Through the windows she could see the brightness of early afternoon, yet before she was halfway across her sitting room, the light suddenly faded into dim evening. The darkness did not surprise her. She turned and went to her knees immediately. “Great Mistress, I live to serve.” A tall woman of dark shadow and silver light stood before her. Mesaana.
“Tell me what happened, child.” The voice was crystal chimes.
On her knees, Alviarin repeated every word that Elaida had said, though she wondered why it was necessary. In the beginning she had left out unimportant bits, and Mesaana knew every time, demanded every word, every gesture and facial expression. Plainly she eavesdropped on those meetings. Alviarin had tried to work out the logic of it and failed. Some things did work to logic, though.
She had met others of the Chosen, whom fools called the Forsaken. Lanfear had come within the Tower, and Graendal, imperious in their strength and knowledge, making it clear without words that Alviarin was far beneath them, a scullery maid to run errands and wriggle with pleasure if she received a kind word. Be’lal had snatched Alviarin away in the night while she slept—to where she still did not know; she had wakened back in her own bed, and that had terrified her even more than being in the presence of a man who could channel. To him she was not even a worm, not even a living thing, just a piece in a game, to move at his command. First had been Ishamael, years before the others, plucking her out of the hidden mass of the Black Ajah to place her at its head.
To each she had knelt, saying that she lived to serve and meaning it, obeying as they commanded, whatever the command. After all, they stood only a step below the Great Lord of the Dark himself, and if she wanted the rewards of her service, the immortality it seemed they already possessed, it was well to obey. To each she knelt, and only Mesaana had appeared with an inhuman face. This cloak of shadow and light must be woven with the One Power, but Alviarin could see no weave. She had felt the strength of Lanfear and Graendal, had known from the first instant how much stronger in the Power they were than she, but in Mesaana she sensed . . . nothing. As if the woman could not channel at all.
The logic was clear, and stunning. Mesaana hid herself because she might be recognized. She must reside in the Tower itself. On the face of it, that seemed impossible, yet nothing else fit. Given that, she must be one of the sisters; surely she was not among servants, bound to labor and sweat. But who? Too many women had been out of the Tower for years before Elaida’s summons, too many had no close friends, or none at all. Mesaana must be one of those. Alviarin very much wanted to know. Even if she could make no use of it, knowledge was power.
“So our Elaida has had a Foretelling,” Mesaana chimed, and Alviarin realized with a start that she had reached the end of her recital. Her knees hurt, but she knew better than to rise without permission. A finger of shadow tapped silver lips thoughtfully. Had she seen any sister make that gesture? “Strange that she should be so clear and so erratic at the same time. It was always a rare Talent, and most who had it spoke so only poets could understand. Usually until it was too late to matter, at least. Everything always became clear then.” Alviarin kept silent. None of the Chosen conversed; they commanded or demanded. “Interesting predictions. The rebels breaking—like a rotten melon?—was that part of it?”
“I am not certain, Great Mistress,” she said slowly—had it been?—but Mesaana only shrugged.
“Either it is or it is not, and either way can be used.”
“She is dangerous, Great Mistress. Her Talent could reveal what should not be revealed.”
Crystalline laughter answered her. “Such as? You? Your Black Ajah sisters? Or perhaps you think to safeguard me? You are a good girl sometimes, child.” That silvery voice was amused. Alviarin felt her face heat and hoped that Mesaana read the shame, not the anger. “Do you suggest that our Elaida should be disposed of, child? Not yet, I think. She has her uses still. At least until young al’Thor reaches us, and very likely after. Write out her orders and see to them. Watching her play her little games is certainly amusing. You children almost match the ajah at times. Will she succeed in having the King of Illian and the Queen of Saldaea kidnapped? You Aes Sedai used to do that, didn’t you, but not for—what?—two thousand years? Who will she try to put on the throne of Cairhien? Will the offer of being king in Tear overcome the High Lord Darlin’s dislike of Aes Sedai? Will our Elaida choke on her own frustration first? A pity she resists the idea of a larger army. I’d have thought her ambitions would leap at that.”
The interview was coming to a close—they never lasted longer than for Alviarin to report and be given her own orders—but she had a question yet to ask. “The Black Tower, Great Mistress.” Alviarin wet her lips. She had learned much since Ishamael appeared to her, not least that the Chosen were neither omnipotent nor all-knowing. She had risen because Ishamael killed her predecessor in his wrath at discovering what Jarna Malari had begun, yet it had not ended for another two years, after the death of another Amyrlin. She often wondered whether Elaida had had any hand in the death of that one, Sierin Vayu; certainly the Black Ajah had not. Jarna had had Tamra Ospenya, the Amyrlin before Sierin, squeezed like a bunch of grapes—obtaining little juice, as it turned out—and made her appear to have died in her sleep, but Alviarin and the other twelve sisters of the Supreme Council had paid in pain before they could convince Ishamael they had no responsibility for it. The Chosen were not all-powerful, and they did not know everything, yet sometimes they knew what no one else did. Asking could be dangerous, though. “Why” was the most dangerous; the Chosen never liked to be asked why. “Is it safe to send fifty sisters to deal with them, Great Mistress?”
Eyes glowing like twin full moons regarded her in silence, and a chill slid up Alviarin’s spine. Jarna’s fate flashed into her mind. Publicly Gray, Jarna had never shown any interest in the ter’angreal no one knew a use for—until the day she became snared in one untried for centuries. How to activate it remained a mystery still. For ten days no one could reach her, only listen to her throat-wrenching shrieks. Most of the Tower thought Jarna a model of virtue; when what could be recovered was buried, every sister in Tar Valon and every one who could reach the city in time attended the funeral.
“You have curiosity, child,” Mesaana said finally. “That can be an asset, properly directed. Wrongly directed. . . .” The threat hung in the air like a gleaming dagger.
“I will direct it as you command, Great Mistress,” Alviarin breathed hoarsely. Her mouth was dry as dust. “Only as you command.” But she would still see that no Black sisters went with Toveine. Mesaana moved, looming over her so she had to crane her neck to look up at that face of light and shadow, and suddenly she wondered whether the Chosen knew her thoughts.
“If you would serve me, child, then you must serve and obey me. Not Semirhage or Demandred. Not Graendal or anyone else. Only me. And the Great Lord, of course, but me above all save him.”
“I live to serve you, Great Mistress.” That came out in a croak, but she managed to emphasize the added word.
For a long moment silvery eyes stared down at her unblinking. Then Mesaana said, “Good. I will teach you, then. But remember that a pupil is not a teacher. I choose who learns what, and I decide when they can make use of it. Should I find you have passed on the smallest scrap or used even a hair of it without my direction, I will extinguish you.”
Alviarin worked moisture back into her mouth. There was no anger in those chimes, only certainty. “I live to serve you, Great Mistress. I live to obey you, Great Mistress.” She had just learned something about the Chosen that she could hardly credit. Knowledge was power.
“You have a little strength, child. Not much, but enough.”
A weave appeared seemingly from nowhere.
“This,” Mesaana chimed, “is called a gateway.”
Pedron Niall grunted as Morgase placed a white stone on the board with a smile of triumph. Lesser players might set two dozen more stones each yet, but he could
see the inevitable course now, and so could she. In the beginning the golden-haired woman seated on the other side of the small table had played to lose, to make the game close enough to be interesting for him, but it had not taken her long to learn that that led to obliteration. Not to mention that he was clever enough to see through the subterfuge and would not tolerate it. Now she plied all her skill and managed to win nearly half their games. No one had beaten him so often in a good many years.
“The game is yours,” he told her, and the Queen of Andor nodded. Well, she would be Queen again; he would see to that. In green silk, with a high lace collar brushing her chin, she looked every inch a queen despite the sheen of perspiration on her smooth cheeks. She hardly appeared old enough to have a daughter Elayne’s age, though, much less a son Gawyn’s.
“You did not realize I saw the trap you were laying from your thirty-first stone, Lord Niall, and you took my feint from the forty-third stone to be my real attack.” Excitement sparkled in her blue eyes; Morgase liked to win. She liked playing to win.
It was all meant to lull him, of course, the playing at stones, the politeness. Morgase knew she was a prisoner in the Fortress of the Light in all but name, albeit a luxuriously pampered prisoner. And a secret one. He had allowed stories of her presence to spread, but issued no proclamations. Andor had too strong a history of opposing the Children of the Light. He would announce nothing until legions moved into Andor, with her their figurehead. Morgase certainly knew that, as well. Very probably she also knew he was aware of her attempts to soften him. The treaty she had signed gave the Children rights in Andor they had never possessed anywhere except here in Amadicia, and he expected that she already planned how to lighten his hand on her land, how to remove his hand altogether as soon as she could. She had only signed because he backed her into a corner, yet confined in that corner, she fought on as skillfully as she maneuvered on a stones board. For one so beautiful, she was a tough woman. No, she was tough, and that was that. She did let herself be caught up in the pure pleasure of the game, but he could not count that a fault when it gave him so many pleasant moments.
Had he been even twenty years younger, he might have played more to her true game. Long years as a widower stretched behind him, and the Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light had little time for pleasantries with women, little time for anything except being Lord Captain Commander. Had he been twenty years younger—well, twenty-five—and she not trained by the Tar Valon witches. It was easy to forget that, in her presence. The White Tower was a sink of iniquity and the Shadow, and she touched deeply by it. Rhadam Asunawa, the High Inquisitor, would have tried her for her months in the White Tower and hanged her without delay, had Niall allowed it. He sighed regretfully.
Morgase kept her victorious smile, but those big eyes studied his face with an intelligence she could not hide. He filled her goblet and his own with wine from the silver pitcher sitting in a bowl of cool water that had been ice a little while ago.
“My Lord Niall. . . .” The hesitation was just right, the slim hand half-stretched across the table toward him, the added respect in how she addressed him. Once she had called him simply Niall, with more contempt than she would have handed a drunken groom. The hesitation would have been just right had he not had the measure of her. “My Lord Niall, surely you can order Galad to Amador so I may see him. Just for a day.”
“I regret,” he replied smoothly, “that Galad’s duties keep him in the north. You should be proud; he is one of the best young officers among the Children.” Her stepson was a lever to use on her at need, one best used now by keeping him away. The young man was a good officer, perhaps the best to join the Children in Niall’s time, and there was no need to put strains on his oath by letting him know his mother was here, and a “guest” only by courtesy.
No more than a slight tightening of her mouth, quickly gone, betrayed her disappointment. This was not the first time she had made that request, nor would it be the last. Morgase Trakand did not surrender just because it was plain she was beaten. “As you say, my Lord Niall,” she said, so meekly that he nearly choked on his wine. Submissiveness was a new tactic, one she must have worked up with difficulty. “It is just a mother’s—”
“My Lord Captain Commander?” a deep, resonant voice broke in from the doorway. “I fear I have important news that cannot wait, my Lord.” Abdel Omerna stood tall in the white-and-gold tabard of a Lord Captain of the Children of the Light, bold face framed by wings of white at his temples, dark eyes deep and thoughtful. From head to toe he was fearless and commanding. And a fool, though that was not apparent at a glance.
Morgase drew in on herself at the sight of Omerna, so small a motion most men would not have noticed. She believed him spymaster for the Children, as everyone did, a man to be feared almost as much as Asunawa, perhaps more. Even Omerna himself did not know he was but a decoy to keep eyes away from the true master of spies, a man known only to Niall himself. Sebban Balwer, Niall’s dry little stick of a secretary. Yet decoy or not, something useful did pass through Omerna’s hands on occasion. On rare occasions, something dire. Niall had no doubts what the man had brought; nothing else except Rand al’Thor at the gates would have sent him barging in this way. The Light send it was all a rug merchant’s madness.
“I fear our gaming is done for this morning,” Niall told Morgase, standing. He offered her a slight bow as she rose, and she acknowledged it by inclining her head.
“Until this evening, perhaps?” Her voice still held that almost docile tone. “That is, if you will dine with me?”
Niall accepted, of course. He did not know where she was leading with this new tactic—not where an oaf might suppose, he was sure—but it would be amusing to find out. The woman was full of surprises. Such a pity she was tainted by the witches.
Omerna advanced as far as the great sunflare of gold, set in the floor, that had been worn by feet and knees over centuries. It was a plain room aside from that and the captured banners that lined the walls high beneath the ceiling, age-tattered and worn. Omerna watched her skirt around him without really acknowledging his presence, and when the door closed behind her, he said, “I have not yet found Elayne or Gawyn, my Lord.”
“Is that your important news?” Niall demanded irritably. Balwer reported Morgase’s daughter in Ebou Dar, still mired to her neck with the witches; orders concerning her had already been sent to Jaichim Carridin. Her other son still toiled with the witches as well, it seemed, in Tar Valon, where even Balwer possessed few eyes-and-ears. Niall took a long swallow of cool wine. His bones felt old and brittle and cold of late, yet the Shadowspawned heat made his skin sweat enough, and dried his mouth.
Omerna gave a start. “Ah . . . no, my Lord.” He fumbled in a pocket of his white undercoat and pulled out a tiny bone cylinder with three red stripes running its length. “You wanted this brought as soon as the pigeon arrived in the—” He cut off as Niall snatched the tube.
This was what he had been waiting for, the reason a legion was not already on its way to Andor with Morgase riding at its head, if not leading. If it was not all Varadin’s madness, the ravings of a man unbalanced by watching Tarabon collapse into anarchy, Andor would have to wait. Andor, and maybe more.
“I . . . I have confirmation that the White Tower truly has broken,” Omerna went on. “The . . . the Black Ajah has seized Tar Valon.” No wonder he sounded nervous, speaking heresy. There was no Black Ajah; all of the witches were Darkfriends.
Niall ignored him and broke the wax sealing the tube with his thumbnail. He had used Balwer to start those rumors, and now they came back to him. Omerna believed every rumor his ears caught, and his ears caught them all.
“And there are reports that the witches are conferring with the false Dragon al’Thor, my Lord.”
Of course the witches were conferring with him! He was their creation, their puppet. Niall shut out the fool’s blather and moved back to the gaming table while he drew a slim roll of paper f
rom the tube. He never let anyone know more of these messages than that they existed, and few knew that much. His hands trembled as they unrolled the thin paper. His hands had not trembled since he was a boy facing his first battle, more than seventy years ago. Those hands seemed little more than bone and sinew now, but they still possessed enough strength for what he had to do.
The writing was not that of Varadin, but of Faisar, sent to Tarabon for a different purpose. Niall’s stomach twisted into a knot as he read; it was in clear language, not Varadin’s cipher. Varadin’s reports had been the work of a man on the brink of madness if not over, yet Faisar confirmed the worst of it and more. Much more. Al’Thor was a rabid beast, a destroyer who must be stopped, but now a second mad animal had appeared, one that might be even more dangerous than the Tar Valon witches with their tame false Dragon. But how under the Light could he fight both?
“It . . . it seems that Queen Tenobia has left Saldaea, my Lord. And the . . . the Dragonsworn are burning and killing across Altara and Murandy. I have heard the Horn of Valere has been found, in Kandor.”
Still half-distracted, Niall looked up to find Omerna at his side, licking his lips and wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. No doubt he hoped for a glance at what was in the message. Well, everyone would know soon enough.
A Crown of Swords Page 5
