She made her way down several streets, crossing through the mud at intersections. That was the irredeemable flaw of boardwalks, in her opinion. The locals knew which streets to cut across and which ones were deep in mud, but Cadsuane had to just tramp across wherever she could. That’s why she’d hunted out these clogs, built after the Tairen style, to go over her shoes. It had been surprisingly hard to find a merchant selling them; the Domani obviously had little interest in them, and most people she passed either went barefoot in the mud or knew where to cross and keep from soiling their shoes.
Halfway down to the docks, she finally reached her destination. The fine banner flapping out front proclaimed the inn’s name as The Wind’s Favor, beating against an inlaid wood front. Cadsuane made her way inside and took off the clogs in the muddy entryway before stepping up into the inn proper. There, finally, she allowed herself to lower her hood. If al’Thor randomly happened to visit this particular inn, then he’d just have to hang her.
The inn’s common room was decorated more like a king’s dining hall than a tavern. White tablecloths coated the tables, and the varnished wooden floor was mopped to a shine. The walls were hung with tasteful still-life paintings—a bowl of fruit on the wall behind the bar, a vase of flowers on the wall opposite it. The bottles on the ledge behind the bar were almost all wine, very few bottles of brandy or other liquors.
The slender innkeeper, Quillin Tasil, was a tall, oval-faced Andoran man. Thinning on top with dark, short hair at the sides of his head, he wore a full beard, trimmed short, which was almost all gray. His fine lavender coat had white ruffled cuffs peeking out from the sleeves, but he wore an innkeeper’s apron over the front. He generally had had good information, but was also willing to look into inquiries for her among his associates. A very useful man indeed.
He smiled at Cadsuane as she entered, wiping his hands on a towel. He gestured her toward a table, then went back to the bar to fetch some wine. Cadsuane settled herself as two men on the other side of the room began to argue loudly. The other patrons—only four, two women at a table on the far side, two more men at the bar—paid the argument no heed. One couldn’t spend much time in Arad Doman without learning to ignore the frequent flares in temper. Domani men were as hotheaded as volcanoes, and most people agreed that Domani women were the reason. These two men did not turn to a duel, as would have been common in Ebou Dar. Instead, they shouted for a few moments, then began to agree with each other, then insisted on buying one another wine. Fights were common; bloodshed infrequent. Injuries were bad for business.
Quillin approached, bearing a cup of wine—it would be one of his finest vintages. She never requested such from him, but never complained either.
“Mistress Shore,” he said with his affable voice, “I wish I’d known earlier that you were back in town! The first I heard of it was your letter!”
Cadsuane took the offered cup. “I am not accustomed to giving reports on my whereabouts to every acquaintance, Master Tasil.”
“Of course not, of course not,” he said, and seemed completely unoffended at her sharp response. She’d never been able to get a rise out of him. That had always made her curious.
“The inn seems to be doing well,” she said politely, causing him to turn and look over his few patrons. They seemed uncomfortable to be sitting at immaculate tables atop a gleaming floor. Cadsuane wasn’t certain if it was the intimidating cleanliness that kept people away from The Wind’s Favor, or if it was Quillin’s insistence on never hiring gleemen or musicians to perform. He claimed they spoiled the atmosphere. As she watched, he noticed that a new patron entered, tracking in mud. She could see Quillin’s fingers itching to go scrub the floor.
“You there,” Quillin called to the man. “Scrape your shoes before coming in, if you please.”
The man froze, frowning, but went back to do as instructed. Quillin sighed and moved over to sit at her table. “Frankly, Mistress Shore, it gets a little too busy here lately for my tastes. Can’t keep track of all my patrons sometimes! People go without drink, waiting for me to get to them.”
“You could hire help,” she noted. “A serving girl or two.”
“What? And let them have all the fun?” He said it in all seriousness.
Cadsuane took a sip of her wine. An excellent vintage indeed, perhaps expensive enough that an inn—no matter how splendid—shouldn’t have had it readily available behind the bar. She sighed. Quillin’s Domani wife was one of the most accomplished silk merchants in the city; many Sea Folk vessels sought her out personally to trade with her. Quillin had kept accounts for his wife’s business for some twenty years before he had retired, both of them wealthy.
And what did he do with it? Open an inn. It had apparently always been a dream of his. Cadsuane had learned long ago to stop questioning the odd penchants of people with too much free time.
“What news of the city, Quillin?” she asked, sliding a small bag of coins across the table toward him.
“Mistress, you offend,” he said, raising his hands. “I couldn’t take your coin!”
She raised an eyebrow. “I have little patience for games today, Master Tasil. If you don’t want it yourself, then give it to the poor. Light knows there are enough of those in the city these days.”
He sighed, but reluctantly pocketed the purse. Perhaps that was why his common room was often empty; an innkeeper who had no regard for money was a strange beast. Many of the common men would find Quillin as discomforting as the immaculate floor and tasteful decorations.
Quillin was, however, very good for information. His wife shared her gossip with him. With her face, he obviously knew she was Aes Sedai. Namine—his eldest daughter—had gone to the White Tower, eventually choosing the Brown and settling into the library there. A Domani librarian was nothing unusual—the Terhana library in Bandar Eban was one of the greatest in the world. However, Namine’s casual, yet keen, understanding of current events had been enough of a curiosity that Cadsuane had followed the connection, hoping to discover well-placed parents. Ties such as a daughter in the White Tower often made people amiable toward other Aes Sedai. That had led her to Quillin. Cadsuane didn’t trust him entirely, but she was fond of him.
“What news of the city?” Quillin asked. Honestly, what innkeeper wore a silk embroidered vest beneath his apron? No wonder people found the inn strange. “Where should I start? There has almost been too much to keep track of lately!”
“Start with Alsalam,” Cadsuane said, sipping her wine. “When was he last seen?”
“By credible witnesses, or by hearsay?”
“Tell me both.”
“There have been lesser windborn and merchants who claim to have received personal communication from the King as recently as a week ago, my Lady, but I regard such claims with skepticism. Very soon after the King’s . . . hiatus began you could find forged letters claiming to dictate his wishes. I have seen some few sets of orders with my own eyes that I trust—or, at least, I trust the seal on them—but the King himself? I’d say it has been almost half a year since anyone I can vouch for has seen him.”
“His whereabouts, then?”
The innkeeper shrugged, looking apologetic. “For a while, we were certain that the Council of Merchants was behind the disappearance. They rarely let the King out of their sight, and with the troubles to the south, we all assumed they’d taken His Majesty to safety.”
“But?”
“But my sources,” that meant his wife, “aren’t convinced any longer. The Council of Merchants has been too disorganized lately, each member trying to keep their own chunk of Arad Doman from unraveling. If they’d had the King, they’d have revealed him by now.”
Cadsuane tapped the side of her cup with a fingernail, annoyed. Could there be truth, then, to the al’Thor boy’s belief that one of the Forsaken had Alsalam? “What else?”
“There are Aiel in the city, Lady,” Quillin said, scrubbing at an invisible spot on the tabletop.
S
he gave him a flat stare. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He chuckled. “Yes, yes, obvious, I suppose. But the exact number in the area is twenty-four thousand. Some say the Dragon Reborn has them here just to prove his power and authority. After all, who ever heard of Aiel distributing food? Half the poor in the city are too frightened to go to the handouts, for fear the Aiel have used some of their poisons on the grain.”
“Aiel poisons?” She’d never heard that particular rumor before.
Quillin nodded. “Some claim that as the reason for the food spoilages, my Lady.”
“But food was spoiling in the country long before the Aiel arrived, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Quillin said. “But it can be hard to remember things like that in the face of so much bad grain. Besides, spoilage has grown much worse since the Lord Dragon arrived.”
Cadsuane covered her frown by taking a sip of wine. It had grown worse with al’Thor’s arrival? Was that just rumor, or was it the truth? She lowered her cup. “And the other strange occurrences in the city?” she asked carefully, to see what she could discover.
“You’ve heard of those, then?” Quillin said, leaning in. “People don’t like to speak of them, of course, but my sources hear things. Stillborn children, men dying from falls that should barely have caused a bruise, stones toppling from buildings and striking women dead as they trade. Dangerous times, my Lady. I hate to pass on mere hearsay, but I’ve seen the numbers myself!”
The events were not, in themselves, unexpected. “Of course, there are the balances.”
“Balances?”
“Marriages on the rise,” she said, waving a hand, “children who encounter wild beasts but escape unharmed, unexpected fortunes discovered beneath the floorboards of a pauper’s home. That sort of thing.”
“That certainly would be nice,” Quillin said, chuckling. “We can wish and hope, my Lady.”
“You’ve heard no such stories?” Cadsuane asked with surprise.
“No, my Lady. I can ask around, if you wish.”
“Do so.” Al’Thor was ta’veren, but the Pattern was a thing of balance. For every accidental death caused by Rand’s presence in a city, there was always a miraculous survival.
What did it mean if that was breaking down?
She went on to specific questions for Quillin, the whereabouts of the members of the merchant council at the top of the list. She knew that the al’Thor boy wanted to capture them all; if she could get information about their locations that he didn’t have, it could be very useful. She also asked Quillin to find out the economic situation of the other major Domani cities and supply any news of rebel factions or Taraboners striking across the border.
As she left the inn—reluctantly raising her hood and stepping back into the muggy afternoon—she found that Quillin’s words had left her with more questions than she’d had when she’d come.
It looked like rain. Of course, that was always the way it looked lately. Overcast and dreary, with a gray sky and clouds that bled together in a uniform haze. At least it had actually rained the previous night; for some reason, that made the overcast sky more bearable. As if it were more natural, allowing her to pretend that the perpetual gloom wasn’t another sign of the Dark One’s stirring. He had withered the people with a drought, he had frozen them with a sudden winter, and now he seemed determined to destroy them through sheer melancholy.
Cadsuane shook her head, tapping her clogs to make sure they were sturdily affixed, then walked onto the muddied boardwalk and made her way down toward the docks. She would see just how accurate these rumors about spoilage were. Had the strange events surrounding al’Thor really grown more destructive, or was she just allowing herself to find what she feared?
Al’Thor. She had to face the truth: she had bungled her handling of him. Of course, she hadn’t made any mistakes with the male a’dam, whatever al’Thor claimed. Whoever had stolen the collar had been exceedingly powerful and crafty. Anyone capable of such a feat could just as easily have fetched another male a’dam from the Seanchan. They were likely to have plenty of them.
No, the a’dam had been taken from her own room in an effort to sow distrust; of that she was certain. Perhaps, even, the theft had been intended to mask something else: the returning of the figurine to al’Thor. His temperament had become so dark, there was no telling what destruction he could cause with that.
The poor, foolish boy. He should never have had to suffer collaring at the hands of one of the Forsaken; that would only remind him of the times he had been beaten and caged by Aes Sedai. It would make her job more difficult. If not impossible.
That was the question she had to face now. Was he beyond saving? Was it too late to change him? And if it was, what—if anything—could she do? The Dragon Reborn had to meet the Dark One at Shayol Ghul. If he did not, all was lost. But what if allowing him to meet the Dark One would be equally disastrous?
No. She refused to believe that their battle had already been lost. There had to be something that could be done to change al’Thor’s direction. But what?
Al’Thor hadn’t reacted like most peasants suddenly granted power; he hadn’t grown selfish or petty. He hadn’t hoarded wealth, nor had he struck with childish vengeance against any who had slighted him in his youth. Indeed, there had actually been a wisdom to many of his decisions—the ones that didn’t involve gallivanting into danger.
Cadsuane continued down the boardwalk, passing Domani refugees in their incongruously bright clothing. She occasionally had to step around clusters of them sitting on the damp logs, an impromptu camp growing up around the mouth to an alleyway or the unused side door of a building. None made way for her. What good was an Aes Sedai face if you covered it up? This city was just too packed.
Cadsuane slowed near a row of pennants which spelled out the name of the dock registrar. The docks themselves were just ahead, lined by twice as many Sea Folk ships as before, many of them rakers, the largest of Sea Folk vessels. More than a few were converted Seanchan ships, likely stolen from Ebou Dar during the mass escape a short while back.
The docks were crowded with people eager for grain. The crowds jostled and yelled, not looking at all worried about the “poisons” Quillin had mentioned. Of course, starvation could overcome a great number of fears. Dock workers controlled the crowds; among them were Aiel in brown cadin’sor, holding their spears and glaring as only Aiel could. There also appeared to be a fair number of merchants on the docks, probably hoping to secure some of the handouts for storage and later sale.
The docks looked much as they had every day since al’Thor’s arrival. What had made her pause? There seemed to be a prickling sensation on her back, as if. . . .
She spun to find a procession riding down the muddy street. Al’Thor sat proudly on his dark gelding, his clothing colored to match, with only a little red embroidery. As usual, he led a score of soldiers, advisors and a growing number of Domani sycophants.
She seemed to encounter him very frequently traveling the streets. She forced herself to hold her ground, not shying away into an alley, though she did pull her hood down a little lower to shade her face. Al’Thor gave no sign that he recognized her as he rode just in front of her. He seemed troubled by his own thoughts, as he often was. She wanted to yell at him that he needed to move more quickly, secure the crown of Arad Doman and move on, but she held her tongue. She would not let her nearly three hundred years of life end with an execution at the hands of the Dragon Reborn!
His retinue passed. As before, when she turned away from him, she thought she saw . . . from the corner of her eye . . . darkness around him, like too much shade from the clouds above. Whenever she looked directly at him, it vanished—in fact, whenever she tried to see it, she couldn’t make it out. It only appeared when she saw him indirectly, and by happenstance.
She had never read or heard of such a thing in all of her years. To see it around the Dragon Reborn terrified her. This had grown bigger than
her pride, much larger than her failures. No. It had always been larger than she was. Guiding al’Thor wasn’t like guiding a galloping horse, it was like trying to guide a deep sea tempest itself!
She would never be able to change his course. He didn’t trust Aes Sedai, and with good reason. He didn’t seem to trust anyone, save perhaps for Min—but Min had resisted every attempt that Cadsuane had made at involving her. The girl was almost as bad as al’Thor.
Visiting the docks was useless. Talking to her informants was useless. If she didn’t do something soon, they were all doomed. But what? She leaned back against the building behind her, triangular banners blowing in front of her, pointing north. Toward the Blight and al’Thor’s ultimate destiny.
An idea struck her. She seized it like a drowning woman in the churning waves. She didn’t know what it was attached to, but it was her only hope.
She spun on her heels and hurried back the way she had come, her head bowed, barely daring to think about her plan. It could fail so easily. If al’Thor really was as dominated by his rage as she feared, then even this would not help him.
But if he really was that far gone, then there wasn’t anything that would help him. That meant she had nothing to lose. Nothing but the world itself.
Pushing her way through crowds and occasionally taking to the muddy street to avoid them, she arrived at the mansion. Some Aiel had taken the camp where Dobraine’s armsmen had staged until his withdrawal. They camped all about, some on the grounds, some in a wing of the mansion, others in nearby buildings.
Cadsuane made her way to the wing that belonged to the Aiel, and she was not stopped. She enjoyed privileges among the Aiel that none of the other sisters had been given. She found Sorilea and the other Wise Ones in conference in one of the libraries. They were sitting on the floor, of course. Sorilea nodded to Cadsuane as she entered. She was all bone, thin and leathery, yet never could a person think her frail. Not with those eyes, set into a face that, despite being worn by wind and sun, was too young for her age. How was it that the Wise Ones could live so long, yet not obtain the Aes Sedai agelessness? That was a question Cadsuane had not been able to answer.
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