A Crown of Swords

by Robert Jordan

  Raising a hand to his forehead, he wondered why it trembled. His head ached, too. There had been something . . . He gave a start at the street below. Everything was changed in the blink of an eye, the people different, wagons moved, colorful coaches and chairs replaced by others. Worse, Cauthon was gone. He wanted to swallow that whole flask of brandy in one gulp.

  Suddenly he realized that Shiaine had stopped talking. He turned, ready to continue putting her in her place.

  She was leaning forward in the act of rising, one hand on the arm of her chair, the other raised in a gesture. Her narrow face was fixed in petulant defiance, but not at Carridin. She did not move. She did not blink. He was not sure she breathed. He barely noticed her.

  “Ruminating?” Sammael said. “Can I at least hope that it is about what you are here to find for me?” He stood only a little taller than average, a muscular, solid man in a coat of the high-collared Illianer style, so covered with gold-work it was hard to tell the cloth was green, but more than being one of the Chosen gave him stature. His blue eyes were colder than winter’s heart. A livid scar burned down his face from golden hairline to the edge of golden, square-cut beard, and it seemed a suitable decoration. Whatever got in his way was brushed aside, trampled or obliterated. Carridin knew Sammael would have turned his bowels to water if the man had been just someone met by chance.

  Hurriedly moving from the window, he dropped to his knees before the Chosen. He despised the Tar Valon witches; indeed, he despised anyone who used the One Power, meddling with what had broken the world once, wielding what mere mortals should not touch. This man used the Power, too, but the Chosen could not be called mere mortals. Perhaps not mortals at all. And if he served well, neither would he be. “Great Master, I saw Mat Cauthon.”

  “Here?” Oddly, for a moment, Sammael seemed taken aback. He murmured something under his breath, and the blood drained from Carridin’s face at one caught word.

  “Great Lord, you know I would never betray —”

  “You? Fool! You haven’t the stomach. Are you certain it was Cauthon you saw?”

  “Yes, Great Master. In the street. I know I can find him again.”

  Sammael frowned down at him, stroking his beard, looking through and beyond Jaichim Carridin. Carridin did not like feeling insignificant, especially when he knew it was true.

  “No,” Sammael said finally. “Your search is the most important thing, the only thing, so far as you are concerned. Cauthon’s death would be convenient, certainly, but not if it draws attention here. If it appears that attention is already here, should he take an interest in your search, then he dies, but otherwise, he can wait.”

  “But — “

  “Did you mishear me?” Sammael’s scar pulled his smile into a snarl on one side. “I saw your sister Vanora recently. She did not look well, at first. Screaming and weeping, twitching constantly and pulling at her hair. Women do suffer worse than men from the attentions of Myrddraal, but even Myrddraal must find their pleasures somewhere. Don’t worry that she suffered too long. The Trollocs are always hungry.” The smile faded; his voice was stone. “Those who disobey can find themselves over a cookfire, too. Vanora seemed to be smiling, Carridin. Do you think you would smile, turning on a spit?”

  Carridin swallowed in spite of himself, and quelled a pang for Vanora, with her ready laugh and her skill with horses, daring to gallop where others feared to walk. She had been his favorite sister, yet she was dead and he was not. If there were any mercies in the world, she had not learned why. “I live to serve and obey, Great Master.” He did not believe he was a coward, but no one disobeyed one of the Chosen. Not more than once.

  “Then find what I want!” Sammael roared. “I know it’s hidden somewhere in this kjasic flyspeck of a city! Ter’angreal, angreal, even sa’angreal! I have tracked them, traced them! Now you find them, Carridin. Do not make me grow impatient.”

  “Great Master . . . ” He worked his mouth to find moisture. “Great Master, there are witches . . . Aes Sedai . . . here. I cannot be sure how many. If they hear a whisper . . . ”

  Waving him to silence, Sammael paced a few quick steps, three times up and back, hands clasped behind his back. He did not look worried, only . . . considering. Finally he nodded. “I will send you . . . someone . . . to deal with these Aes Sedai.” He barked a short laugh. “I almost wish I could see their faces. Very well. You have a little while longer. Then perhaps someone else will have a chance.” He lifted a strand of Shiaine’s hair with a finger; she still did not move; her eyes stared unblinking. “This child would certainly leap at the opportunity.”

  Carridin fought down a stab of fear. The Chosen cast down as quickly as they raised up, and as often. Failure never went unpunished. “Great Master, the favor I asked of you. If I might know . . . Have you . . . will you —?”

  “There is very little luck in you, Carridin,” Sammael said with another smile. “You had better hope you have more carrying out my orders. It seems that someone is making sure at least some of Ishmael’s commands are still carried out.” He was smiling, but he seemed far from amused. Or perhaps it was just the scar. “You failed him, and you’ve lost your entire family for it. Only my hand protects you, now. Once, long ago, I saw three Myrddraal make a man give them his wife and his daughters one by one, then beg them to cut off his right leg, then the left, then his arms, and burn out his eyes.” The perfectly ordinary conversational tone made the recitation worse than any shouts or snarls ever could have. “It was a game with them, you understand, to see how much they could make him beg them to take. They left his tongue for last, of course, but there wasn’t a great deal of him remaining by then. He had been quite powerful, handsome and famous. Envied. No one would ever envy what they finally tossed to the Trollocs. You wouldn’t believe the sounds it made. Find what I want, Carridin. You will not like it if I withdraw my hand.”

  Abruptly there was a vertical line of light in the air before the Chosen. It seemed to turn in some fashion, widening as it did into a square . . . hole. Carridin gaped. He was staring through a hole in the air, at somewhere full of gray columns and thick mist. Sammael stepped through, and the opening snapped shut, a brilliant bar of light that vanished, leaving only a purple afterimage glowing in Carridin’s eyes.

  Unsteadily, he pushed himself to his feet. Failure was always punished, but no one survived disobeying one of the Chosen.

  Suddenly Shiaine moved, completing her halted rise from the chair. “You mark me, Bors,” she began, then cut off, staring at the window where he had been standing. Her eyes darted, found him, and she jumped. He could have been one of the Chosen himself from the way those eyes bulged.

  No one survived disobeying the Chosen. He pressed his hands against his temples. His head felt tight to bursting. “There is a man in the city, Mat Cauthon. You will — ”She gave a small start, and he frowned. “You know him?”

  “I have heard the name,” she said warily. And angrily, he would have said. “Few linked to al’Thor remain unknown for long.” As he stepped closer, she crossed her arms protectively in front of herself, and held her place with an obvious effort. “What is a seedy farmboy doing in Ebou Dar? How did he —?”

  “Don’t bother me with foolish questions, Shiaine.” His head had never hurt like this; never. It felt as though a dagger was being driven into his skull between his eyes. No one survived . . . ”You will put your circle to locating Cauthon immediately. All of them.” Old Cully was coming tonight, slipping in through the back of the stables; she did not need to know there would be others. “Nothing else is to get in the way.”

  “But I thought — “

  She broke off with a gasp as he seized her neck. A slim dagger appeared in her hand, but he wrenched it away. She twisted and jerked, but he drove her face down onto the table, her cheek smudging still-damp ink on the discarded letter to Pedron Niall. The dagger, stabbing down just in front of her eyes, froze her. By chance, the blade piercing the paper had caught an ant by
the tip of one leg. It struggled as vainly as she had.

  “You are an insect, Mili.” The pain in his head made his voice rasp. “It is time you understand that. One insect is much like another, and if one won’t do . . . ” Her eyes followed his thumb down, and when it flattened on the ant, she flinched.

  “I live to serve and obey, master,” she breathed. She had said that to Old Cully every time he saw them together, but never before to him.

  “And this is how you will obey . . .” No one survived disobedience. No one.

  Chapter 16

  A Touch on the Cheek

  * * *

  The Tarasin Palace was a mass of shining marble and white plaster, with screened balconies of white-painted wrought iron and columned walks as much as four stories above the ground. Pigeons wheeled around pointed domes and tall, balcony-wreathed spires banded in red and green tiles, glittering in the sun. Sharp-arched gates in the palace itself led to various courtyards, and more pierced the high wall hiding the gardens, but deep, snowy white steps ten spans wide climbed on the side facing Mol Hara Square to great doors carved in coiling patterns like the balcony screens and covered with beaten gold.

  The dozen or so guards lined up before those doors, sweating in the sun, wore gilded breastplates over green coats and baggy white trousers stuffed into dark green boots. Green cords secured thick twists of white cloth around glittering golden helmets, with the long ends hanging down their backs. Even their halberds and the scabbards of their daggers and short swords shone with gold. Guards for being looked at, not fighting. But then, when Mat reached the top, he could see swordsmen’s calluses on their hands. Always before he had entered through one of the stableyards, to peruse the palace horses in passing, but this time he was going in the way a lord would.

  “The Light’s blessing on all here,” he said to their officer, a man not much older than he. Ebou Dari were polite people. “I’ve come to leave a message for Nynaeve Sedai and Elayne Sedai. Or to give it to them, if they’ve returned.”

  The officer stared at him, looked at the stairs in consternation. Gold cord as well as green on his pointed helmet signified some rank Mat did not know, and he carried a gilded rod instead of a halberd, with a sharp end and a hook like an ox-goad. By his expression, no one had ever come up that way before. Studying Mat’s coat, he mulled it over visibly, and at last decided he could not tell him to go away. With a sigh, the man murmured a benison in return and asked Mat’s name, pushed open a small door in one of the larger and ushered him into a grand entry hall encircled by five stone-railed balconies beneath a domed ceiling painted like the sky, complete with clouds and a sun.

  The guard’s snapping fingers summoned a slim young serving woman in a white dress, sewn up on the left to show green petticoats and embroidered on the left breast with a green Anchor and Sword. She scurried across the red-and-blue marble floor looking startled, curtsying to Mat and the officer each. Short black hair framed a sweetly pretty face, with silken olive skin, and her livery had the deep narrow neckline common to all women except nobles in Ebou Dar. For once, Mat did not really notice. When she heard what he wanted, her big black eyes widened even more. Aes Sedai were not unpopular in Ebou Dar, exactly, but most Ebou Dari would go a long distance out of their way to avoid one.

  “Yes, Sword-Lieutenant,” she said, bobbing again. “Of course, Sword-Lieutenant. May it please you to follow me, my Lord?” It did.

  Outside, Ebou Dar sparkled white, but inside, color ran wild. There seemed to be miles of broad corridor in the palace, and here the high ceiling was blue and the walls yellow, there the walls pale red and the ceiling green, changing with every turn, combinations to jar any eye but a Tinker’s. Mat’s boots sounded loud on floor tiles that made patterns of two or three or sometimes four colors in diamonds or stars or triangles. Wherever hallways crossed the floor was a mosaic of tiny tiles, intricate swirls and scrolls and loops. A few silk tapestries displayed scenes of the sea, and arched niches held carved crystal bowls and small statues and yellow Sea Folk porcelain that would fetch a fine penny anywhere. Occasionally a liveried servant hurried along silently, often as not carrying a silver tray, or a golden.

  Normally, displays of wealth made Mat feel comfortable. For one thing, where there was money, some might stick to his fingers. This time he felt impatient, more so by the step. And anxious. The last time he had felt the dice rolling so hard in his head was just before he found himself with three hundred of the Band, a thousand of Gaebril’s White Lions on a ridge to his front and another thousand coming hard up the road behind him, when all he had been trying to do was ride away from the entire mess. That time he had avoided the chop by the grace of other men’s memories and more luck than he had a right to. The dice almost always meant danger, and something else he had not figured out yet. The prospect of having his skull cracked was not enough, and once or twice there had been no possibility of such, yet the upcoming likelihood of Mat Cauthon dead in some spectacular fashion seemed the most usual cause. Unlikely, maybe, in the Tarasin Palace, but unlikely did not make the dice go away. He was going to leave his message, grab Nynaeve and Elayne by the scruff of the neck if he had an opportunity, give them a talking-to that made their ears glow, and then get out.

  The young woman glided ahead of him until they reached a short, bullish man a little older than she, another servant, in tight white breeches, a white shirt with wide sleeves, and a long green vest with the Anchor and Sword of House Mitsobar in a white disc. “Master Jen,” she said, curtsying once more, “this is Lord Mat Cauthon, who wishes to leave a message for the honored Elayne Aes Sedai and the honored Nynaeve Aes Sedai.”

  “Very good, Haesel. You may go.” He bowed to Mat “May it please you to follow me, my Lord?”

  Jen led him as far as a dark, grim-faced woman short of her middle years, and bowed. “Mistress Carin, this is Lord Mat Cauthon, who wishes to leave a message for the honored Elayne Aes Sedai and the honored Nynaeve Aes Sedai.”

  “Very good, Jen. You may go. May it please you to follow me, my Lord?”

  Carin took him up a sweeping flight of marble stairs, the risers painted yellow and red, to a skinny woman named Matilde, who handed him over to a stout fellow named Bren, who led him to a balding man named Madic, each a little older than the one before. Where five corridors met like the spokes of a wheel, Madic left him with a round woman called Laren, who had a touch of gray at her temples and a stately carriage. Like Carin and Matilde, she wore what the Ebou Dari called a marriage knife, hanging hilt down from a close-fitting silver necklace between more than plump breasts. Five white stones in the hilt, two set in red, and four red stones, one surrounded by black, said three of her nine children were dead, two sons in duels. Rising out of her curtsy to Mat, Laren began to float up one of the hallways, but he hurried to catch her arm.

  Dark eyebrows rose slightly as she glanced at his hand. She had no dagger except the marriage knife, but he released her immediately. Custom said she could only use that on her husband, yet there was no point in pushing. He did not soften his voice, though. “How far do I have to go to leave a note? Show me to their rooms. A pair of Aes Sedai shouldn’t be that hard to find. This isn’t the bloody White Tower.”

  “Aes Sedai?” a woman said behind him in a heavy Illianer accent. “If you do seek two Aes Sedai, you have found two.”

  Laren’s face did not change, or almost not. Her nearly black eyes darted past him, and he was sure they tightened with worry.

  Doffing his hat, Mat turned wearing an easy smile. With that silver foxhead around his neck, Aes Sedai did not put him off at all. Well, not very much. It had those flaws. Maybe the smile was not that easy.

  The two women confronting him could not have been more different. One was slender, with a fetching smile, in a green-and-gold dress that showed a hint of what he judged to be a fine bosom. Except for that ageless face, he might have thought to strike up a conversation. It was a pretty face, with eyes large enough for a man to sink int
o. A pity. The other had the agelessness too, but seeing it took him a moment. He thought she was scowling until he realized that must be her normal expression. Her dark, almost black, dress covered her to the wrists and chin, for which he was grateful. She looked scrawny as an old bramble. She looked as if she ate brambles for breakfast.

  “I’m trying to leave a message for Nynaeve and Elayne,” he told them. “This woman — ”He blinked, looking down each of the corridors. Servants hurried by, but Laren was nowhere in sight. He would not have thought she could move so fast. “Anyway, I want to leave a note.” Suddenly cautious, he added, “Are you friends of theirs?”

  “Not exactly,” the pretty one said. “I am Joline, and this is Teslyn. And you are Mat Cauthon.” Mat’s stomach tightened. Nine Aes Sedai in the palace, and he had to walk into the two who followed Elaida. And one of them Red. Not that he had anything to fear. He lowered his hand to his side before it could touch the foxhead under his clothes.