The Wheel of Time, page 241
Nynaeve’s face reddened. “I know this trap for a trap. Mother. And the best way to catch whoever set a trap is to spring it and wait for him—or her—to come.” It sounded weaker than it had when she had said it to Egwene and Elayne, after what the Amyrlin had just told her, but she still meant it.
“Perhaps so, child. Perhaps it is the way to find them. If they do not come and find you held tightly in their net.” She gave a vexed sigh. “I will put gold in your room for the journey. And I will let it be whispered about that I have sent you out to a farm to hoe cabbages. Will Elayne be going with you?”
Nynaeve forgot herself enough to stare at the Amyrlin, then hurriedly put her eyes back on her hands. Her knuckles were white on the spit handle. “You scheming old. . . . Why all the pretense, if you knew? Your sly plots have had us squirming nearly as much as the Black Ajah has. Why?” The Amyrlin’s face had tightened, enough to make her force a more respectful tone. “If I may ask, Mother.”
The Amyrlin snorted. “Putting Morgase back on the proper path whether she wants to go or not will be hard enough without her thinking I’ve sent her daughter to sea in a leaky skiff. This way I can say straight out that it was none of my doing. It may be a bit hard on Elayne, when she finally has to face her mother, but I have three hounds, now, not two. I told you I’d have a hundred if I could.” She adjusted her stole on her shoulders. “This has gone on long enough. If I stay this close to you, it may be noticed. Have you anything more to tell me? Or to ask? Make it quick, Daughter.”
“What is Callandor, Mother?” Nynaeve asked.
This time it was the Amyrlin who forgot herself, half turning toward Nynaeve before jerking herself back. “They cannot be allowed to have that.” Her whisper was barely audible, as if meant for her own ears alone. “They cannot possibly take it, but. . . .” She took a deep breath, and her soft words firmed enough to be clear to Nynaeve, if to no one two paces further away. “No more than a dozen women in the Tower know what Callandor is, and perhaps as many outside. The High Lords of Tear know, but they never speak of it except when a Lord of the Land is told on being raised. The Sword That Cannot Be Touched is a sa’angreal, girl. Only two more powerful were ever made, and thank the Light, neither of those was ever used. With Callandor in your hands, child, you could level a city at one blow. If you die keeping that out of the Black Ajah’s hands—you, and Egwene, and Elayne, all three—you’ll have done a service to the whole world, and cheap at the price.”
“How could they take it?” Nynaeve asked. “I thought only the Dragon Reborn could touch Callandor.”
The Amyrlin gave her a sideways look sharp enough to carve the roasts on the spit. “They could be after something else,” she said after a moment. “They stole ter’angreal here. The Stone of Tear holds nearly as many ter’angreal as the Tower.”
“I thought the High Lords hated anything to do with the One Power,” Nynaeve whispered incredulously.
“Oh, they do hate it, child. Hate it, and fear it. When they find a Tairen girl who can channel, they bundle her onto a ship for Tar Valon before the day is done, with hardly time to speak goodbyes to her family.” The Amyrlin’s murmur was bitter with memory. “Yet they hold one of the most powerful focuses of the Power the world has ever seen, inside their precious Stone. It is my belief that is why they have collected so many ter’angreal—and indeed, anything to do with the Power—over the years, as if by doing so they can diminish the existence of the thing they cannot rid themselves of, the thing that reminds them of their own doom every time they enter the Heart of the Stone. Their fortress that has broken a hundred armies will fall as one of the signs the Dragon is Reborn. Not even the only sign; just one. How that must rankle their proud hearts. Their downfall will not even be the one great sign of the world’s change. They cannot even ignore it by staying out of the Heart. That is where Lords of the Land are raised to High Lords, and where they must perform what they call the Rite of the Guarding four times a year, claiming that they guard the whole world against the Dragon by holding Callandor. It must bite at their souls like a bellyful of live silverpike, and no more than they deserve.” She gave herself a shake, as if realizing she had said far more than she had intended. “Is that all, child?”
“Yes, Mother,” Nynaeve said. Light, it always comes back to Rand, doesn’t it? Always back to the Dragon Reborn. It was still an effort to think of him that way. “That’s all.”
The Amyrlin shifted her stole again, frowning at the frenzied scurry in the kitchen. “I’ll have to set this aright. I needed to speak to you without delay, but Laras is a good woman, and she manages the kitchen and the larders well.”
Nynaeve sniffed, and addressed her hands on the spit handle. “Laras is a sour lump of lard, and too handy with that spoon by half.” She thought she had muttered it under her breath, but she heard the Amyrlin chuckle wryly.
“You are a fine judge of character, child. You must have done well as the Wisdom of your village. It was Laras who went to Sheriam and demanded to know how long you three are to be kept to the dirtiest and hardest work, without a turn at lighter. She said she would not be a party to breaking any woman’s health or spirit, no matter what I said. A fine judge of character, child.”
Laras came back into the kitchen doorway then, hesitating to enter her own domain. The Amyrlin went to meet her, smiles replacing her frowns and stares.
“It all looks very well to me, Laras.” The Amyrlin’s words came loud enough for the entire kitchen to hear. “I see nothing out of place, and everything as it should be. You are to be commended. I think I will make Mistress of the Kitchens a formal title.”
The stout woman’s face fluttered from uneasiness to shock to beaming pleasure. By the time the Amyrlin swept out of the kitchen, Laras was all smiles. Her frown returned, though, as she looked from the Amyrlin’s departing back to her workers. The kitchen seemed to leap into motion. Laras’ grim stare settled on Nynaeve.
Turning the spit again, Nynaeve tried smiling at the big woman.
Laras’ frown deepened, and she began tapping her spoon on her thigh, apparently forgetting that for once it had been used for its intended purpose. It left smears of soup on the white of her apron.
I will smile at her if if kills me, Nynaeve thought, though she had to grit her teeth to do it.
Egwene and Elayne appeared, twisting their faces and scrubbing their mouths with their sleeves. At a stare from Laras, they dashed to the spit and resumed their labors.
“Soap,” Elayne muttered thickly, “tastes horrid!”
Egwene trembled as she spooned juice from the dripping pan over the roasts. “Nynaeve, if you tell me the Amyrlin told us to stay here, I will scream. I might run away for real.”
“We leave after the washing up is done,” she told them, “just as quickly as we can fetch our belongings from our rooms.” She wished she could share the eagerness that flashed in their eyes. Light send we aren’t walking into a trap we can’t get out of. Light send it so.
CHAPTER
30
The First Toss
After Nynaeve and the others left him, Mat spent most of the day in his room, except for one brief excursion. He was planning. And eating. He ate nearly everything the serving women brought him, and asked for more. They were more than happy to oblige. It was bread and cheese and fruit he asked for, and he piled winter-wrinkled apples and pears, wedges of cheese and loaves of bread inside the wardrobe, leaving empty trays for them to take away.
At midday he had to endure a visit from an Aes Sedai—Anaiya, he seemed to remember her name was. She put her hands on his head and sent cold chills through him. It was the One Power, he decided, not simply being touched by an Aes Sedai. She was a plain woman despite her smooth cheeks and Aes Sedai serenity.
“You seem much better,” she told him, smiling. Her smile made him think of his mother. “Even hungrier than I expected, so I hear, but better. I am informed you are trying to eat the larders bare. Believe me when I say we will see you have all the food you need. You do not have to worry that we’ll let you miss a meal before you are fully well again.”
He gave the grin he used on his mother when he especially wanted her to believe him. “I know you won’t. And I do feel better. I thought I might see some of the city this afternoon. If you have no objections, of course. Maybe visit an inn tonight. There’s nothing like a night of common-room talk to pick one’s spirits up.”
He thought her lips twitched on the edge of a bigger smile. “No one will try to stop you, Mat. But do not try to leave the city. It will only upset the guards, and bring you nothing but a trip back here under escort.”
“I would not do that, Aes Sedai. The Amyrlin Seat said I’d starve to death in a few days if I left.”
She nodded as if she did not believe a word he said. “Of course.” As she turned from him, her eyes fell on the quarterstaff he had brought from the practice yard, propped in the corner of the room. “You do not need to protect yourself from us, Mat. You are as safe here as you could be anywhere. Almost certainly safer.”
“Oh, I know that, Aes Sedai. I do.” After she left he frowned at the door, wondering if he had managed to convince her of anything.
It was more evening than afternoon when he left the room for what he hoped was the final time. The sky was purpling, and the setting sun painted clouds to the west in shades of red. Once he had his cloak around him, and the big leather scrip he had found on his one earlier foray dangling from his shoulder and bulging with the bread and cheese and fruit he had squirreled away, one look in the mirror told him there was no hiding what he intended. He tied the rest of his clothes up in a roll with the blanket from the bed and slung that across his shoulders, too. The quarterstaff did for a walking staff. He left nothing behind. His coat pockets held all his smaller belongings, and his belt pouch held the most important. The Amyrlin Seat’s paper. Elayne’s letter. And his dice cups.
He saw Aes Sedai as he made his way out of the Tower, and some of them noticed him, though most merely flickered an eyebrow, and none spoke to him. Anaiya was one. She gave him an amused smile and a rueful shake of her head. He returned a shrug and the guiltiest grin he could manage, and she went silently on, still shaking her head. The guards at the Tower gates simply looked at him.
It was not until he was across the big square and into the streets of the city that relief finally surged up in him. And triumph. If you can’t hide what you are going to do, do it so everybody thinks you are a fool. Then they stand around waiting to see you fall on your face. Those Aes Sedai will be waiting for the guards to bring me back. When I do not return by morning, then they’ll start a search. Not too frantic at first, because they’ll think I have gone to ground somewhere in the city. By the time they realize I haven’t, this rabbit will be a long way downriver from the hounds.
With as light a heart as he could remember having in years, or so it seemed, he began to hum “We’re Over the Border Again,” heading toward the harbor where vessels would be sailing down to Tear and all the villages along the Erinin between. He would not be going so far as that, of course. Aringill, where he would take to land again for the rest of the trip to Caemlyn, was only halfway downriver.
I’ll deliver your bloody letter. The nerve of her, thinking I’d say I would, then not. I will deliver the bloody thing if it kills me.
Twilight was beginning to cover Tar Valon, but there was still enough light to grace the fantastical buildings, and the oddly shaped towers connected by high bridges spanning open air over hundred-pace drops. People yet filled the streets, in so many different kinds of clothing that he thought every nation must be represented. Along the major avenues, pairs of lamplighters used their ladders to light lanterns atop tall poles. But in the part of Tar Valon he sought, the only light was what spilled from windows.
Ogier had built the great buildings and towers of Tar Valon, but other, newer parts had grown under the hands of men. Newer meaning two thousand years in some cases. Down near Southharbor, men’s hands had tried to match, if not duplicate, the fanciful Ogier work. Inns where ships’ crews caroused bore enough stonework for palaces. Statues in niches and cupolas on rooftops, ornately worked cornices and intricately carved friezes, all decorated chandlers’ shops and merchant houses. Bridges arched across the streets here, too, but the streets were cobblestone, not great paving blocks, and many of the bridges were wood instead of stone, sometimes as low as the second stories of the buildings they joined, and never higher than four.
The dark streets hummed with as much life as any in Tar Valon. Traders off their vessels and those who bought what the vessels carried, people who traveled the River Erinin and people who worked it, all filled the taverns and the common rooms of the inns, in company with those who sought the money such folk carried, by fair means or murky. Raucous music filled the streets from bittern and flute, harp and hammered dulcimer. The first inn Mat entered had three dice games in progress, men crouched in circles near the common-room walls and shouting the wins and losses.
He only meant to gamble an hour or so before finding a ship, just long enough to add a few coins to his purse, but he won. He had always won more than he lost, as far as he could remember, and there had been times with Hurin, and in Shienar, when six or eight tosses in a row won for him. Tonight, every toss won. Every toss.
From the looks some of the men gave him, he was glad he had left his own dice in his pouch. Those looks made him decide to move on. With surprise he realized that he had nearly thirty silver marks in his purse now, but he had not won so much from any one man that they would not all be glad to see him go.
Except for one dark sailor with tight curls—one of the Sea Folk, someone had said, though Mat wondered what one of the Atha’an Miere was doing so far from the sea—who followed him down the darkened street, arguing for a chance to make good his losses. He wanted to reach the docks—thirty silver marks was more than enough—but the sailor argued on, and he had only used half his hour, so he gave in, and with the man entered the next tavern they passed.
He won again, and it was as if a fever gripped him. He won every throw. From tavern to inn to tavern he went, never staying long enough to anger anyone with the amount of his winnings. And he still won every toss. He exchanged silver for gold with a money changer. He played at crowns, and fives, and maiden’s ruin. He played games with five dice, and with four, and three, and even only two. He played games he did not know before he squatted in the circle, or took a place at the table. And he won. Somewhere during the night, the dark sailor—Raab, he had said his name was—staggered away, exhausted but with a full purse; he had decided to put his wagers on Mat. Mat visited another money changer—or perhaps two; the fever seemed to cloud his brain as badly as his memories of the past were clouded—and made his way to another game. Winning.
And so he found himself, he did not know how many hours later, in a tavern filled with tabac smoke—The Tremalking Splice, he thought it was called—staring down at five dice, each showing a deeply carved crown. Most of the patrons here seemed interested only in drinking as much as they could, but the rattle of dice and shouts of players from another game in the far corner were almost submerged by a woman singing to a quick tune from a hammered dulcimer.
“I’ll dance with a girl with eyes of brown,
or a girl with eyes of green,
I’ll dance with a girl with any color eyes,
but yours are the prettiest I’ve seen.
I’ll kiss a girl with hair of black,
or a girl with hair of gold,
I’ll kiss a girl with any color hair,
but it’s you I want to hold.”
The singer had named the song as “What He Said to Me.” Mat remembered the tune as “Will You Dance With Me,” with different words, but at that moment all he could think of were those dice.
“The king again,” one of the men squatting with Mat muttered. It was the fifth time in a row Mat had thrown the king.
He had won the bet of a gold mark, not even caring by this time that his Andoran mark outweighed the other man’s Illianer coin, but he scooped the dice into the leather cup, rattled it hard, and spun them across the floor again. Five crowns. Light, it can’t be. Nobody ever threw the king six times running. Nobody.
“The Dark One’s own luck,” another man growled. He was a bulky fellow, his dark hair tied at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, with heavy shoulders, scars on his face, and a nose that had been broken more than once.
Mat was scarcely aware of moving before he had the bulky man by the collar, hauling him to his feet, slamming him back against the wall. “Don’t you say that!” he snarled. “Don’t you ever say that!” The man blinked down at him in astonishment; he was a full head taller than Mat.
“Just a saying,” somebody behind him was muttering. “Light, it’s just a saying.”
Mat released his grip on the scar-faced man’s coat and backed away. “I. . . . I . . . I don’t like anybody saying things like that about me. I’m no Darkfriend!” Burn me, not the Dark One’s luck. Not that! Oh, Light, did that bloody dagger really do something to me?
“Nobody said you was,” the broken-nosed man muttered. He seemed to be getting over his surprise, and trying to decide whether to be angry.
Gathering his belongings from where he had piled them behind him, Mat walked out of the tavern, leaving the coins where they lay. It was not that he was afraid of the big man. He had forgotten the man, and the coins, too. All he wanted was to be outside, in fresh air, where he could think.
In the street, he leaned against the wall of the tavern not far from the door, breathing the coolness in. The dark streets of Southharbor were all but empty, now. Music and laughter still floated from the inns and taverns, but few people made their way through the night. Holding the quarterstaff upright in front of him with both hands, he lowered his head to his fists and tried to think at the puzzle from every side.
