pride somewhat spoiled by the shade of green his face was turning.

“My lady, I cannot allow…” Ynild began but he trailed off as she fixed him with her arctic blue eyes. There were many ways by which she might have cowed him but the simple stare was most effective, combining as it did the promise of unknown wrath and his own desire to be away from the grotesque thing that had been brought, so unexpectedly, into his world. The Custodian offered a stiffly affronted bow and then fled. Lysabel gave her attention to the arm. It was thick and muscular and covered with bristly hair perhaps similar to that of a boar but it was thin enough that it didn’t obscure the flesh beneath. Standing gracefully she sat her book down with care on the bench and knelt beside it peering intently at the markings. They had been carved into the flesh some time before death, perhaps weeks or even months, the symbols marked out in keloid scarring that puckered the flesh an angry red brown. Few, even among Aes Sedai, could have read the script, but Lysabel had studied long under the Brown Ajah before ultimately choosing the White.

 

“A strange thing Outrider,” she mused, leaning close and moving the arm slightly to reveal the script concealed by the curve of the limb. It wasn’t easy to dredge up the knowledge and it felt almost physically uncomfortable to do so. That things as vile as trollocs had a mockery of the written word was offensive on a level that only a dyed in the wool bibliophile could appreciate.

 

“These appear to be marching orders, or perhaps a map might be closer to the truth,” she began, her mind engaging and the icy veneer sliding away from her face as she became involved in the puzzle. 

 

“Four nights march to reach a great lake, turn towards the sun, two days march to reach the… this might be fortress or watch tower. On the night of the dark moon. Kill,” she translated. She followed the script backwards in time and towards the elbow and she paused.

 

“They were heading south when we intercepted them, but there were hardly enough of them to threaten any fortress,” the gruff borderlander supplied. Lysabel barely noticed so engrossed in the translation.

“This is no trolloc symbol,” she said, pointing to a particularly contorted knot of flesh.

“If I didn’t know better…” she trailed off looking up at Markus. “I’d say its an Ogier symbol for a waygate.”[@POOHEAD189]