Knife of Dreams twot-11

by Robert Jordan

  “Your training has been in abeyance too long, Aviendha,” Nadere said firmly. “Go and change into proper clothing.”

  “But I am learning so much from Elayne. Nadere. Weaves even you do not know. I think I can make it rain in the Three-fold Land! And just now we learned that I can-”

  “Whatever you may have learned,” Nadere cut in sharply, “it seems you have forgotten as much. Such as the fact that you are an apprentice still. The Power is the least of what a Wise One must know, else only those who can channel would be Wise Ones. Now go and change, and count your luck that I do not make you return in your skin to face a strapping. The tents are being struck as we speak, and if the clan’s departure is delayed, you will face the strap.”

  Without another word, Aviendha dropped Elayne’s hand and ran from the room, bumping into Naris. who staggered and almost dropped the large, cloth-covered tray she was carrying. At a quick gesture from Essande, Sephanie hurried after Aviendha. Naris’ eyes went wide at the sight of the Aiel women, but Essande admonished her for taking so long and directed her to lay out the meal on the table, setting the young maid into hurried motion while muttering apologies under her breath.

  Elayne wanted to run after Aviendha, too, to grasp every moment with her, but Nadere’s words held her. “You’re leaving Caemlyn, Dorindha? Where are you going?” As much as Elayne liked the Aiel, she did not want them wandering about the countryside. With the situation as unstable as it was. they were problem enough simply venturing out of their camp to hunt or trade.

  “We are leaving Andor, Elayne. In a few hours, we will be far beyond your borders. As to where, you must ask the Car a’cam.”

  Nadere had walked over to study what Naris was laying out. and Naris began to tremble so that she nearly dropped more than one dish. “This looks good, but I do not recognize some of these herbs,” the Wise One said. “Your midwife has approved all of this, Elayne?”

  “I’ll summon a midwife when my time is near. Nadere. Dorindha, you can’t think Rand would want your destination kept from me. What did he say?”

  Dorindha gave a small shrug. “He sent a messenger, one of the black coats, with a letter for Bael. Bael let me read it,” of course her tone said there had never been any question of her not reading it- “but the Cava’cam asked Bael not to tell anyone, so I cannot tell you.”

  “No midwife?” Nadere said incredulously. “Who tells you what to eat and drink? Who gives you the proper herbs? Stop looking daggers at me, woman. Melaine’s temper is worse than yours could ever be, but she has sense enough to let Monaelle govern her in these things.”

  “Every woman in the palace governs what I eat,” Elayne replied bitterly. “Sometimes I think every woman in Caemlyn does. Dorindha, can’t you at least-”

  “My Lady, your food is getting cold.” Essande said mildly, but with just the touch of firmness that an elderly retainer was allowed.

  Gritting her teeth. Elayne glided to the chair Essande stood behind. She did not flounce, much as she wanted to. She glided. Essande produced an ivory-backed hairbrush and, removing the towel from Elayne’s head, began brushing her hair while she ate. She ate largely because not eating only meant someone would be told to fetch more hot food, because Essande and her own bodyguards between them might well keep her there until she did, but except for some dried apple that had not gone bad, the meal was decidedly unappetizing. The bread was crusty but flecked with weevils, and the soaked dried beans. since all of the preserved beans had spoiled, were tough and tasteless. The apple was mixed in a bowl of herbs-sliced burdock root, black haw, cramp bark, dandelion, nettle leaf-with a touch of oil, and for meat she had a piece of kid simmered in bland broth. With next to no salt, as far as she could tell. She would have killed for salty beef dripping with fat! Avkndba’s plate had sliced beef, though it looked tough. She could as well ask for wine. To drink, she had her choice of water or goat’s milk. She wanted tea almost as much as she did fatty meat, but even the weakest tea sent her running to make water, and she had quite enough difficulties with that as it was. So she ate methodically, mechanically. trying to think of anything but the tastes in her mouth. Except for the apple, at least.

  She tried to pry some news of Rand out of the two Aiel women, but it seemed they knew less than she. As far as they would admit, anyway. They could be closemouthed when they wanted to be. She at least knew that he was somewhere far to the southeast. Somewhere in Tear, she suspected, though he could as easily have been on the Plains of Maredo or in the Spine of the World. Beyond that, she knew he was alive and not a whit more. She tried keeping the conversation on Rand in the hope they might let something slip, yet she might as well have tried dressing bricks with her fingers. Dorindha and Nadere had their own goal, convincing her to acquire a midwife right away. They went on and on about how she might be endangering herself and her babes, and not even Min’s viewing would dissuade them.

  “Very well,” she said at last, slapping down her knife and fork. “I will start looking for one today.” And if she failed to find one, well, they would never know.

  “I have a niece who’s a midwife, my Lady,” Essande said. “Melfane dispenses herbs and ointments from a shop on Candle Street in the New City, and I believe she is quite knowledgeable.” She patted a few last curls into place and stepped back with a pleased smile. “You do so remind me of your mother, my Lady.”

  Elayne sighed. It seemed she was to have a midwife whether she wanted one or not. Someone else to see that her meals were wretched. Well, perhaps the midwife could suggest a remedy for those backaches at night, and the tender bosom. Thank the Light she had been spared the desire to sick up. Women who could channel never suffered that part of pregnancy.

  When Aviendha returned, she was in Aiel garb again, with her still-damp shawl draped over her arms, a dark scarf tied around her temples to hold back her hair, and a bundle on her back. Unlike the multitudes of bracelets and necklaces Dorindha and Nadere wore, she had a single silver necklace, intricately worked discs in a complex pattern, and one ivory bracelet densely carved with roses and thorns. She handed Elayne the blunt dagger. “You must keep this, so you will be safe. I will try to visit you as often as I can.”

  “There may be time for an occasional visit,” Nadere said severely, “but you have fallen behind and must work hard to catch up. Strange,” she mused, shaking her head, “to speak casually of visiting from so far. To cover leagues, hundreds of leagues, in a step. Strange things we have learned in the wetlands.”

  “Come, Aviendha, we must go,” Dorindha said.

  “Wait,” Elayne told them. “Please wait, just a moment.” Clutching the dagger, she raced to her dressing room. Sephanie paused in hanging up Aviendha’s blue dress to curtsy, but Elayne ignored her and opened the carved lid of her ivory jewelry chest. Sitting atop the necklaces and bracelets and pins in their compartments were a brooch in the shape of a turtle that appeared to be amber and a seated woman, wrapped in her own hair, apparently carved from age-darkened ivory. Both were angreal. Placing the antler-hilted dagger in the chest, she picked up the turtle, and then, impulsively, snatched up the twisted stone dream ring, all red and blue and brown. It seemed to be useless to her since she became pregnant, and if she could manage to weave Spirit, she still had the silver ring, worked in braided spirals, that had been recovered from Ispan.

  Hurrying back to the sitting room, she found Dorindha and Nadere arguing, or at least having an animated discussion, while Essande pretended to be checking for dust, running her fingers under the edge of the table. From the angle of her head, she was listening avidly, though. Naris, putting Elayne’s dishes back on the tray, was gaping at the Aiel women openly.

  “I told her she would feel the strap if we delayed the departure,” Nadere was saying with some heat as Elayne entered the room. “It is hardly fair if she is not the cause, but I said what I said.”

  “You will do as you must,” Dorindha replied calmly, but with a tightness to her eyes that suggested these
were not the first words they had exchanged. “Perhaps we will not delay anything. And perhaps Aviendha will pay the price gladly to say farewell to her sister.”

  Elayne did not bother with trying to argue for Aviendha. It would have done no good. Aviendha herself displayed an equanimity that would have credited an Aes Sedai. as if whether she was to be beaten for another’s fault were of no matter at all.

  “These are for you,” Elayne said, pressing the ring and the brooch into her sister’s hand. “Not as gifts. I’m afraid. The White Tower will want them back. But to use as you need.”

  Aviendha looked at the things and gasped. “Even the loan of these is a great gift. You shame me, sister. I have no farewell gift to give in return.”

  “You give me your friendship. You gave me a sister.” Elayne felt a tear slide down her cheek. She essayed a laugh, but it was a weak, tremulous thing. “How can you say you have nothing to give? You’ve given me everything.”

  Tears glistened in Aviendha’s eyes, too. Despite the others watching, she put her arms around Elayne and hugged her hard. “I will miss you, sister,” she whispered. “My heart is as cold as night.”

  “And mine, sister,” Elayne whispered, hugging back equally hard.

  “I will miss you, too. But you will be allowed to visit me sometimes. This isn’t forever.”

  “No. not forever. But I will still miss you.”

  They might have begun weeping next, only Dorindha laid her hands on their shoulders. “It is time. Aviendha. We must go if you are to have any hope of avoiding the strap.”

  Aviendha straightened with a sigh, scrubbing at her eyes. “May you always find water and shade, sister.”

  “May you always find water and shade, sister,” Elayne replied. The Aiel way had a finality about it, so she added. “Until I see your face again.”

  And as quickly as that, they were gone. As quickly as that, she felt very alone. Aviendha’s presence had become a certainty, a sister to talk to. laugh with, share her hopes and fears with, but that comfort was gone.

  Essande had slipped from the room while she and Aviendha were hugging, and now she returned to set the coronet of the Daughter-Heir on Elayne’s head, a simple circlet of gold supporting a single golden rose on her forehead. “So these mercenaries won’t forget who they’re talking to, my Lady.”

  Elayne did not realize her shoulders had slumped until she straightened them. Her sister was gone, yet she had a city to defend and a throne to gain. Duty would have to sustain her, now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The New Follower

  The Blue Reception Room, named for its arched ceiling, painted to display the sky and white clouds, and its blue floor tiles, was the smallest reception room in the palace, less than ten paces square. The arched windows that made up the far wall, overlooking a courtyard and still filled with glassed casements against the spring weather, gave a fair light even with the rain falling outside, but despite two large fireplaces with carved marble mantels, a cornice of plaster lions and a pair of tapestries bearing the White Lion that flanked the doors, a delegation of Caemlyn’s merchants would have been insulted to be received in the Blue Room, a delegation of bankers livid. Likely that was why Mistress Harfor had put the mercenaries there, although they would not know they were being insulted. She herself was present “overseeing” the pair of liveried young maids who were keeping the winecups full from tall silver pitchers standing on a tray atop a plainly carved sideboard, but she had the embossed leather folder used to carry her reports pressed to her bosom, as if in anticipation of the mercenaries being dealt with quickly. Halwin Norry. the wisps of white hair behind his ears as always looking like feathers, was standing in a corner, also with his leather folder clutched to his narrow chest. Their reports were a daily fixture, and seldom much in them to cheer the heart of late. Quite the opposite.

  Warned by the pair of Guards women who had checked the room ahead of her, everyone was on their feet when Elayne entered with another pair at her back. Deni Colford, in charge of the Guardswomen who had replaced Devore and the others, had simply ignored her order for them all to remain outside. Ignored her! She supposed they made a good show, swaggering proudly as they did, yet she could not stop grinding her teeth.

  Careane and Sareitha, formal in their fringed shawls, bowed their heads slightly in respect, but Mellar swept off his plumed hat in a flourishing bow. one hand laid over the lace-edged sash slanting across his burnished breastplate. The six golden knots brazed to that breastplate, three on each shoulder, rankled her, yet she had let them pass so far. His hatchet face offered her a smile that was much too warm, too. but then, however cold she was to him, he thought he had some chance with her because she had not denied the rumor her babes were his. Her reasons for not countering that filthy tale had changed-she no longer had need to protect her babes, Rand’s babes-yet she let it stand. Give the man time, and he would braid a rope for his own neck. And if he failed to, she would braid one for him.

  The mercenaries, all well into their middle years, were only a heartbeat behind Mellar, though not so elaborate in their courtesies. Evard Cordwyn, a tall, square-jawed Andoran, wore a large ruby in his left ear, and Aldred Gomaisen, short and slender, the front of his head shaved, had horizontal stripes of red and green and blue covering half his chest, far more than it seemed at all likely he was entitled to in his native Cairhien. Hafeen Bakuvun, graying, was ornamented with a thick gold hoop in his left ear and a jeweled ring on every finger. The Domani was very stout, but the way he moved spoke of solid muscle beneath the fat.

  “Don’t you have duties. Captain Mellar?” Elayne said coolly, taking one of the room’s few chairs. There were only five, arms and high backs simply carved with vines and leaves and lacking even a hint of gilt. Standing in a widely spaced row in front of the windows, the chairs put the light behind whoever sat in them. On a bright day, those given audience here squinted in the glare. Unfortunately, that advantage was lost today. The two Guardswomen took up positions behind her and to either side, each with a hand resting on her sword hilt, watching the mercenaries with fierce expressions that made Bakuvun smile and Gomaisen rub his chin to half-hide a sly grin. The women gave no sign of being offended; they knew the point of their uniforms. Elayne knew they would wipe away any smiles very quickly if they needed to draw their blades.

  “My first duty above all is to protect you. my Lady.” Easing his sword, Mellar eyed the mercenaries as though he expected them to attack her. or perhaps him. Gomaisen looked bitterly amused, and Baku-vun laughed aloud. All three men had empty scabbards, Cordwyn a pair on his back; no mercenary was allowed to enter the palace carrying so much as a dagger.

  “I know you have other duties.” she said levelly, “because I assigned them to you. Captain. Training the men I brought in from the countryside. You are not spending as much time with them as I expect. You have a company of men to train, Captain.” A company of old men and boys, and surely enough to occupy his hours. He spent few enough with her bodyguards in spite of commanding them. That was just as well, really. He liked to pinch bottoms. “I suggest you see to them. Now.”

  Rage flashed across Mellar’s narrow face-he actually quivered!- but he mastered himself instantly. It was all gone so fast that she might have imagined it. But she knew she had not. “As you command, my Lady,” he said smoothly. His smile had an oily smoothness, too. “My honor is to serve you well.” With another flamboyant bow, he started for the door, as near to strutting as made no difference. Little could dent Doilin Mellar’s demeanor for long.

  Bakuvun laughed again, throwing his head back. “Man wears so much lace now, I vow. I keep expecting him to offer to teach us to dance, and now he does dance.” The Cairhienin laughed, too, a nasty, guttural sound.

  Mellar’s back stiffened and his step hesitated, then quickened, so much so that he bumped into Birgitte at the doorway. He hurried on without stopping to ask pardon, and she frowned after him-the bond carried anger, quickly suppressed, a
nd impatience, which was not- before shutting the door behind her and moving to stand beside Elayne’s chair with one hand resting on the chairback. Her thick braid was not so neatly done as usual after having been undone for drying, but the uniform of the Captain-General suited her. Taller than Gomaisen in her heeled boots. Birgitte had a commanding presence when she wanted to. The mercenaries offered her small bows, respectful though not deferential. Whatever misgivings of her they might have entertained in the beginning, few who had seen her use her bow.or expose herself to the enemy, had any remaining.

  “You speak as if you know Captain Mellar, Captain Bakuvun.” Elayne put just a hint of question in that, but kept her tone casual. Birgitte was attempting to project confidence along the bond to equal her expression, yet wariness and worry kept intruding. And the ever-present weariness. Elayne tightened her jaw to fight a yawn. Birgitte had to get some rest.

  “I’ve seen him once or twice before, my Lady,” the Domani replied cautiously. “Not above thrice at most, I’d say. Yes. no more than that.” He tilted his head, eyeing her almost sideways. “You know he’s followed my trade in the past?”

  “He did not try to hide the fact. Captain,” she said, as if tired of the subject. Had he let anything interesting slip, she might have arranged to question him alone, but pressing was not worth the risk of Mellar discovering that questions were being asked. He might run then, before she could learn what she wanted to know.

  “Do we really have need of the Aes Sedai, my Lady?” Bakuvun asked. “The other Aes Sedai,” he added, glancing at her Great Serpent ring. He held out his silver cup, and one of the maids darted to fill it. They were both pretty women, perhaps not the best choices, but Reene had not much to choose from; most of the maids were either young or else aged and not so spry as they once had been. “All they’ve done the whole time we’ve been here is try to put us in awe of the White Tower’s might and reach. I respect Aes Sedai as much as any man, yes, I do indeed, but if you’ll forgive me, it gets tiresome when they turn to trying to browbeat a man. I vow it does, my Lady.”