The silence around the table stretched in discomfort. Nasin’s more open displays of senility had a way of causing that.
“I still say,” Lir began finally, only to cut off as a stocky armsman with Marne’s four Silver Moons on his chest entered the tent.
Bowing respectfully, the fellow made his way around the table and bent to whisper in Arymilla’s ear. “Master Hernvil asks a word in private, my Lady.”
Everyone but Nasin and his granddaughter pretended to concentrate on their wine, certainly not attempting to eavesdrop. He went on eating. She watched Arymilla, bland-faced. That sharpness must have been a trick of the light.
“I’ll be but a few moments,” Arymilla said, rising. She waved a hand, indicating the food and wine. “Enjoy yourselves until I return. Enjoy.” Lir called for more wine.
Outside, she did not bother raising her skirts to keep them clear of the mud. Arlene would already have to clean them, so what did a little more mud matter? Light showed in some tents, but by and large the camp was dark beneath a half moon. Jakob Hernvil, her secretary, waited a little away from the tent in a plain coat, holding a lantern that made a yellow pool around him. He was a little man, and lean, as if all the fat had been boiled from him. Discretion was bred in his bones, and she ensured his loyalty by paying him enough that only the largest bribes could be of interest, far more than anyone would offer a scrivener.
“Forgive me for interrupting your meal, my Lady,” he said with a bow, “but I was sure you would want to hear right away.” It was always a surprise, hearing such a deep voice from such a tiny man. “They have agreed. But they want the whole amount of gold first.”
Her lips compressed of their own accord. The whole amount. She had hoped to get off with paying only the first half. After all, who would dare dun her once she was queen? “Draw up a letter to Mistress Andscale. I’ll sign and seal it first thing in the morning.” Transferring that much gold would require days. And how long to have the armsmen ready? She had never really paid attention to that sort of thing. Lir could tell her, but she hated showing weakness. “Tell them a week from tomorrow, to the day.” That should be enough. In a week, Caemlyn would be hers. The throne would be hers. Arymilla, by the Grace of the Light, Queen of Andor, Defender of the Realm, Protector of the People, High Seat of House Marne. Smiling, she went back inside to tell the others the wonderful news.
CHAPTER 18
News for the Dragon
Enough, Loial,” Rand said firmly, thumbing tabac into his short-stemmed pipe from a goatskin pouch. It was Tairen leaf, with a slightly oily taste from the curing, but that was all that was to be had. Thunder rolled overhead, slow and ponderous. “You’ll talk me hoarse with all these questions.”
They were seated at a long table in one of the larger rooms in Lord Algarin’s manor house, the remains of the midday meal pushed down to one end. The servants were old, for the most part, and slower moving than ever since Algarin left for the Black Tower. The rain pouring down outside seemed to be slackening, though strong gusts of wind still pelted the windows with raindrops hard enough to rattle the glass in the six yellow-painted casements. Many of those panes held bubbles; some distorted what lay outside almost beyond recognition. The table and chairs were simply carved, no more elaborate than might be found in many farmhouses, and the yellow cornices beneath the high, beamed ceiling little more so. The two fireplaces, at either end of the room, were broad and tall but of plain stone, the andirons and firetools sturdy wrought iron and simple. Lord or no, Algarin was far from wealthy.
Tucking the tabac pouch into his pocket, Rand strolled to one of the fireplaces and used small brass tongs from the mantel to lift a burning sliver of oak for lighting his pipe. He hoped no one thought that strange. He avoided channeling any more than absolutely necessary, especially if anyone else was present—the dizziness that hit him when he did was difficult to conceal—but no one had mentioned it so far. A gust of wind brought a squeaking as though tree branches had scraped across the windowpanes. Imagination. The nearest trees were beyond the fields, more than half a mile away.
Loial had brought down a vine-carved chair from the Ogier rooms that put his knees level with the tabletop, so he had to lean forward sharply to write in his leather-bound notebook. The volume was small for him, little enough to fit neatly into one of his capacious coat pockets, but still as large as most human books Rand had seen. Fine hair decorated Loial’s upper lip and a patch beneath his chin; he was attempting a beard and mustaches, though with only a few weeks’ growth, it did not seem a very successful attempt so far.
“But you’ve told me almost nothing really useful,” the Ogier rumbled, a drum booming its disappointment. His tufted ears drooped. Even so, he began wiping the steel nib of his polished wooden pen. Fatter than Rand’s thumb and long enough to seem slender, it fitted Loial’s thick fingers perfectly. “You never mention heroics, except by somebody else. You make it all sound so everyday. To hear you tell it, the fall of Illian was as exciting as watching a weaver repair her loom. And cleansing the True Source? You and Nynaeve linked, then you sat and channeled while everybody else was off fighting Forsaken. Even Nynaeve told me more than that, and she claims to remember almost nothing.”
Nynaeve, wearing all of her jeweled ter’angreal and her strange bracelet-and-rings angreal, shifted in her chair in front of the other fireplace, then went back to watching Alivia. Every so often she glanced toward the windows and tugged at her thick braid, but for the most part she focused on the yellow-haired Seanchan woman. Standing beside the doorway like a guard, Alivia gave a small, brief smile of amusement. The former damane knew Nynaeve’s display was meant for her. The intensity never left her hawkish blue eyes, though. It seldom had, ever since her collar had been removed in Caemlyn. The two Maidens squatting on their heels near her playing cat’s cradle, Harilin of the Iron Mountain Taardad and Enaila of the Jarra Chareen, were making their own display. Shoufa wrapped around their heads and black veils hanging down their chests, each had three or four spears stuck through the harness holding her bow case on her back and a bull-hide buckler lying on the floor. There were fifty Maidens in the manor house, several of them Shaido, and they all went about ready to dance the spears in a heartbeat. Perhaps with him. They seemed torn between delight at providing a guard for him again and displeasure over how long he had avoided them.
As for himself, he could not look at any of them without the litany of women who had died for him, women he had killed, starting up in his head. Moiraine Damodred. Her above all. Her name was written inside his skull in fire. Liah of the Cosaida Chareen, Sendara of the Iron Mountain Taardad, Lamelle of the Smoke Water Miagoma, Andhilin of the Red Salt Goshien, Desora of the Musara Reyn. . . . So many names. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night muttering that list, with Min holding him and murmuring to him as if soothing a child. He always told her he was all right and wanted to go back to sleep, yet after he closed his eyes, he did not sleep until the list had been completed. Sometimes Lews Therin chanted it with him.
Min looked up from the volume she had open on the table, one of Herid Fel’s books. She devoured those, and used the note he had sent Rand before his murder, the one where he said she was a distraction because she was so pretty, as a bookmark. Her short blue coat, embroidered with white flowers on the sleeves and lapels, was cut to fit snugly over her bosom, where her creamy silk blouse showed a touch of cleavage, and her big dark eyes, framed by dark ringlets to her shoulders, held a pleased light. He could feel her pleasure through the bond. She liked him looking at her. Without a doubt the bond told her how much he liked looking. Oddly enough, it said she liked looking at him, too. Pretty? He hummed, thumbing his earlobe. She was beautiful. And tied to him tighter than ever. She and Elayne and Aviendha. How was he to keep them safe now? He forced himself to smile back at her around his pipestem, unsure how well the deception was working. A touch of irritation had entered the bond from her end, though why she should become irritable whenever she
thought he was worrying about her was beyond him. Light, she wanted to protect him!
“Rand isn’t very talkative, Loial,” she said, no longer smiling. Her low, almost musical voice held no anger, but the bond told another story. “In fact, sometimes he’s about as talkative as a mussel.” The look she directed at Rand made him sigh. It seemed there would be a great deal of talking once they were alone together. “I can’t tell you much, myself, but I’m sure Cadsuane and Verin will tell you anything you want to know. Others will, too. Ask them if you want more than yes and no and two words besides.”
Stout little Verin, knitting in a chair beside Nynaeve, appeared startled to hear her name mentioned. She blinked vaguely, as though wondering why it had been. Cadsuane, at the far end of the table with her sewing basket open beside her, only took her attention away from her embroidery hoop long enough to glance at Loial. Golden ornaments swayed, dangling from the iron-gray bun atop her head. It was only that, a glance, not a frown, yet Loial’s ears twitched. Aes Sedai always impressed him, and Cadsuane more than any other.
“Oh, I will, Min, I will,” he said. “But Rand is central to my book.” With no sand jar at hand, he began blowing gently on the page of his notebook to dry the ink, but Loial being Loial, he still talked between puffs. “You never give enough detail, Rand. You make me drag everything out of you. Why, you never even mentioned being imprisoned in Far Madding until Min did. Never mentioned it! What did the Council of Nine say when they offered you the Laurel Crown? And when you renamed it? I can’t think they liked that. What was the coronation like? Was there feasting, a festival, parades? How many Forsaken came against you at Shadar Logoth? Which ones? What did it look like at the end? What did it feel like? My book won’t be very good without the details. I hope Mat and Perrin give me better answers.” He frowned, long eyebrows grazing his cheeks. “I hope they’re all right.”
Colors spun in Rand’s head, twin rainbows swirled in water. He knew how to suppress them, now, but this time he did not try. One resolved into a brief image of Mat riding through forest at the head of a line of mounted folk. He seemed to be arguing with a small, dark woman who rode beside him, taking his hat off and peering into it, then cramming it back onto his head. That lasted only moments, then was replaced by Perrin sitting over winecups in a common room or tavern with a man and a woman who wore identical red coats ornately trimmed with blue and yellow. Odd garments. Perrin looked grim as death, his companions wary. Of him?
“They’re well,” he said, calmly ignoring a piercing look from Cadsuane. She did not know everything, and he intended to keep it that way. Calm on the surface, content, blowing smoke rings. Inside was another matter. Where are they? he thought angrily, pushing down another appearance of the colors. That was as easy as breathing, now. I need them, and they’re off for a day at the Ansaline Gardens!
Abruptly another image was floating in his head, a man’s face, and his breath caught. For the first time, it came without any dizziness. For the first time, he could see it clearly in the moments before it vanished. A blue-eyed man with a square chin, perhaps a few years older than himself. Or rather, he saw it clearly for the first time in a long while. It was the face of the stranger who had saved his life in Shadar Logoth when he fought Sammael. Worse. . . .
He was aware of me, Lews Therin said. He sounded sane for a change. Sometimes he did, but the madness always returned eventually. How can a face appearing in my mind be aware of me?
If you don’t know, how do you expect me to? Rand thought. But I was aware of him, as well. It had been a strange sensation, as if he were . . . touching . . . the other man somehow. Only not physically. A residue hung on. It seemed he only had to move a hair’s breadth, in any direction, to touch him again. I think he saw my face, too.
Talking to a voice in his head no longer seemed peculiar. In truth, it had not for quite a long time. And now . . . ? Now, he could see Mat and Perrin by thinking of them or hearing their names, and he had this other face coming to him unbidden. More than a face, apparently. What was holding conversations inside his own skull alongside that? But the man had been aware, and Rand of him.
When our streams of balefire touched in Shadar Logoth, it must have created some sort of link between us. I can’t think of any other explanation. That was the only time we ever met. He was using their so-called True Power. It had to be that. I felt nothing, saw nothing except his stream of balefire. Having bits of knowledge seem his when he knew they came from Lews Therin no longer seemed odd, either. He could remember the Ansaline Gardens, destroyed in the War of the Shadow, as well as he did his father’s farm. Knowledge drifted the other way, too. Lews Therin sometimes spoke of Emond’s Field as if he had grown up there. Does that make any sense to you?
Oh, Light, why do I have this voice in my head? Lews Therin moaned. Why can I not die? Oh, Ilyena, my precious Ilyena, I want to join you. He trailed off into weeping. He often did when he spoke of the wife he had murdered in his madness.
It did not matter. Rand suppressed the sound of the man crying, pushed it down to a faint noise on the edge of hearing. He was certain that he was right. But who was the fellow? A Darkfriend, for sure, but not one of the Forsaken. Lews Therin knew their faces as well as he knew his own, and now Rand did, too. A sudden thought made him grimace. How aware of him was the other man? Ta’veren could be found by their effect on the Pattern, though only the Forsaken knew how. Lews Therin certainly had never mentioned knowing—their “conversations” were always brief, and the man seldom gave information willingly—and nothing had drifted across from him on the subject. At least, Lanfear and Ishamael had known how, but no one had found him that way since they had died. Could this link be used in the same fashion? They could all be in danger. More danger than usual, as if the usual were not enough.
“Are you well, Rand?” Loial asked worriedly, screwing the leaf-engraved silver cap onto his ink jar. The glass of that was so thick it could have survived anything short of being hurled against stone, but Loial handled it as though it were fragile. In his huge hands, it looked fragile. “I thought the cheese tasted off, but you ate a good bit of it.”
“I’m fine,” Rand said, but of course, Nynaeve paid him no heed. She was out of her chair and gliding down the room in a flash, blue skirts swirling. Goose bumps popped out on his skin as she embraced saidar and stretched to lay her hands on his head. An instant later, a chill rippled through him. The woman never asked! Sometimes she behaved as if she were still the Wisdom in Emond’s Field and he would be heading back to the farm come morning.
“You’re not ill,” she said in tones of relief. Spoiled food was causing all sorts of sickness among the servants, some of it serious. People would have died except for the presence of Asha’man and Aes Sedai to give Healing. Reluctant to cost their lord scarce money by throwing food out, despite all the admonitions Cadsuane and Nynaeve and the other Aes Sedai gave them, they fed themselves things that should have been tossed on the midden heap. A different tingling centered briefly around the double wound in his left side.
“That wound is no better,” she said with a frown. She had tried Healing it, succeeding no better than Flinn had. That did not sit well with her. Nynaeve took failure as a personal insult. “How can you even stand up? You must be in agony.”
“He ignores it,” Min said flatly. Oh, yes, there would be words.
“It hurts no worse standing than sitting,” he told Nynaeve, gently taking her hands from his head. Simple truth. So was what Min had said. He could not afford to let pain make him a prisoner.
One of the twinned doors creaked open to admit a white-haired man in a worn yellow coat trimmed with red and blue that hung loosely on his bony frame. His bow was halting, a fault of his joints rather than disrespect. “My Lord Dragon,” he said in a voice nearly as creaky as the hinges, “Lord Logain has returned.”
Logain did not wait on invitations, entering practically on the serving man’s heels. A tall man with dark hair curling to his shoulde
rs, and dark for a Ghealdanin, women likely thought him handsome, yet there was a streak of darkness inside him as well. He wore his black coat with the Sword and the Dragon on the high collar, and a long-hilted sword on his hip, but he had made an addition, a round enameled pin on his shoulder showing three golden crowns in a field of blue. Had the man adopted a sigil? The old man’s hairy eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he looked to Rand as if inquiring whether he wanted Logain removed.
“The news from Andor is fair enough, I suppose,” Logain said, tucking black gauntlets behind his sword belt. He offered Rand a minimal bow, the slightest bending of his back. “Elayne still holds Caemlyn, and Arymilla still holds her siege, but Elayne has the advantage since Arymilla can’t even stop food getting in, much less reinforcements. No need to scowl. I kept out of the city. Black coats aren’t exactly welcome there, in any case. The Borderlanders are still in the same place. You were wise to stay clear of them, it seems. Rumor says there are thirteen Aes Sedai with them. Rumor says they’re looking for you. Has Bashere gotten back yet?” Nynaeve gave him a scowl and moved away from Rand gripping her braid tightly. Aes Sedai bonding Asha’man was all very well in her book, but not the reverse.
Thirteen and looking for him? He had stayed clear of the Borderlanders because Elayne did not welcome his help—interference, she called it, and he had begun to see that she had the right of it; the Lion Throne was hers to gain, not his to give—but perhaps it was as well that he had. The Borderland rulers all had ties to the White Tower, and no doubt Elaida was still eager to get her hands on him. Her and that mad proclamation about no one approaching him except through her. If she believed that would force him to come to her, she was a fool.
“Thank you, that will be all, Ethin. Lord Logain?” he asked as the serving man bowed himself out with a last disgruntled glance at Logain. Rand thought the man would have tried had he told him to haul Logain out.
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