Knife of Dreams twot-11

by Robert Jordan

  The Band was going to end up fighting Seanchan, and most likely Trollocs as well. And he would be there when it happened. There was no getting around the fact. Try to avoid it how he would, that bloody ta’veren twisting would put him right in the bloody middle. So he was ready to pour out gold like water if it gave him a way to kill his enemies before they got close enough to poke holes in his hide.

  Aludra tilted her head to one side, pursing her rosebud lips. “Who is this man with such power?”

  “It’ll have to be a secret between us. Thorn and Juilin know, and Egeanin and Domon, and the Aes Sedai, Teslyn and Joline at least, and Van in and the Redarms, but nobody else, and I want to keep it that way.” Blood and bloody ashes, far too many people knew already. He waited for her curt nod before saying, “The Dragon Reborn.” The colors swirled and despite his fighting them again became Rand and Loial for a moment. This was not going to be as easy as it had seemed.

  “You know the Dragon Reborn.” she said doubtfully.

  “We grew up in the same village,” he growled, already fighting the colors. This time, they nearly coalesced before vanishing. “If you don’t believe me. ask Teslyn and Joline. Ask Thorn. But don’t do it around anyone else. A secret, remember.”

  “The Guild has been my life since I was a girl.” She scraped one of the sticks quickly down the side of the box, and the thing sputtered into flame! It smelled of sulphur. “The dragons, they are my life now. The dragons, and revenge on the Seanchan.” Bending, she touched the flame to a dark length of fuse that ran under the canvas. As soon as the fuse caught, she shook the stick until the fire went out, then dropped it. With a crackling hiss the flame sped along the fuse. “I think me I believe you.” She held out her free hand. “When you leave, I will go with you. And you will help me make many dragons.”

  For a moment, as he shook her hand, he was sure the dice had stopped, but a heartbeat later they were rattling again. It must have been imagination. After all, this agreement with Aludra might help the Band, and incidentally Mat Cauthon. stay alive, yet it could hardly be called fateful. He would still have to fight those battles, and however you planned, however well-trained your men were, luck played its part, too. bad as well as good, even for him. These dragons would not change that. But were the dice bouncing as loudly? He thought not, yet how could he be sure? Never before had they slowed without stopping. It had to be his imagination.

  A hollow thump came from inside the enclosure, and acrid smoke billowed over the canvas wall. Moments later the nightflower bloomed in the darkness above Runnien Crossing, a great ball of red and green streaks. It bloomed again and again in his dreams that night and for many nights after, but there it bloomed among charging horsemen and massed pikes, rending flesh as he had once seen stone rent by fireworks. In his dreams, he tried to catch the things with his hands, tried to stop them, yet they rained down in unending streams on a hundred battlefields. In his dreams, he wept for the death and destruction. And somehow it seemed that the rattling of the dice in his head sounded like laughter. Not his laughter. The Dark One’s laughter.

  The next morning, with the sun just rising toward a cloudless sky, he was sitting on the steps of his green wagon, carefully scraping at the bowstave with a sharp knife-you had to be careful, almost delicate: a careless slice could ruin all your work-when Egeanin and Domon came out. Strangely, they seemed to have dressed with special care, in their best, such as it was. He was not the only one to have bought cloth in Jurador, but without promises of Mat’s gold to speed them, the seamstresses were still sewing for Domon and Egeanin. The blue-eyed Seanchan woman wore a bright green dress heavily embroidered with tiny white and yellow flowers on the high neck and all down the sleeves. A flowered scarf held her long black wig in place. Domon, looking decidedly odd with a head of very short hair and that Illianer beard that left his upper lip bare, had brushed his worn brown coat till it actually had some semblance of neatness. They squeezed past Mat and hurried off without a word, and he thought no more of it until they returned an hour or so later to announce that they had been into the village and gotten Mother Darvale to marry them.

  He could not stop himself from gaping. Egeanin’s stern face and sharp eyes gave good indications of her character. What could have brought Domon to marry the woman? As soon marry a bear. Realizing the Illianer was beginning to glare at him, he hastily got to his feet and made a presentable bow over the bowstave. “Congratulations, Master Domon. Congratulations. Mistress Domon. The Light shine on you both.” What else was he to say?

  Domon kept glaring as if he had heard Mat’s thoughts, though, and Egeanin snorted. “My name is Leilwin Shipless, Cauthon,” she drawled. “That’s the name I was given and the name I’ll die with. And a good name it is, since it helped me reach a decision I should have made weeks ago.” Frowning, she looked sideways at Domon. “You do understand why I could not take your name, don’t you, Bayle?”

  “No, lass,” Domon replied gently, resting a thick hand on her shoulder, “but I will take you with any name you do care to use so long as you be my wife. I told you that.” She smiled and laid her hand atop his, and he began smiling, too. Light, but the pair of them were sickening. If marriage made a man start smiling like dreamy syrup… Well, not Mat Cauthon. He might be as good as wed, but Mat Cauthon was never going to start carrying on like a loon.

  And that was how he ended up in a green-striped wall-tent, not very large, that belonged to a pair of lean Domani brothers who ate fire and swallowed swords. Even Thom admitted that Balat and Abar were good, and they were popular with the other performers, so finding them places to stay was easy, but that tent cost as much as the wagon had! Everybody knew he had gold to fling about, and that pair just sighed over giving up their snug home when he tried to bargain them down. Well, a new bride and groom needed privacy, and he was more than glad to give it to them if it meant he did not have to watch them go moon-eyed at each other. Besides, he was tired of taking his turn sleeping on the floor. In the tent, at least he had his own cot every night-narrow and hard it might be, yet it was softer than floorboards-and with only him, he had more room than in the wagon even after the rest of his clothes were moved in and stowed in a pair of brass-bound chests. He had a washstand of his very own, a ladder-back chair that was not too unsteady, a sturdy stool, and a table big enough to hold a plate and cup and a pair of decent brass lamps. The chest of gold he left in the green wagon. Only a blind fool would try robbing Domon. Only a madman would try robbing Egeanin. Leilwin. if she insisted, though he was still certain she would regain her senses eventually. After the first night, spent close by the Aes Sedai wagon, with the foxhead cool for half the night, he had the tent set up facing Tuon’s wagon by dint of making sure that the Redarms started raising it before anyone else could claim the space.

  “Are you placing yourself as my guard now?” Tuon said coolly when she saw the tent for the first time.

  “No,” he replied. “I’m just hoping for more glimpses of you.” That was the Light’s own truth-well, getting away from the Aes Sedai was part of it, but the other was true, too-yet the woman waggled her fingers at Selucia, and the pair of them launched into gales of giggles before recovering themselves and reentering the faded purple wagon with all the dignity of a royal procession. Women!

  He was not often alone in the tent. He had taken on Lopin as his bodyservant after Nalesean’s death, and the stout Tairen, with his blocky face and a beard that nearly reached his chest, was always popping in to bow his balding head and ask what “my Lord” would enjoy for his next meal or inquire whether “my Lord” had any need of wine or tea or would care for a plate of candied dried figs he had vaguely acquired somewhere. Lopin was vain over his ability to find delicacies where it seemed there could be none. That, or he was rifling through the clothes chests to see whether anything needed repair or cleaning or ironing. Something always did, in his estimation, though it all looked fine to Mat. Nerim. Talmanes’ melancholy bodyservant, frequently accompanied
him, largely because the skinny, gray-haired Cairhienin was bored. Mat could not understand how anyone could get bored with not having any work to do, but Nerim was full of dolorous comments on how poorly Talmanes must be faring without him, mournfully sighing about five times a day that Talmanes must have given his place to another by now, and he was ready to wrestle Lopin if need be for a share of the cleaning and mending. He even wanted his turn blacking Mat’s boots!

  Noal dropped by to spin his tall tales, and Olver to play stones or Snakes and Foxes, when he was not playing with Tuon instead. Thorn came to play stones, too, and to share rumors he picked up in the towns and villages, knuckling his long white mustache over the choicer bits. Juilin brought his own reports, but he always brought Amathera. as well. The former Panarch of Tarabon was pretty enough for Mat to understand why the thief-catcher was interested, with a rosebud mouth just made for kissing, and she clung to Juilin’s arm as if she might return some of his feelings, but her big eyes always gazed fearfully toward Tuon’s wagon, even when they were all inside Mat’s tent, and it was still all Juilin could do to keep her from dropping to her knees and putting her face to the ground whenever she glimpsed Tuon or Selucia. She did the same with Egeanin. and with Bethamin and Seta, besides. Considering that Amathera had been da’covale for just a matter of months, it fair made Mat’s skin crawl. Tuon could not really mean to make him da’covale when she was going to marry him. Could she?

  He soon told them to stop bringing him rumors about Rand. Fighting the colors in his head was too much effort, and he lost that fight as often as he won. Sometimes it was all right, but sometimes he caught glimpses of Rand and Min, and it seemed those two were carrying on something awful. Anyway, the rumors were all the same, really. The Dragon Reborn was dead, killed by Aes Sedai, by Asha’man, by the Seanchan, by a dozen other assassins. No, he was in hiding, he was massing a secret army, he was doing some fool thing or other that varied village by village and usually inn by inn. The one thing that was clear was that Rand was no longer in Cairhien, and nobody had any idea where he was. The Dragon Reborn had vanished.

  It was odd how many of these Altaran farmers and villagers and townsfolk seemed worried by that, as worried as the merchants passing through and the men and women who worked for them. Not one of those people knew any more of the Dragon Reborn than the tales they carried, yet his disappearance frightened them. Thorn and Juilin were clear on that, until he made them stop. If the Dragon Reborn was dead, what was the world to do? That was the question that people asked over breakfast in the morning and ale in the evening and likely on going to bed. Mat could have told them Rand was alive-those bloody visions made him sure of that-but explaining how he knew was another matter. Even Thom and Juilin seemed uncertain about the colors. The merchants and the others would have thought him a mad man. And if they believed, that would only scatter rumors about him, not to mention likely setting the Seanchan to hunting for him. All he wanted was the bloody colors out of his head.

  Moving into the tent made the showfolk eye him very oddly, and small wonder. First he had been running off with Egearrin-Leilwin, if she insisted on it-and Domon supposedly was her servant, but now she was married to Domon, and Mat was out of the wagon entirely. Some of the showfolk seemed to think it no more than he deserved for trailing after Tuon. yet a surprising number offered him sympathy. Several men commiserated over the fickleness of women-at least they did when they there were no women around-and some of the unmarried women, contortionists and acrobats and seamstresses, began eyeing him much too warmly. He might have enjoyed that if they had not been so willing to give him smoky looks right in front of Tuon. The first time that happened, he was so startled that his eyes nearly popped. Tuon seemed to find it amusing, of all things! She seemed to. But only a fool thought he knew what was in a woman’s head just because she had a smile on her face.

  He continued to dine with her every midday, if they were halted, and began arriving for his nightly games of stones early, so she had to feed him then, too. Light’s truth, if you got a woman to feed you on a regular basis, she was halfway won. At least, he dined with her when she would let him into the wagon. One night he found the latch down, and no amount of talking would make her or Selucia open the door. It seemed a bird had managed to get inside during the day, an extremely bad omen apparently, and the pair of them had to spend the night in prayer and contemplation to avert some evil or other. They seemed to run half their lives according to strange superstitions. Tuon or Selucia either one would make odd signs with their hands if they saw a torn spiderweb with the spider in it. and Tuon explained to him, just as serious as if she were making sense, that the sure result of clearing away a spiderweb before shooing the spider out of it was the death of someone close to you within the month. They would see a flight of birds circle more than once and predict a storm, or draw a finger through a line of marching ants, count how long it took for the ants to rejoin their line, and predict how many days of fair weather lay ahead, and never mind that it did not work out that way. Oh, there was rain three days after the birds-crows, disturbingly enough-but it was nowhere near a storm, just a gray, drizzling day.

  “Obviously, Selucia miscounted with the ants,” Tuon said, placing a white stone on the board with that oddly graceful arching of her fingers. Selucia, watching over her shoulder in a white blouse and divided brown skirts, nodded. As usual, she wore a head scarf over her short golden hair even indoors, a length of red-and-gold silk that day. Tuon was all in brocaded blue silk, a coat of odd cut that covered her hips and divided skirts so narrow they seemed to be wide trousers. She spent considerable time giving the seamstresses detailed instructions on what she wanted sewn, and little of it was much like anything he had ever seen before. It was all in Seanchan styles, he suspected, though she had had a few riding dresses sewn that would not draw comment, for when she went outside. Rain pattered softly on the roof of the wagon. “Obviously, what the birds told us was modified by the ants. It is never simple, Toy. You must learn these things. I will not have you ignorant.”

  Mat nodded as if that made sense and placed his black stone. And she called his uneasiness about crows and ravens superstition! Knowing when to keep your mouth shut was a useful skill around women. Around men, too, but more so around women. You could be pretty certain what would set a man’s eyes on fire.

  Talking with her could be dangerous in other ways, too. “What do you know of the Dragon Reborn?” she asked him another evening.

  He choked on a mouthful of wine, and the whirling colors in his brain dissipated in a fit of coughing. The wine was near enough vinegar; but even Nerim had a hard time finding good wine these days. “Well, he’s the Dragon Reborn,” he said when he could speak, wiping wine from his chin with one hand. For a moment, he saw Rand eating at a large dark table. “What else is there to know?” Selucia refilled his cup smoothly.

  “A great deal, Toy. For one thing, he must kneel to the Crystal Throne before Tarmon Gai’don. The Prophecies are clear on that, but I haven’t even been able to learn where he is. It becomes still more urgent if he is the one who sounded the Horn of Valere, as I suspect.”

  “The Horn of Valere?” he said weakly. The Prophecies said what} “It’s been found, then?”

  “It must have been, mustn’t it, if it was sounded?” she drawled dryly. “The reports I’ve seen from the place where it was blown, a place called Falme, are very disturbing. Very disturbing. Securing whoever blew the Horn, man or woman, may be as important as securing the Dragon Reborn himself. Are you going to play a stone or not, Toy?”

  He played his stone, but he was so shaken that the colors whirled and faded without forming any image. In fact, he was barely able to eke out a draw from what had seemed a clear winning position.

  “You played very poorly toward the end.” Tuon murmured, frowning thoughtfully at the board, now divided evenly between the control of black stones and white. He could all but see her start trying to work out what they had been talking about
when his poor play began. Talking with her was like walking a crumbling ledge across the face of a cliff. One misstep, and Mat Cauthon would be as dead as last year’s mutton. Only, he had to walk that ledge. He had no bloody choice. Oh, he enjoyed it. In a way. The longer he spent with her, the more opportunity to memorize that heart-shaped face, to get it down so he could see her just by closing his eyes. But there was always that misstep waiting ahead. He could almost see that, too.

  For several days after giving her the little bunch of silk flowers, he brought her no presents, and he thought he was beginning to detect hints of disappointment when he appeared empty-handed. Then, four days out of Jurador, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon into a nearly cloudless sky, he got her and Selucia out of the purple wagon. Well, he just wanted Tuon, but Selucia might as well have been her shadow when it came to trying to separate them. He had commented on that once, making a joke, and both women went on talking as if he had not spoken. It was a good thing he knew Tuon could laugh at a joke, because sometimes she seemed to have no sense of humor at all. Selucia, wrapped in a green wool cloak with the cowl all but hiding her red headscarf, eyed him suspiciously, but then, she nearly always did. Tuon never bothered with a scarf, yet the shortness of her black hair was not so apparent with the hood of her blue cloak up.

  “Cover your eyes, Precious,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.”

  “I like surprises,” she replied, placing her hands over her big eyes. For an instant, she smiled in anticipation, but only for an instant. “Some surprises, Toy.” That had the sound of a warning. Selucia stood hard by her shoulder, and though the bosomy woman appeared completely at her ease, something told him she was as tense as a cat ready to leap. He suspected she did not like surprises.

  “Wait right there,” he said, and ducked around the side of the purple wagon. When he returned, he was leading Pips and the razor, both saddled and bridled. The mare stepped lively, frisking at the prospect of an outing. ‘You can look now. I thought you might like a ride.” They had hours; the show might as well have been deserted for all the evidence of life among the wagons. Only a handful had smoke rising from their metal chimneys. “She’s yours!’ he added, and stiffened as the words nearly froze in his throat.