Leilwin, with a curved sword hanging from a broad leather strap that slanted across her chest, and Domon, with a shortsword on one side of his belt and a brass-studded cudgel on the other, were chatting with Juilin and Amathera on yet another log close by. Leilwin—he had come to accept that that was the only name she would stomach—made a point of showing that she would not avoid Tuon or Selucia, or lower her eyes when they met, though she had to steel herself visibly to carry it off. Juilin had the cuffs of his black coat turned back, a sign he felt among friends, or at least people he could trust. The onetime Panarch of Tarabon still clutched the thief-catcher’s arm tightly, but she met Leilwin’s sharp blue eyes with little flinching. In fact, she often seemed to gaze at the other woman with something approaching awe.
Seated cross-legged on the ground and unmindful of the dampness, Noal was playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver and spinning wild tales about the lands beyond the Aiel Waste, about some great coastal city that foreigners were not allowed to leave except by ship and the inhabitants were not allowed to leave at all. Mat wished they would find another game to play. Every time they brought out that piece of red cloth with its spiderweb of black lines, it reminded him of his promise to Thom, reminded him the bloody Eelfinn were inside his head somehow, and maybe the flaming Aelfinn, too. The Aes Sedai came up from the stream, and Joline stopped to talk with Blaeric and Fen. Bethamin and Seta, trailing along behind, hesitated until a gesture from the Green sent them to stand behind the log where Teslyn and Edesina sat, as far apart as they could manage, with uncut branches between, and began reading small leather-bound books taken from their belt pouches. Both Bethamin and Seta stood behind Edesina.
The yellow-haired former sul’dam had come round in spectacular, and painful, fashion. Painful for her and for the sisters. When she first hesitantly asked them to teach her, too, at supper the night before, they refused. They were only teaching Bethamin because she had already channeled. Seta was too old to become a novice, she had not channeled, and that was that. So she duplicated whatever it was that Bethamin had done and had all three leaping about the cookfire and squealing in showers of dancing sparks for as long as she could hold on to the Power. They agreed to teach her then. At least, Joline and Edesina did. Teslyn still was having none of any sul’dam, former or not. All three of them took a hand in switching her, though, and she had spent the morning continually easing herself in her saddle. She still looked afraid, of the One Power and maybe of the Aes Sedai, but strangely, her face somehow seemed . . . content, too. How to understand that was beyond Mat.
He should have felt content himself. He had avoided a charge of murder, avoided riding blindly into a Seanchan trap that would have killed Tuon, and left the gholam behind for good this time. It would be following Luca’s show, and Luca had been warned, for whatever good that would do. In well under two weeks he would be over the mountains into Murandy. The need to figure out how to get Tuon back to Ebou Dar safely, no easy task at all now, especially since he would have to guard against Aes Sedai trying to spirit her away, would mean that much longer to look at her face. And to try puzzling out what went on behind those big beautiful eyes. He should have been as happy as a goat in a corn crib. He was far from it.
For one thing, all those sword-cuts he had received in Maderin hurt. Some of them were inflamed, though he had managed to keep that from anyone so far. He hated being fussed over nearly as much as he hated anyone using the Power on him. Lopin and Nerim had sewed him up as well as they could, and he had refused Healing despite attempted bullying by all three Aes Sedai. He had been surprised that Joline, of all people, tried to insist, but she did, and flung up her hands in disgust when he failed to relent. Another surprise had been Tuon.
“Don’t be foolish, Toy,” she had drawled in his tent, standing over him, arms folded beneath her breasts, while Lopin and Nerim plied their needles and he gritted his teeth. Her proprietary air, very much a woman making sure her property was repaired properly, had been enough to make him grind his teeth, never mind the needles. Or that he was down to his smallclothes! She had just walked in and refused to leave short of manhandling, and he had felt in no condition to manhandle a woman he suspected might be able to break his arm. “This Healing is a wonderful thing. My Mylen knows it, and I taught it to my others, too. Of course, many people are foolish about having the Power touch them. Half my servants would faint at the suggestion, and most of the Blood, too, I shouldn’t be surprised. But I wouldn’t have expected it of you.” If she had a quarter his experience of Aes Sedai, she would have.
They had ridden off up the road from Maderin as if setting out for Lugard, then taken to the forest as soon as the last farms were out of sight. The moment they entered the trees, the dice started up in his head again. That was the other thing that soured his mood, those bloody dice drumming inside his head for two days. There hardly seemed any way they could stop here in the forest. What kind of momentous event could happen in the woods? Still, he had stayed well clear of the small villages they had passed. Sooner or later the dice would stop, though, and he could only wait for it.
Tuon and Selucia headed for the stream to wash, wiggling their fingers at one another rapidly. Talking about him, he was sure. When women started putting their heads together, you could be sure—
Amathera screamed, and every head whipped around toward her. Mat spotted the cause as quickly as Juilin did, a black-scaled snake a good seven feet long wriggling quickly away from the log Juilin was seated on. Leilwin cursed and leaped to her feet drawing her sword, but no faster than Juilin, who tugged his shortsword free of its scabbard and started after the snake so swiftly that his conical red cap fell off.
“Let it go, Juilin,” Mat said. “It’s heading away from us. Let it go.” The thing probably had a den under that log and had been surprised to come out and find people. Luckily, blacklances were solitary snakes.
Juilin hesitated before deciding that comforting a shivering Amathera was more important than chasing a snake. “What kind is it, anyway?” he said, folding her in his arms. He was a city man, after all. Mat told him, and for a moment, he looked as though he meant to go after it again. Wisely, he decided against. Blacklances were quick as lightning, and with a shortsword, he would have needed to get close. Anyway, Amathera was clinging to him so hard he would have had a time getting free of her.
Taking his hat from the butt of his ashandarei, which was driven point-down into the ground, Mat settled it on his head. “Daylight’s wasting,” he said around his pipestem. “Time we were moving on. Don’t dawdle over there, Tuon. Your hands are clean enough.” He had tried calling her Precious, but since her claim of victory back in Maderin, she refused to acknowledge that he had even spoken when he did.
She did not hurry in the slightest, of course. By the time she returned, drying her small hands on a small piece of toweling that Selucia would drape across the pommel of her saddle to dry, Nerim and Lopin had filled in the refuse pit, wrapped the remains of the meal and tucked them into Nerim’s saddlebags, and doused the fire with water brought from the stream in folding leather buckets. Ashandarei in hand, Mat was ready to mount Pips.
“A strange man, who lets poisonous serpents go,” Tuon said. “From the fellow’s reaction, I assume a blacklance is poisonous?”
“Very,” he told her. “But snakes don’t bite anything they can’t eat unless they’re threatened.” He put a foot in the stirrup.
“You may kiss me, Toy.”
He gave a start. Her words, not spoken softly, had made them the object of every eye. Selucia’s face was so stiffly expressionless her disapproval could not have been plainer. “Now?” he said. “When we stop tonight, we could take a stroll alone—”
“By tonight, I may have changed my mind, Toy. Call it a whim, for a man who lets poisonous snakes go.” Maybe she saw one of her omens in that?
Taking off his hat and sticking the black spear back into the ground, he took the pipe from between his teeth and planted a ch
aste kiss on her full lips. A first kiss was nothing to be rough with. He did not want her to think him pushy, or crude. She was no tavern maid to enjoy a bit of slap and tickle. Besides, he could almost feel all those eyes watching. Someone snickered. Selucia rolled her eyes.
Tuon folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked up at him through her long eyelashes. “Do I remind you of your sister?” she asked in a dangerous tone. “Or perhaps your mother?” Somebody laughed. More than one somebody, in fact.
Grimly, Mat tapped the dottle from his pipe on the heel of his boot and stuffed the warm pipe into his coat pocket. He hung his hat back on the ashandarei. If she wanted a real kiss. . . . Had he really thought she would not fill his arms? Slim, she was to be sure, and small, but she filled them very nicely indeed. He bent his head to hers. She was far from the first woman he had kissed. He knew what he was about. Surprisingly—or then again, perhaps not so surprisingly—she did not know. She was a quick pupil, though. Very quick.
When he finally released her, she stood there looking up at him and trying to catch her breath. For that matter, his breath came a little raggedly, too. Metwyn whistled appreciatively. Mat smiled. What would she think of what plainly was her first real kiss ever? He tried not to smile too widely, though. He did not want her to think he was smirking.
She laid fingers against his cheek. “I thought so,” she said in that slow honey drawl. “You’re feverish. Some of your wounds must be infected.”
Mat blinked. He gave her a kiss that had to have curled her toes, and all she said was that his face was hot? He bent his head again—this time, she would bloody well need help to stay standing!—but she put a hand against his chest, fending him off.
“Selucia, fetch the box of ointments I got from Mistress Luca,” she commanded. Selucia went scurrying for Tuon’s black-and-white mount.
“We don’t have time for that now,” Mat said. “I’ll smear on something tonight.” He might as well have kept his mouth shut.
“Strip off, Toy,” she said in the same tone she had used with her maid. “The ointment will sting, but I expect you to be brave.”
“I am not going to—!”
“Riders coming,” Harnan announced. He was already in his saddle, on a dark bay gelding with white forefeet, holding the lead to one of the strings of packhorses. “One of them’s Vanin.”
Mat swung up onto Pips for a better vantage. A pair of horsemen were approaching at a gallop, dodging around fallen trees when they had to. Aside from recognizing Chel Vanin’s dun, there was no mistaking the man himself. Nobody else who was that wide and sat his saddle like a sack of suet could have maintained his seat at that pace without any apparent effort. The man could have stayed in the saddle on a wild boar. Then Mat recognized the other rider, whose cloak was flailing behind him, and felt as if he had been punched in the belly. He would not have been surprised in the least had the dice stopped then, but they kept bouncing off the inside of his skull. What in the Light was Talmanes bloody well doing in Altara?
The two riders slowed to a walk short of Mat, and Vanin reined in to let Talmanes approach alone. It was not shyness. There was nothing shy about Vanin. He leaned lazily on the tall pommel of his saddle and spat to one side through a gap in his teeth. No, he knew Mat would not be best pleased, and he meant to stay clear.
“Vanin brought me up to date, Mat,” Talmanes said. Short and wiry, with the front of his head shaved and powdered, the Cairhienin had the right to wear stripes of color across his chest in considerable number, but a small red hand sewn to the breast of his dark coat was its only decoration unless you counted the long red scarf tied around his left arm. He never laughed and seldom smiled, but he had his reasons. “I was sorry to hear about Nalesean and the others. A good man, Nalesean. They all were.”
“Yes, they were,” Mat said, keeping a tight rein on his temper. “I assume Egwene never came to you for help getting away from those fool Aes Sedai, but what in the bloody flaming Light are you doing here?” Well, maybe he did not have such a tight rein after all. “At least tell me you haven’t brought the whole bloody Band three hundred bloody miles into Altara with you.”
“Egwene is still the Amyrlin,” the other man said calmly, straightening his cloak. Another red hand, larger, marked that. “You were wrong about her, Mat. She really is the Amyrlin Seat, and she has those Aes Sedai by the scruff of the neck. Though some of them might not know it yet. The last I saw, she and the whole lot of them were off to besiege Tar Valon. She might have it by now. They can make holes in the air like the one the Dragon Reborn made to take us near Salidar.” The colors spun in Mat’s head, resolving for an instant into Rand talking to some woman with gray hair in a bun atop her head, an Aes Sedai, he thought, but his anger blew the image away like mist.
All that talk of the Amyrlin Seat and Tar Valon attracted the sisters, of course. They heeled their horses up beside Mat and tried to take over. Well, Edesina hung back a little the way she did when Teslyn or Joline had the bit in her teeth, but the other two. . . .
“Who do you be talking about?” Teslyn demanded while Joline was still opening her mouth. “Egwene? There did be an Accepted named Egwene al’Vere, but she be a runaway.”
“Egwene al’Vere is the one, Aes Sedai,” Talmanes said politely. The man was always polite to Aes Sedai. “And she is no runaway. She is the Amyrlin Seat, my word on it.” Edesina made a sound that would have been called a squeak coming from anyone but an Aes Sedai.
“Later for that,” Mat muttered. Joline opened her mouth again, angrily. “Later, I said.” That was not enough to stop the slender Green, but Teslyn laid a hand on her arm and murmured something, and that was. Joline still glared daggers, though, promising to drag out everything she wanted to know later. “The Band, Talmanes?”
“Oh. No, I only brought three banners of horse and four thousand mounted crossbowmen. I left three banners of horse and five of foot, a little short of crossbows, in Murandy with orders to move north to Andor. And the Mason’s Banner, of course. Handy to have masons ready to hand if you need a bridge built or the like.”
Mat squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Six banners of horse and five of foot. And a banner of masons! The Band had only been two banners counting horse and foot when he left them in Salidar. He wished he had back half the gold he had handed over to Luca so freely. “How am I supposed to pay that many men?” he demanded. “I couldn’t find enough dice games in a year!”
“Well, as to that, I made a small deal with King Roedran. Finished with, now, and not before time—I think he was about ready to turn on us; I will explain later—but the Band’s coffers hold a year’s pay and more. Besides, sooner or later the Dragon Reborn will give you estates, and grand ones. He has raised men to rule nations, so I hear, and you grew up with him.”
This time, he did not fight the colors as they resolved into Rand and the Aes Sedai. It was an Aes Sedai, for sure. A hard woman, she looked. If Rand tried to give him any titles, he would stuff them down Rand’s bloody throat is what he would do. Mat Cauthon had no liking for nobles—well, a few like Talmanes were all right; and Tuon; never forget Tuon—and he certainly had no bloody desire to become one! “That’s as may be,” was all he said, though.
Selucia cleared her throat loudly. She and Tuon moved their horses up beside Mat, and Tuon was so straight in her mare’s saddle, so cool-eyed, cold-faced and regal, that he expected Selucia to start proclaiming her titles. She did nothing of the sort. Instead, she shifted on her dun and scowled at him, eyes like blue coals in a fire, then cleared her throat again. Very loudly. Ah.
“Tuon,” Mat said, “allow me to present Lord Talmanes Delovinde of Cairhien. His family is distinguished and ancient, and he has added honors to its name.” The little woman inclined her head. Perhaps all of an inch. “Talmanes, this is Tuon.” So long as she called him Toy, she would get no titles from him. Selucia glared, eyes hotter than ever, impossible as that seemed.
Talmanes blinked in surprise, though,
and bowed very low in his saddle. Vanin pulled the sagging brim of his hat lower, half hiding his face. He still avoided looking directly at Mat. So. It seemed the man had already told Talmanes exactly who Tuon was.
Growling under his breath, Mat leaned from the saddle to snatch his hat from the spear and pull up the ashandarei. He clapped the hat on his head. “We were ready to move on, Talmanes. Take us to where your men are waiting, and we’ll see if we can have as good luck avoiding Seanchan on the way out of Altara as you had on the way in.”
“We saw a good many Seanchan,” Talmanes said, turning his bay to fall in beside Pips. “Though most of the men we saw seemed to be Altaran. They have camps scattered everywhere, it seems. Luckily, we saw none of those flying creatures I have heard tell of. But there is a problem, Mat. There was a landslide. I lost my rear guard and some of the packhorses. The pass is well and truly blocked, Mat. I sent three men to try climbing over with the orders sending the Band to Andor. One broke his neck, and another his leg.”
Mat stopped Pips short. “I’m guessing this is the same pass Vanin was talking about?”
Talmanes nodded, and Vanin, waiting to fall in farther back, said, “Bloody right, it was. Passes don’t grow on trees, not in mountains like the Damonas.” He was no respecter of rank.
“Then you’ll have to find another one,” Mat told him. “I’ve heard you can find your way blindfolded at midnight. It should be easy for you.” Flattery never hurt. Besides, he had heard that about the man.
Vanin made a sound like he was swallowing his tongue. “Find another pass?” he muttered. “Find another pass, the man says. You don’t just go find another pass in new mountains like the Damonas. Why do you think I only knew the one?” He was shaken to admit that much. Before this, he had been adamant that he had only heard of it.
“What are you talking about?” Mat demanded, and Vanin explained. At great length, for him.
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