Crossroads of Twilight

by Jordan, Robert

  “It is called Caressing the Child,” Monaelle said in an abstracted voice. Most of her attention was focused on the weave. A simple Delving to learn what ailed someone—it was simple, come to think—would have been finished by now, but she altered the flows, and the hum inside Elayne changed pitch, sinking deeper. “It may be some part of Healing, a sort of Healing, but we have known this since before we were sent to the Three-fold Land. Some of the ways the flows are used are similar to what Sumeko Karistovan and Nynaeve al’Meara showed us. In Caressing the Child, you learn the health of mother and child, and by changing the weaves, you can cure some problems of either, but they will not work on a woman who is not with child. Or on a man, of course.” The hum grew louder, until it seemed everyone must be able to hear it. Elayne thought her teeth were vibrating.

  An earlier thought returned to her, and she said, “Will channeling hurt my child? If I channel, I mean.”

  “No more than breathing does.” Monaelle let the weave vanish with a grin. “You have two. It is too early to say whether they are girls are boys, but they are healthy, and so are you.”

  Two! Elayne shared a wide smile with Aviendha. She could almost feel her sister’s delight. She was going to have twins. Rand’s babies. A boy and a girl, she hoped, or two boys. Twin girls would present all manner of difficulties for the succession. No one ever gained the Rose Crown with everyone behind her.

  Sumeko made an urgent sound in her throat, gesturing toward Elayne, and Monaelle nodded. “Do exactly as I did, and you will see.” Watching Sumeko embrace the Source and form the weave, she nodded again, and the round Kinswoman let it sink into Elayne, letting out a gasp as if she felt the humming herself. “You will not have to worry about birthing sickness,” Monaelle went on, “but you will find that you have difficulty in channeling sometimes. The threads may slip away from you as though greased or fade like mist, so you will have to try again and again to make the simplest weave or hold it. This may grow worse as your pregnancy progresses, and you will not be able to channel at all while in labor or giving birth, but it will come right after the children are born. You soon will become moody, too, if that has not already started, weepy one minute and snarling the next. The father of your child will be wise to step warily and keep his distance as much as he can.”

  “I hear she’s already snapped his head off once this morning,” Sumeko muttered. Releasing the weave, she straightened and adjusted her red belt around her girth. “This is remarkable, Monaelle. I never thought of a weave that could only be used on a pregnant woman.”

  Elayne’s mouth tightened, but what she said was “You can tell all of that with this weave, Monaelle?” It was best that people thought her babes were Doilan Mellar’s. Rand al’Thor’s children would be targets, stalked for fear or advantage or hatred, but no one would think twice about Mellar’s, perhaps not even Mellar. It was for the best, and that was that.

  Monaelle threw back her head, laughing so hard that she had to wipe a corner of her eyes with her shawl. “I know this from bearing seven children and having three husbands, Elayne Trakand. The ability to channel shields you from the birthing sickness, but there are other prices to pay. Come, Aviendha, you must try, too. Carefully, now. Exactly as I did.”

  Eagerly, Aviendha embraced the Source, but before she had begun to weave a thread, she let saidar go and turned her head to stare toward the dark-paneled wall. Toward the west. So did Elayne, and Monaelle, and Sumeko. The beacon that had been burning for so long had just vanished. One instant it had been there, that raging blaze of saidar, and then it was gone as if it had never existed.

  Sumeko’s massive bosom heaved as she drew a deep breath. “I think something very wonderful or very terrible has happened today,” she said softly. “And I think I am afraid to learn which.”

  “Wonderful,” Elayne said. It was done, whatever it was, and Rand was alive. That was wonderful enough. Monaelle glanced at her quizzically. Knowing about the bond, she could puzzle out the rest, but she only fingered one of her necklaces in a thoughtful manner. In any case, she would pry it out of Aviendha soon enough.

  A knock at the door made them all start. All but Monaelle, anyway. Pretending not to see the other women jump, she focused a little too intently on adjusting her shawl which made the contrast all the greater. Sumeko coughed to hide her embarrassment.

  “Come,” Elayne said loudly. A half-shout was necessary to be heard through the door even without a ward.

  Caseille put her head into the room, plumed hat in hand, then came in the rest of the way and closed the door carefully behind her. The white lace at her neck and wrists was fresh, the lace and lions on her sash gleamed, and her breastplate sparkled as if freshly burnished, but obviously she had gone right back on duty after cleaning up from their overnight trip. “Forgive me for interrupting, my Lady, but I thought you should know right away. The Sea Folk are in a frenzy, those that are still here. It seems one of their apprentices has gone missing.”

  “What else?” Elayne said. A missing apprentice might be bad enough, but something in Caseille’s face told her there was more.

  “Guardswoman Azeri happened to tell me that she saw Merilille Sedai leaving the palace about three hours ago,” Caseille said reluctantly. “Merilille and a woman who was cloaked and hooded. They took horses, and a loaded pack mule. Yurith said the second woman’s hands were tattooed. My Lady, no one had any reason to be looking for—”

  Elayne waved her to silence. “No one did anything wrong, Caseille. No one will be blamed.” Not among the Guards, anyway. A fine pickle this was. Talaan and Metarra, the two apprentice Windfinders, were very strong in the Power, and if Merilille had been able to talk either one into trying to become Aes Sedai, she might have been able to convince herself that taking the girl where she could be entered into the novice book was reason enough to evade her own promise to teach the Windfinders. Who would be more than upset over losing Merilille, and more than furious over the apprentice. They would blame everyone in sight, and Elayne most of all.

  “Is this general knowledge about Merilille?” she asked.

  “Not yet, my Lady, but whoever saddled their horses and loaded that mule won’t hold their tongues. Stablehands don’t have much to gossip about.” More of a brush fire than a pickle, then, and small chance of putting it out before it reached the barns.

  “I hope you will dine with me later, Monaelle,” Elayne said, “but you must forgive me, now.” Duty to her midwife or no, she did not wait for the other woman’s assent. Trying to douse the fire might be enough to stop the barns from catching. Maybe. “Caseille, inform Birgitte, and tell her I want an order sent to the gates immediately to watch for Merilille. I know; I know; she may be out of the city already, and the gate guards won’t stop an Aes Sedai, anyway, but maybe they can delay her, or frighten her companion into scuttling back into the city to hide. Sumeko, would you ask Reanne to assign every Kinswoman who can’t Travel to start searching through the city. It’s a small hope, but Merilille may have thought it was too late in the day to start out. Check every inn, including the Silver Swan, and . . .”

  She hoped Rand had done something wonderful today, but she could not waste time even thinking about that now. She had a throne to gain and angry Atha’an Miere to deal with, before they could vent their anger on her, it was to be hoped. In short, it was a day like every other since she returned to Caemlyn, and that meant her hands were quite full enough.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Gathering Darkness

  The evening sun was a ball of blood on the treetops, casting a lurid light across the camp, a widely spaced sprawl of horselines and canvas-covered wagons and high-wheeled carts and tents in every size and sort with the snow between trampled to slush. Not the time of day or sort of place that Elenia wished to be on horseback. The smell of boiling beef wafting from the big black iron cookpots was enough to turn her stomach. The cold air frosted her breath and promised a bitter night to come, and the wind cut thr
ough her best red cloak without regard for the thick lining of plush white fur. Snowfox was supposed to be warmer than other furs, but she had never found it so.

  Holding the cloak closed with one gloved hand, she rode slowly and tried very hard, if not very successfully, not to shiver. Given the hour, it seemed more than likely she would be spending the night here, but as yet, she had no idea where she would sleep. Doubtless in some lesser noble’s tent, with the lord or lady shuffled off to find haven elsewhere and trying to put the best face on being evicted, but Arymilla liked leaving her on tenterhooks until the very last, about beds and everything else. One suspense was no sooner dispelled than another replaced it. Plainly the woman thought the constant uncertainty would make her squirm, perhaps even strive to please. That was far from the only miscalculation Arymilla had made, beginning with the belief that Elenia Sarand’s claws had been clipped.

  She had just four men with the two Golden Boars on their cloaks as escort—and her maid, Janny, of course, huddling in her cloak till she seemed a bundle of green wool piled on her saddle—and she had not seen a single fellow more in the camp who she could be sure held a scrap of loyalty to Sarand. Here and there one of the clumps of men huddled around the campfires with their laundresses and seamstresses displayed House Anshar’s Red Fox, and a double column of horsemen wearing Baryn’s Winged Hammer passed her heading in the opposite direction at a slow walk, hard-faced behind the bars of their helmets. They were of little real account, in the long run. Karind and Lir had gotten singed badly by being slow when Morgase took the throne. This time they would take Anshar and Baryn wherever the advantage lay the instant they saw it clearly, abandoning Arymilla with as great an alacrity as they had leapt to join her. When the time came.

  Most of the men trudging through the muddy slush or peering hopefully into those disgusting cookpots were levies, farmers and villagers gathered up when their lord or lady marched, and few wore any sort of House badge on their shabby coats and patched cloaks. Even separating putative soldiers from farriers and fletchers and the like was near impossible, since nearly all had belted on a sword of some description, or an axe. Light, a fair number of the women wore knives large enough to be called short-swords, but there was no way to tell some conscripted farmer’s wife from a wagon driver. They wore the same thick wool and had the same rough hands and weary faces. It did not really matter, in any case. This winter siege was a dire mistake—the armsmen would begin going hungry long before the city did—but it gave Elenia an opportunity, and when an opening presented itself, you struck. Keeping her hood back far enough to show her features clearly in spite of the freezing wind, she nodded graciously to every unwashed lout who so much as looked in her direction, and ignored the surprised starts that some gave at her condescension.

  Most would remember her affability, remember the Golden Boars her escort wore, and know that Elenia Sarand had taken notice of them. On such a foundation power was built. A High Seat as much as a queen stood atop a tower built of people. True, those at the bottom were bricks of the basest clay, yet if those common bricks crumpled in their support, the tower fell. That was something Arymilla appeared to have forgotten, if she had ever known. Elenia doubted that Arymilla spoke to anyone lower than a steward or a personal servant. Had it been . . . prudent . . . she herself would have passed a few words at every campfire, perhaps grasping a grubby hand now and then, remembering people she had encountered before or at least dissembling well enough to make it seem she did. Pure and simple, Arymilla lacked the wit to be queen.

  The camp covered more ground than most towns, more like a hundred clustered camps of varying sizes than one, so she was free to wander without worrying too much about straying close to the outer boundaries, but she took a care anyway. The guards on sentry would be polite, unless they were utter fools, yet without any doubt they had their orders. On principle, she approved of people doing as they were told, but it would be best to avoid any embarrassing incidents. Especially given the likely consequences if Arymilla actually thought she had been trying to leave. She had already been forced to endure one frigid night sleeping in some soldier’s filthy tent, a shelter hardly worth the name, complete with vermin and badly patched holes, not to mention the lack of Janny to help her with her clothes and add a little warmth under the sorry excuse for blankets, and that had been for no more than a perceived slight. Well, it had been an actual slight, but she had not thought Arymilla bright enough to catch it. Light, to think that she must step warily around that . . . that pea-brained ninny! Pulling her cloak closer, she tried to pretend that her shudder was just a reaction to the wind. There were better things to dwell on. More important things. She nodded to a wide-eyed young man with a dark scarf wrapped around his head, and he recoiled as though she had glared. Fool peasant!

  It was grating to think that, only a few miles away, that young chit Elayne sat snug and warm in the comfort of the Royal Palace, attended by scores of well-trained servants and likely without two thoughts in her head beyond what to wear tonight at a supper prepared by the palace cooks. Rumor had the girl with child, possibly by some Guardsman. It might be so. Elayne had never possessed any more sense of decency than her mother. Dyelin was the brain there, a sharp mind and dangerous notwithstanding her pathetic lack of ambition, perhaps advised by an Aes Sedai. There must be at least one real Aes Sedai among all those absurd rumors.

  So many fabulations drifted out of the city that telling reality from nonsense became difficult—Sea Folk making holes in the air? Absolute drivel!—yet the White Tower clearly had an interest in putting one of its own on the throne. How could it not? Even so, Tar Valon seemed to be pragmatic when it came to these matters. History clearly showed that whoever reached the Lion Throne would soon find that she was the one the Tower actually had favored all along. The Aes Sedai would not lose their connection to Andor through a lack of nimbleness, particularly not with the Tower itself riven. Elenia was as certain of that as she was of her own name. In fact, if half what she heard of the Tower’s situation was true, the next Queen of Andor might find herself able to demand whatever she wanted in return for keeping that connection intact. In any event, no one was going to rest the Rose Crown on her head before summer at the earliest, and a great deal could change before then. A very great deal.

  She was making her second round of the camp when the sight of another small mounted party ahead of her, picking its slow way between the scattered campfires in the last light, made her scowl and draw rein sharply. The women were cloaked and deeply hooded, one in strong blue silk lined with black fur, the other in plain gray wool, but the silver Triple Keys worked large on the four armsmen’s cloaks named them clearly enough. She could think of any number of people she would rather encounter than Naean Arawn. In any case, while Arymilla had not precisely forbidden them to meet without her—Elenia heard her teeth grind as much as felt them, and forced her face smooth—for the moment, it seemed wisest not to press matters. Especially when there seemed no possible advantage to such a meeting.

  Unfortunately, Naean saw her before she could turn aside. The woman spoke hastily to her escort and, while armsmen and maid were still bowing in their saddles, spurred toward Elenia at a pace that sent clods of slush flying from her black gelding’s hooves. The Light burn the fool! On the other hand, whatever was goading Naean to recklessness might be valuable to know, and dangerous not to. It might, but finding out presented its own dangers.

  “Stay here and remember that you’ve seen nothing,” Elenia snapped at her own meager retinue and dug her heels into Dawn Wind’s flanks without waiting for any reply. She had no need for elaborate bows and courtesies every time she turned around, not beyond what seemliness demanded, and her people knew better than to do anything other than what she commanded. It was everyone else she had to worry about, burn them all! As the long-legged bay sprang forward, she lost her grip on her cloak, and it streamed behind her like the crimson banner of Sarand. She refused to gather the cloak under control, flailin
g around in front of farmers and the Light alone knew who, so the wind razored through her riding dress, another reason for irritation.

  Naean at least had the sense to slow and meet her little more than halfway, beside a pair of heavily laden carts with their empty shafts lying in the muck. The nearest fire was almost twenty paces away, and the nearest tents farther, their entry flaps laced tight against the cold. The men at the fire were intent on the big iron pot steaming over the flames, and if the stench from it was enough to make Elenia want to empty her stomach, at least the wind that carried the stink would keep stray words from their ears. But they had better be important words.

  With a face as pale as ivory in its frame of black fur, Naean might have been called beautiful by some despite more than a hint of harshness around her mouth and eyes as cold as blue ice. Straight-backed and outwardly quite calm, she seemed untouched by events. Her breath, making a white mist, was steady and even. “Do you know where we are sleeping tonight, Elenia?” she said coolly.

  Elenia made no effort at all to stop from glaring. “Is that what you want?” Risking Arymilla’s displeasure for a brainless question! The thought of risking Arymilla’s displeasure, the thought that Arymilla’s displeasure was something she needed to avoid, made her snarl. “You know as much as I, Naean.” Tugging at her reins, she was already turning her mount away when Naean spoke again, with just a hint of heat.

  “Don’t play the simpleton with me, Elenia. And don’t tell me you aren’t as ready as I am to chew off your own foot to escape this trap. Now, can we at least pretend to civility?”

  Elenia kept Dawn Wind half turned away from the other woman and looked at her sideways, past the fur-trimmed edge of her hood. That way, she could keep an eye on the men crowding around the nearest fire, too. No House badges displayed there. They could belong to anyone. Now and then one fellow or another shielding bare hands in his armpits glanced toward the two ladies on horseback, but their real interest was on shuffling near enough the fire to get warm. That, and how long it was going to take for the beef to boil down to something approaching mush. That sort seemed able to eat anything.