The walls of Baerlon rose gray and solid against the midday sky.
Spencer felt the Level 3 threshold break as they approached the gates — a cascade of thread identifications from two days of road travel finally pushing him over the edge. The sensation was strange: a click somewhere behind his eyes, a door opening in his mind that hadn't existed a moment before.
[LEVEL 3 ACHIEVED]
[Skill Archive Module: ONLINE]
[New capability: Formally archive observed skills and weave structures. Archived skills can be reviewed, practiced, and eventually mastered. Current slots: 5]
The Skill Archive manifested as a mental library — shelves that weren't shelves, holding knowledge that wasn't quite knowledge. Spencer immediately filed two entries: Lan's positioning principles (Physical, Comprehension 0) and the Draghkar's compulsion-thread structure (Channeling-Adjacent, Comprehension 0). Both settled into their slots with a satisfying weight, like books finding their proper places.
Level 3. Finally. Now I can actually learn things systematically.
The gates of Baerlon loomed ahead, and Spencer forced his attention back to the present. There would be time to explore the new module later. Right now, he had a woman to find.
---
The Stag and Lion was exactly as the books had described: a solid stone inn with good food, clean rooms, and a common room that served as Baerlon's informal gathering place. Moiraine arranged lodging with the innkeeper while Lan did whatever Warders did when they weren't looming ominously — probably looming ominously somewhere else.
Spencer slipped away from the group as they settled in. He had questions that needed answering, and there was only one person in Baerlon who might have useful answers.
He found Min Farshaw in the common room, nursing an ale and watching the door with the resigned patience of someone who'd rather be anywhere else. She was younger than he'd expected — early twenties, maybe — with short dark hair and a practical set to her shoulders. Her thread was interesting: white with flickers of silver that pulsed whenever her gaze landed on someone new.
The viewing ability. She's seeing images right now, around everyone who walks past.
Spencer approached her table with the carefully casual air of a man who just wanted company. "Mind if I sit? The locals keep staring at my accent."
Min's eyes flickered to him — and stopped.
Her face went through three expressions in rapid succession: confusion, fascination, and something that looked very much like fear. The silver flickers in her thread blazed bright for a moment, then subsided into an agitated pulse.
"That's... new," she said quietly. Her voice was steadier than her thread suggested. "I've never seen anything like that before."
Spencer sat down anyway. "Like what?"
Min studied him for a long moment, her gaze moving around his head and shoulders in a way that had nothing to do with normal vision. Whatever she was seeing, it was bothering her deeply.
"Threads," she said finally. "I see threads around you, but they're not yours — they're everyone's."
Spencer's stomach dropped. She can see the Codex. Or something related to it. Something that connects me to the Pattern differently than normal people.
"I don't understand," he said, which was technically true.
"Neither do I." Min's hand tightened on her mug. "Usually I see images. Symbols. Things that mean something about a person's future. But you... you're covered in threads. White ones, gold ones, threads that don't belong to any single person. It's like looking at a — a weaver's loom, except the loom is wrapped around you."
The Pattern itself. She's seeing my connection to the Pattern.
That's either very good or very bad, and I don't know which.
"Does it mean something?" Spencer asked carefully. "Your visions always mean something, right?"
Min flinched slightly. "How did you—" She stopped, looked at him again with those too-perceptive eyes. "You're with the Aes Sedai. The one who arrived today."
"Her party, yes."
"And you came looking for me specifically." It wasn't a question. "How did you know what I can do?"
Careful. Don't overplay it.
"I have impressions sometimes," Spencer said, using the cover story that had served him so far. "Feelings about people. When I walked in here, I felt... something. About you. Something that said you might understand things other people can't."
Min's thread rippled with uncertainty. She wanted to believe him — the relief of finding someone who might understand her gift was visible in the way her shoulders relaxed slightly — but she was too smart to trust a stranger completely.
"The threads around you," she said slowly. "They're moving. Not like normal fate-threads — I don't see those, usually. These are... active. Reaching toward things. Or pulling things toward you."
The Codex's connection to the Pattern. She's seeing me as a node in the web, not just a thread.
"Is that dangerous?"
"I don't know." Min's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "But I've never been scared of a viewing before. And looking at you... I'm scared."
---
Spencer bought her a drink she didn't ask for.
He set it on the table, sat back down, and said nothing. Just let the silence stretch, comfortable and undemanding, until Min's thread stopped pulsing with agitation and settled into something calmer.
"Your haircut is terrible," she said finally.
Spencer laughed — a surprised sound, genuine. "I cut it myself. With a knife. In the dark."
"It shows."
They sat together for a while, not talking about visions or threads or the terrifying implications of what Min had seen. Just two strangers sharing space in a crowded inn, finding a moment of normalcy in lives that had stopped being normal a long time ago.
She's isolated, Spencer realized. Surrounded by people all day, seeing their futures, unable to tell anyone what she sees. The loneliness must be crushing.
"Thank you," Min said quietly. "For the drink. And for not pushing."
"You'll tell me more when you're ready. Or you won't." Spencer stood, leaving his own ale mostly untouched. "Either way, I'm glad I met you."
Min watched him go with an expression he couldn't quite read.
---
The Whitecloaks found him before he found them.
Spencer was walking back toward the inn's staircase when Thread Sight caught a cluster of threads approaching from the street — rigid white shot through with steel-grey, the threads of men who believed themselves righteous beyond doubt. Children of the Light.
He stepped aside as they entered, pressing his back to the wall in the positioning Lan had taught him. Watch. Assess. Don't draw attention.
There were six of them, led by an officer whose thread made Spencer's skin crawl. White and grey like the others, but with thin tendrils of black wrapped around its core. Not obvious — nothing like Fain's overt corruption — but unmistakably Shadow-touched.
A Darkfriend. In Whitecloak armor. Hunting for channelers while serving the Dark One.
The irony would have been funny if it weren't so dangerous.
The officer's gaze swept the common room, lingering on faces, searching for something. Spencer kept his own face neutral, his thread-awareness focused inward where it couldn't be perceived.
He's looking for Moiraine's party. Looking for the ta'veren, probably, or anyone who might be channeling.
Mat chose that moment to wander downstairs, coin spinning on his fingers, mouth already opening for some complaint about the quality of the beds.
Spencer intercepted him before he reached the bottom step.
"Not now," he said quietly, steering Mat toward the kitchen entrance. "Whitecloaks. The kind who like asking questions."
Mat's eyes flicked to the patrol, and his thread rippled with the peculiar calculation of a born gambler assessing odds. "They look friendly."
"They're not. Trust me."
"Since when do you know about Whitecloaks?"
Since I read fourteen books about this world, and one of those books describes exactly what happens when Whitecloaks catch boys from the Two Rivers traveling with an Aes Sedai.
"Since Baerlon's a mining town and miners talk," Spencer lied smoothly. "Come on. I owe you a drink anyway."
They slipped into the kitchen and out through a back door, leaving the Darkfriend officer to search an empty common room.
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