A Crown of Swords

by Jordan, Robert

  The man in the gray coat saw it, too. With a smile, he turned toward her.

  Sighing, Mat tucked the useless knife into its scabbard. “You can’t have her,” he said loudly. Promises. One jerk broke the leather cord around his neck; the silver foxhead dangled a foot below his fist. It made a low hum as he whirled it in a double loop. “You can’t bloody have her.” He started forward, keeping the medallion spinning. The first step was the hardest, but he had a promise to keep.

  The fellow’s smile faded. Watching the flashing foxhead warily, he backed away on his toes. The same light that glittered on the whirling silver, from the single window, made a halo around him. If Mat could drive him that far, maybe he could see whether a six-story drop would do what a knife could not.

  Brand livid on his face, the fellow backed away, sometimes half-reaching as if to try grabbing past the medallion. And suddenly, he darted to one side, into one of the rooms. This one had a door that he pulled shut behind him. Mat heard the bar drop.

  Maybe he should have left it there, but without thinking, he raised a foot and slammed the heel of his boot against the center of the door. Dust leaped off the rough wood. A second kick, and rotten bar-catches gave way, along with a rusted hinge. The door fell in, hanging at a slanted angle.

  The room was not entirely dark. A little light reached it from the window at the end of the hall, just one door away, and a broken triangle of mirror leaning against the far wall spread a faint illumination. That mirror let him see everything without going in. Aside from that and a piece of a chair, there was nothing else to see. The only openings were the doorway and a rathole beside the mirror, but the man in the gray coat was gone.

  “Mat,” Elayne called faintly. He hurried away from the room as much as toward her. There was shouting somewhere below, but Nynaeve and the rest would have to take care of themselves for the moment.

  Elayne was sitting up, working her jaw and wincing, when he knelt beside her. Dust covered her dress, her hat hung askew, some of the plumes broken, and her red-gold hair looked as if she had been dragged by it. “He hit me so hard,” she said painfully. “I don’t think anything is broken, but. . . .” Her eyes latched on to his, and if he had ever thought she looked at him as if he were a stranger, he saw it for true now. “I saw what you did, Mat. With him. We might as well have been chickens in a box with a weasel. Channeling wouldn’t touch him; the flows melted the way they do with your. . . .” Glancing at the medallion still hanging from his fist, she drew a breath that did interesting things to that oval cut-out. “Thank you, Mat. I apologize for everything I ever did or thought.” She sounded as though she really meant it. “I keep building up toh toward you,” she smiled ruefully, “but I am not going to let you beat me. You are going to have to let me save you at least once to balance matters.”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange,” he said dryly, stuffing the medallion into a coat pocket. Toh? Beat her? Light! The woman was definitely spending too much time with Aviendha.

  Once he helped her to her feet, she looked at the hallway, at Vanin with his blood-smeared face, and the women lying where they had fallen, and she grimaced. “Oh, Light!” she breathed. “Oh, blood and bloody flaming ashes!” Despite the situation, he gave a start. It was not just that he had never expected to hear those words out of her mouth; they seemed peculiar, as if she knew the sounds but not the meanings. Somehow, they made her sound younger than she looked.

  Shaking off his arm, she discarded her hat, just tossing it aside, and hurried to kneel beside the nearest Wise Woman, Reanne, and take her head in both hands. The woman lay limp, face down and arms stretched out as though she had been tripped up running. Toward the room everyone had been after, toward her attacker, not away.

  “This is beyond me,” Elayne muttered. “Where is Nynaeve? Why didn’t she come up with you, Mat? Nynaeve!” she shouted toward the stairs.

  “No need to shriek like a cat,” Nynaeve growled, appearing in the stairwell. She was looking back over her shoulder down the stairs, though. “You hold her tight, you hear me?” she shrieked like a cat. She carried her hat, and shook it at whoever she was shouting at. “You let her get away, too, and I’ll box your ears till you hear bells next year!”

  She turned, then, and her eyes nearly bulged out of her head. “The Light shine on us,” she breathed, hurrying to bend over Janira. One touch, and she straightened, wincing painfully. He could have told her the woman was dead. Nynaeve seemed to take death personally. Giving herself a shake, she went on to the next, Tamarla, and this time it appeared there was something she could Heal. It also appeared Tamarla’s injuries were not simple, because she knelt over her, frowning. “What happened here, Mat?” she demanded without looking around at him. Her tone made him sigh; he might have known she would decide it was his fault. “Well, Mat? What happened? Will you speak up, man, or do I have to—” He never learned what threat she intended to offer.

  Lan had followed Nynaeve out of the stairwell, of course, with Sumeko right at his heels. The stout Wise Woman took one look at the hall and immediately lifted her skirts and ran to Reanne. She did give Elayne one worried glance before lowering herself to her knees and beginning to move her hands over Reanne in an odd way. That was what pulled Nynaeve up short.

  “What are you doing?” she said sharply. Not halting what she was doing to Tamarla, she spared the round-faced woman only short glances, but they were as piercing as her voice. “Where did you learn that?”

  Sumeko gave a start, but her hands did not stop. “Forgive me, Aes Sedai,” she said in a breathless, disjointed rush. “I know I’m not supposed to. . . . She’ll die if I don’t. . . . I know I wasn’t supposed to keep trying to. . . . I just wanted to learn, Aes Sedai. Please.”

  “No, no, go on,” Nynaeve said absently. Most of her attention was fixed on the woman under her hands, but not all. “You seem to know a few things even I—That is to say, you have a very interesting way with the flows. I suspect you’ll find that a great many sisters want to learn from you.” Half under her breath, she added, “Maybe now they’ll leave me alone.” Sumeko could not have heard that last, but what she did hear dropped her chin to her considerable chest. Her hands barely paused, though.

  “Elayne,” Nynaeve went on, “would you look for the Bowl, please? I suspect that door is the one.” She nodded to the correct door, standing open like half a dozen others. That made Mat blink until he saw two tiny cloth-wrapped bundles lying in front of it where the looters must have dropped them.

  “Yes,” Elayne muttered. “Yes, I can do that much, at least.” Half-raising a hand toward Vanin, still on his knees, she let it fall with a sigh and strode through the doorway, which almost immediately emitted a cloud of dust and the sound of coughing.

  The more-than-plump Wise Woman had not been the only one following Nynaeve and Lan. Ieine stalked out of the stairwell, forcing the Taraboner Darkfriend in front of her by means of an arm twisted up into her back and a fist clutching the back of her neck. Ieine’s jaw was set, her mouth tight; her face was half frightened certainty that she would be skinned alive for manhandling an Aes Sedai, and half determination to hold on no matter what. Nynaeve had that effect on people, sometimes. The Black sister was wide-eyed with terror, sagging so she surely would have fallen except for Ieine’s grip. She must have been shielded, certainly, and with equal surety she probably would have chosen being skinned to whatever was going to happen to her. Tears began leaking from her eyes, and her mouth sagged in silent sobs.

  Behind them came Beslan, who gave a sad sigh at the sight of Nalesean and a sadder for the women, and then Harnan and three of the Redarms, Fergin and Gorderan and Metwyn. Three who had been at the front of the building. Harnan and two of the others had bloody gashes in their coats, but Nynaeve must have Healed them below. They did not move as if they still had injuries. They looked very subdued, though.

  “What happened at the back?” Mat asked quietly.

  “Burn me if I know,” Harnan replied.
“We walked right into a knot of shoulderthumpers with knives in the dark. There was one, moved like a snake. . . .” He shrugged, touching the bloodstained hole in his coat absentmindedly. “One of them got a knife into me, and the next I remember is opening my eyes with Nynaeve Sedai bending over me and Mendair and the others dead as yesterday’s mutton.”

  Mat nodded. One who moved like a snake. And got out of rooms like one, too. He looked around the hallway. Reanne and Tamarla were on their feet—straightening their dresses, of course—and Vanin, peering into the room where Elayne was apparently trying out some more curses, seemingly with no more success than earlier. It was hard to tell because of the coughing. Nynaeve stood, helping up Sibella, a scrawny yellow-haired woman, and Sumeko was still working on Famelle, with her pale-honey hair and big brown eyes. But he was never going to admire Melore’s bosom again; Reanne knelt to straighten her limbs and close her eyes, while Tamarla performed the same service for Janira. Two Wise Women dead, and six of his Redarms. Killed by a . . . man . . . the Power would not touch.

  “I’ve found it!” Elayne shouted excitedly. She strode back out into the hall holding a wide round bundle of rotted cloth she would not let Vanin take from her. Coated in gray from head to toe, she looked as if she had lain down and rolled in the dust. “We have the Bowl of the Winds, Nynaeve!”

  “In that case,” Mat announced, “we are bloody well getting out of here now.” Nobody argued. Oh, Nynaeve and Elayne insisted on all the men making sacks out of their jackets for things they rooted out of the room—they even loaded the Wise Women down, and themselves—and Reanne had to go down and recruit men to carry their dead down the boat landing, but nobody argued. He doubted if the Rahad had ever seen as odd a procession as made its way to the river, or one that moved more quickly.

  CHAPTER

  39

  Promises to Keep

  “We are bloody well getting out of here now,” Mat said again later, and this time there was argument. There had been argument for the past half-hour, near enough. Outside, the sun was past its noon peak. The trade winds cut the heat a little; stiff yellow curtains fastened over the tall windows bulged and snapped at gusts. Three hours back in the Tarasin Palace, the dice still bouncing in his head, and he wanted to kick something. Or somebody. He tugged at the scarf tied around his neck; it felt as though the rope that had given him the scar under that scarf was back and tightening slowly. “Love of the Light, are you all blind? Or just deaf?”

  The room Tylin had provided was large, with green walls and high blue ceiling, and no furnishings but gilded chairs and small tables set with pearlshell, yet it was crowded even so. It seemed so, anyway. Tylin herself sat before one of the three marble fireplaces with her knees crossed, watching him with those dark eagle’s eyes and a small smile, idly kicking her layered blue and yellow petticoats, idly toying with the jeweled hilt of her curved knife. He suspected Elayne or Nynaeve had spoken to her. They were there, too, seated to either side of the Queen, somehow in clean dresses and apparently even bathed, though they had only been out of his sight for minutes at a stretch since returning to the palace. They almost matched Tylin for regal dignity in their bright silks; he was not sure who they wanted to impress, with all that lace and elaborate embroidery. They looked ready for a royal ball, not a journey. He himself was still in his muck, with his dusty green coat hanging open and the silver foxhead caught in the neck of his half-undone shirt. Knotting the leather cord had shortened it, but he wanted the medallion touching his skin. He was around women who could channel, after all.

  Truth, those three women could probably have crowded the room by themselves. Tylin could have done it by herself, so far as he was concerned; if Nynaeve or Elayne had spoken to her, it was a very good thing that he was going. They three could have done it alone, but. . . .

  “This is preposterous,” Merilille announced. “I’ve never heard of any Shadowspawn called a gholam. Have any of you?” That was directed to Adeleas and Vandene, Sareitha and Careane. Facing Tylin, the cool-eyed Aes Sedai serenity of all five made a fair job of turning their high-backed armchairs into thrones. He could not understand why Nynaeve and Elayne just sat like lumps, coolly serene too, but absolutely silent. They knew, they understood, and for some reason, Merilille and that lot slathered their tongues with meekness for them, now. Mat Cauthon, on the other hand, was a hairy-eared lout who needed to be kicked, and from Merilille on down, they were all ready to do the kicking.

  “I saw the thing,” he snapped, “Elayne saw the thing, Reanne and the Wise Women saw it. Ask any of them!”

  Gathered at one end of the room, Reanne and the five surviving Wise Women shrank back like huddling hens, afraid of actual questions. All but Sumeko, anyway; thumbs tucked behind her long red belt, the round woman kept frowning at the Aes Sedai, then shaking her head, frowning, then shaking her head. Nynaeve had had a considerable talk with her in the privacy of the cabin on the boat coming back, and Mat thought that had something to do with her newfound attitude. He had caught mention of Aes Sedai more than once; not that he had been trying to eavesdrop. The rest seemed to be wondering whether they should offer to fetch tea. Only Sumeko had even appeared to consider the offer of a chair. Sibella, flapping bony arms in shock, had nearly fainted.

  “No one denies the word of Elayne Aes Sedai, Master Cauthon,” said Renaile din Calon Blue Star in a cool deep voice. Even had the dignified woman in silks to match the red-and-yellow floor tiles not been named to him earlier, the old memories meshed into his own would have identified her as Windfinder to the Mistress of the Ships by the ten fat gold rings in her earlobes, those in each ear connected by a golden chain and half-hidden by the narrow wings of white in her straight black hair. The medallions clustered along the finer chain that ran to her nose ring would tell him what clan she came from among other things. So would the tattoos on her slim dark hands. “What we question is the danger,” she continued. “We do not like leaving the water without good cause.”

  Nearly twenty Sea Folk women stood gathered behind her chair, a riot of colorful silks and earrings and medallions on chains for the most part. The first odd thing he had noticed about them was their attitude toward the Aes Sedai. They were perfectly respectful, on the surface at any rate, but he had never before seen anyone look at Aes Sedai smugly. The second odd thing came from those other men’s memories; he did not know a great deal about the Sea Folk from them, but enough. Every Atha’an Miere, man or woman, began as the lowest deckhand whether they were destined one day to become the Master of the Blades or the Mistress of the Ships herself, and every step of the way between, the Sea Folk were sticklers for rank to make any king or Aes Sedai look a sloven. The women behind Renaile were a peculiar lot by any measure—Windfinders to Wavemistresses rubbing shoulders with Windfinders from soarers, by their medallions—but two wore bright blouses of plain wool above the dark oily breeches of deckhands, each with a single thin ring in her left ear. A second and third ring in the right indicated they were being trained as Windfinders, but with two more to earn, not to mention the nose ring, it would be a long while yet that either would find herself called to haul sail whenever the deckmaster needed her, and find the deckmaster’s flail across her rump if she did not move quickly enough. Those two did not belong in this gathering by any memory he had; normally, the Windfinder to the Mistress of the Ships would not even have spoken to one of them.

  “Very much as I said, Renaile,” Merilille said, icily condescending. She had certainly noticed those smug glances. That tone did not change as she shifted her attention to him. “Do not grow petulant, Master Cauthon. We are willing to listen to reason. If you have any.”

  Mat gathered patience; he hoped he could find enough. Maybe if he used both hands and both feet. “Gholam were created in the middle of the War of the Power, during the Age of Legends,” he began from the beginning. Almost from the beginning of what Birgitte had told him. He turned, facing each group of women as he spoke. Burn him if he was going to l
et one bunch think they were more important. Or that he was bloody pleading with them. Especially since he was. “They were made to assassinate Aes Sedai. No other reason. To kill people who could channel. The One Power won’t help you; the Power won’t touch a gholam. In fact, they can sense the ability to channel, if they’re within, say, fifty paces of you. They can feel the power in you, too. You won’t know the gholam until it’s too late. They look just like anybody else. On the outside. Inside. . . . Gholam have no bones; they can squeeze themselves under a door. And they’re strong enough to rip a door off steel hinges with one hand.” Or rip out a throat. Light, he should have let Nalesean stay in bed.

  Suppressing a shiver, he pressed on. The women, all of them, watched him, almost not appearing to blink. He would not let them see him shiver. “There were only six gholam made—three male and three female; at least, that’s what they look like. Apparently even the Forsaken were a little uneasy about them. Or maybe they just decided six was enough. Either way, we know one is in Ebou Dar, probably kept alive since the Breaking in a stasis-box. We don’t know if any others were put into that box, but one is more than enough. Whoever sent him—and it had to be one of the Forsaken—knew to follow us across the river. He had to have been sent after the Bowl of the Winds, and by what he said to me, to kill Nynaeve or Elayne, maybe both.” He spared them a quick look, soothing and sympathetic; nobody could feel easy knowing that thing was after them. In return he received a puzzled frown from Elayne, just the smallest wrinkling of her forehead, and from Nynaeve a slight wave of the hand, an impatient wave, to get on with it.