Knife of Dreams twot-11

by Robert Jordan

  Logain bristled, jaw tightening until Rand thought he should hear the man’s teeth grating. He was trying hard not to bristle himself. Cadsuane and her bloody rules. Her conditions for becoming his advisor. She pretended that he had askedTor them, and every so often she added another to her list. The rules were not precisely onerous, though their existence was, but her way of presenting them was always like a poke with a sharp stick. He opened his mouth to tell her he was finished with her rules, and with her, too, if need be.

  “Taim very likely will have to wait on the Last Battle, whatever he’s about,” Verin said suddenly. Her knitting, a shapeless lump that might have been anything, sat in her lap. “It will come soon. According to everything I’ve read on the subject, the signs are quite clear. Half the servants have recognized dead people in the halls, people they knew alive. It’s happened often enough that they aren’t frightened by it any longer. And a dozen men moving the cattle to spring pasture watched a considerable town melt into mist just a few miles to the north.”

  Cadsuane had raised her head and was staring at the stout Brown sister. “Thank you for repeating what you told us yesterday, Verin,” she said dryly. Verin blinked, then took up her knitting again, frowning at it as though she, too, were unsure what it was going to be.

  Min caught Rand’s eyes, shaking her head slowly, and he sighed. The bond held irritation and wariness, the last a deliberate warning to him, he suspected. At times, she seemed able to read his mind. Well, if he needed Cadsuane. and Min said he did, then he needed her. He just wished he knew what she was supposed to teach him aside from how to grind his teeth.

  “Advise me, Cadsuane. What do you think of my plan?”

  “At last the boy asks.” she murmured, setting her embroidery down beside her sewing basket. “All his schemes in motion, some I’ve not been made privy to, and now he asks. Very well. Your peace with the Seanchan will be unpopular.”

  “A truce,” he broke in. “And a truce with the Dragon Reborn will last only as long as the Dragon Reborn. When I die, everyone will be free to go to war with the Seanchan again if they wish.”

  Min slammed her book shut and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Don’t you talk that way!’’ she said, red-faced with anger. The bond also carried fear.

  “The Prophecies, Min,’’ he said sadly. Not sad for himself, but for her. He wanted to protect her, her and Elayne and Aviendha, but he would hurt them in the end.

  “I said don’t you talk that way! The Prophecies don’t say you have to die! I’m not going to let you die, Rand al’Thor! Elayne and Aviendha and I won’t let you!” She glared at Alivia, who her viewing had said would help Rand die. and her hands slid down her arms toward her cuffs.

  “Behave, Min,” he said. Her hands shot away from her cuffs, but she set her jaw. and the bond suddenly was flooded with stubbornness. Light, was he going to have to worry about Min trying to kill Alivia? Not that she was likely to succeed-as well try throwing a knife at an Aes Sedai as at the Seanchan woman-but she might get herself injured. He was not sure Alivia knew any weaves but those for weapons.

  “Unpopular, as I say,” Cadsuane said firmly, raising her voice. She favored Min with a brief frown before turning her attention back to Rand. Her face was smooth, composed, an Aes Sedai’s face. Her dark eyes were hard, like polished black stones. “Especially in Tarabon, Amadicia and Altara, but also elsewhere, if you agree to allow the Seanchan to keep what they’ve already taken, what lands will you give away next? That is how most rulers will see matters.”

  Rand dropped back into his chair, stretching his legs in front of him and crossing his ankles. “It doesn’t matter how unpopular it is. I went through that doorframe ter’angreal in Tear, Cadsuane. You know about that?” Golden ornaments bobbled as she nodded impatiently. “One of my questions for the Aelfinn was ‘How can I win the Last Battle?’”

  “A dangerous question to pose.” she said quietly, “touching on the Shadow as it does. Supposedly, the results can be quite unpleasant. What was the answer?”

  “ ‘The north and the east must be as one. The west and the south must be as one. The two must be as one.’” He blew a smoke ring, put another in the middle of it as it expanded. That was not the whole of it. He had asked how to win and survive. The last part of his answet had been ‘To live, you must die.’ Not something he was going to bring up in front of Min anytime soon. In front of anyone except Alivia, for that matter. Now he just had to figure out how to live by dying. “At first, I thought it meant I had to conquer everywhere, but that wasn’t what they said. What if it means the Seanchan hold the west and south, as you could say they already do, and there’s an alliance to fight the Last Battle, the Seanchan with everybody else?”

  “It’s possible,” she allowed. “But if you’re going to make this… truce… why are you moving what seems to be a considerable army to Arad Doman and reinforcing what is already in Illian?”

  “Because Tarmon Gai’don is coming, Cadsuane, and I can’t fight the Shadow and the Seanchan at the same time. I’ll have a truce, or I’ll crush them whatever the cost. The Prophecies say I have to bind the nine moons to me. I only understood what that meant a few days ago. As soon as Bashere returns, I’ll know when and where I’m to meet the Daughter of the Nine Moons. The only question now is how do I bind her, and she’ll have to answer that.’’

  He spoke matter-of-factly, now and then blowing a smoke ring for punctuation. Reactions varied. Loial just wrote very fast, trying to capture every word, while Harilin and Enaila went on with their game. If the spears had to be danced, they were ready. Alivia nodded fiercely, doubtless hoping it would come to crushing those who had kept her wearing an a dam for five hundred years. Logain had found another winecup and filled it with the last of what was in the pitcher, but he merely held the cup rather than drinking, his expression unreadable. Now it was Rand whom Verin studied intently. But then, she had always been curious about him. But why in the Light would Min feel bone-deep sadness? And Cadsuane…

  “Stone cracks from a hard enough blow,” she said, her face an Aes Sedai mask of calm. “Steel shatters. The oak fights the wind and breaks. The willow bends where it must and survives.”

  “A willow won’t win Tarmon Gai’don,” he told her.

  The door creaked open again, and Ethin tottered in. “My Lord Dragon, three Ogier have arrived. They were most pleased to learn that Master Loial is here. One of them is his mother.”

  “My mother?” Loial squeaked, and even that sounded like a hollow wind gusting in caverns. He leaped up so fast that his chair fell over backward, wringing his hands, ears wilting. His head swung from side to side as if he were hunting for a way out besides the door. “What am I going to do, Rand? The other two must be Elder Haman and Erith. What am I going to do?”

  “Mistress Covril said she was most anxious to speak with you, Master Loial,” Ethin said in that creaky voice. “Most anxious. They are all damp from the rain, but she said they will wait for you in the Ogier sitting room upstairs.”

  “What am I going to do, Rand?”

  “You said you want to marry Erith,” Rand said as gently as he could. Gentleness was difficult except with Min.

  “But my book! My notes aren’t complete, and I’ll never find out what happens next. Erith will take me back to Stedding Tsofu with her.”

  “Phaw!” Cadsuane picked up her embroidery again and began working the needle delicately. She was making the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai. the Dragon’s Fang and the Flame of Tar Valon melded into a disc, black and white separated by a sinuous line. “Go to your mother, Loial. If she’s CovriL daughter of Ella daughter ofSoong, you don’t want to keep her waiting. As I expect you know.”

  Loial seemed to take Cadsuane’s words as a command. He began wiping his pen nib again, capping his ink jar. But he did everything very slowly, with his ears drooping. Every so often he moaned sadly, half under his breath, “My book!’

  “Well,” Verin said, holding up her knit
ting for inspection, “I believe I have done all that I can here. I think I’ll go find Tomas. The rain makes his knee ache, though he denies it even to me.” She glanced at the window. “It does seem to be slowing.”

  “And I think I’ll go find Lan,” Nynaeve said, gathering her skirts. “The company is better where he is.” That with a sharp tug on her braid and a glare divided between Alivia and Logain. “The wind tells me a storm is coming. Rand. And you know I don’t mean rain.”

  “The Last Battle?” Rand asked. “How soon?” When it came to weather, listening to the wind could sometimes tell her when the rains would come to the hour.

  “It may be, and I don’t know. Just remember. A storm is coming. A terrible storm.” Overhead, thunder rolled.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Vows

  Uneasy. Loial watched Nynaeve glide off down the lamp-lit corridor in one direction and Verin in the other. Neither was much taller than his waist, but they were Aes Sedai. The fact knotted his tongue sufficiently that by the time he had worked up his nerve to ask one of them to accompany him. both were out of sight around sharp corners. The manor house was a rambling place, added to over many years with no real overall plan that he could discern, and hallways frequently met at odd angles. He really wished he had an Aes Sedai for company when he faced his mother. Even Cadsuane, although she made him very nervous with how she was always pinching at Rand. Sooner or later. Rand was going to explode. He was not the same man Loial first met in Caemlyn or even the man he had left in Cairhien. The mood around Rand was dark and stony now, a dense patch of lion’s claw and treacherous ground underfoot. The whole house felt that way with Rand in it.

  A lean, gray-haired serving woman carrying a basket of folded towels gave a start, then shook her head and muttered something under her breath before offering him a brief curtsy and walking on. She made a small side-step as though she was moving around something. Or someone. He stared at the spot and scratched behind his ear. Maybe he could only see Ogier dead. Not that he actually wanted to. It was sad enough just knowing that human dead could no longer rest. Having the same confirmed for Ogier would be enough to break his heart. Most likely they would appear only inside stedding, in any case. He would very much like to see a town vanish, though. Not a real town, but a town that was as dead as those spirits the humans claimed to see. You might be able to walk its streets before it melted and see what people were like before the War of the Hundred Years, or even the Trolloc Wars. So Verin said, and she seemed to know a very great deal about it. That would certainly be worth a mention in his book. It was going to be a fine book. Scratching his beard with two fingers-the thing itched!-he sighed. It would have been a fine book.

  Standing there in the corridor was only putting off the inevitable. Put off clearing the brush and you always find chokevine in it, so the old saying went. Only he felt as though the chokevine was tight around him instead of a tree. Breathing hard, he followed the serving woman all the way to the wide stairs that led up to the Ogier rooms. The staircase had two sturdy bannisters, shoulder-high on the gray-haired woman and stout enough to give a decent handhold. He was often afraid just to brush against stair rails made for humans for fear he might break them. One ran down the middle, with the steps along the wood-paneled wall pitched for human feet: those on the outside for Ogier.

  The woman was old as humans counted years, yet she climbed more quickly than he and was scurrying down the corridor by the time he reached the top. Doubtless she was taking the towels to his mother’s room, and to Elder Hainan’s and Erith’s. Surely they would prefer to get dry before talking. He would suggest that. It would gain him time to think. His thoughts seemed as sluggish as his feet, and his feet felt like millstones.

  There were six bedrooms built for Ogier along the corridor, which itself was properly scaled for them-his up-stretched hands would have come a pace short of touching the ceiling beams-along with a storeroom, a bathing room with a large copper tub, and the sitting room. This was the oldest part of the house, dating back nearly five hundred years. A lifetime for a very old Ogier, but many lifetimes for humans. They lived such brief lives, except for Aes Sedai; that had to be why they flitted about like hummingbirds. But even Aes Sedai could be nearly as precipitous as the rest. That was a puzzlement.

  The sitting room door was carved with a Great Tree, not Ogier work, yet finely detailed and instantly recognizable. He stopped, tugging his coat straight, combing his hair with his fingers, wishing he had time to black his boots. There was an ink stain on his cuff. No time to do anything about that, either. Cadsuane was right. His mother was not a woman to be kept waiting. Strange that Cadsuane knew of her. Perhaps knew her. by the way she had spoken. Covril, daughter of Ella daughter of Soong, was a famous Speaker, but he had not realized she was known Outside. Light, he was all but panting with anxiety.

  Trying to control his breathing, he went in. Even here the hinges creaked. The servants had been aghast when he asked after some oil to put on them-that was their task; he was a guest-but they still had not gotten around to it themselves.

  The high-ceilinged room was quite spacious, with dark polished wallpapers and vine-carved chairs and small vine-carved tables and wrought-iron stand-lamps of a proper size, their mirrored flames dancing above his head. Except for a shelf of books, all old enough that the leather bindings were flaking and all of which he had read before, only a small bowl of sung wood was Ogier made. A nice piece; he wished he knew who had sung it, but it was aged enough that singing to it had failed to raise so much as an echo. Yet everything had been made by someone who at least had been to a stedding. The pieces would have looked at home in any dwelling. Of course, the room looked nothing like a room in a stedding, but Lord Algarin’s ancestor had made an effort to have his visitors feel comfortable.

  His mother was standing in front of one of the brick fireplaces, a strong-faced woman with her vine-embroidered skirts spread to let the flames dry them. He heaved a sigh of relief at seeing she was not as wet as he had expected, although it put paid to suggesting they take the time to get dry. Their raincloaks must have developed leaks. They did that after a time, as the anseed oil wore off. Maybe her temper would not be as bad as he feared, either. White-haired Elder Haman, his flaring coat dark with damp in several large patches, was examining one of the axes from the wall, shaking his head over it. Its haft was as long as he was tall. Made during the Trolloc Wars or even before, there were a pair of those, the long axe heads inlaid with gold and silver, and a pair of ornate pointed pruning knives with long shafts, as well. Of course. pruning knives, sharp on one side and sawtoothed on the other, always had long handles, but the inlays and long red tassels indicated that these had been made for weapons, too. Not the most felicitous choices for hanging in a room meant for reading or conversation or the quiet contemplation of stillness.

  But Loial’s eyes swept past his mother and Elder Haman to the other fireplace, where Erith, small and almost fragile appearing, was drying her own skirts. Her mouth was straight, her nose short and well-rounded, her eyes the exact color of a silverbell’s ripe seedpod. In short, she was beautiful! And her ears, sticking up through the glossy black hair that hung down her back… Curving and plump, tipped with fine tufts that looked as soft as dandelion down, they were the most gorgeous ears he had ever seen. Not that he would be crude enough to say so. She smiled at him, a very mysterious smile, and his own ears quivered with embarrassment. Surely she could not know what he had been thinking. Could she? Rand said women could sometimes, but that was human women.

  “So, here you are.” his mother said, planting her fists on her hips. There were no smiles from her. Her brows were drawn down, her jaw set. If this was her better temper, she might as well have been drenched. “I must say, you’ve led me a merry chase, but I have you in hand now. and I do not mean to let you run- What is that on your lip? And your chin! Well, you can shave those right off again. Don’t you grimace at me, Son Loial.”

  Fingering the growt
h on his upper lip uneasily, he tried to smooth his face-when your mother named you Son, she was in no mood to trifle with-but it was hard. He wanted Wis beard and mustaches. Some might think it pretentious, as young as he was. but just the same…

  “A merry chase indeed,” Elder Haman said dryly, hanging the axe back on its hooks. He had long white mustaches that fell past his chin and a long narrow beard that hung to his chest. True, he was well above three hundred years old, but it still seemed unfair. “A very merry chase. First we walked to Cairhien, having heard you were there, only you had gone. After a stop at Stedding Tsofu. we walked to Caem-lyn, where young al’Thor informed us you were in the Two Rivers and took us there. But you were gone again. To Caemlyn, it seemed!” His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “I began to think we were playing ring-in-the-dell.”

  “The people in Emond’s Field told us how heroic you were.” Erith said, her high voice like music. Clutching her skirts with both hands, ears fluttering with excitement, she seemed about to bounce up and down. “They told us all about you fighting Trollocs and Myrddraal, and going out among them by yourself to seal the Manetheren Way-gate so no more could come.”

  “I wasn’t by myself,” Loial protested, waving his hands. He thought his ears might fly from his head, they were twitching so with embarrassment. “Gaul was with me. We did it together. I’d never have reached the Waygate without Gaul.” She wrinkled her delicate nose at him, dismissing Gaul’s participation.

  His mother sniffed. Her ears were rigid with distaste. “Foolishness. Fighting in battles. Putting yourself in danger. Gambling. All of it. Pure foolishness, and there will be no more of it.”