Crossroads of Twilight

by Jordan, Robert

  In the crenelations above, dirty-faced men exchanged bleak looks and fierce whispers, shifting crossbows and polearms nervously. Only a few wore helmets or any sort of armor. Most were in rough coats, but on one man Perrin thought he saw what might have been silk under a layer of grime. It was hard to tell, with so much caked dirt. Even his ears could not make out what they were saying.

  “How do we know you’re alive?” a hoarse voice shouted down at last.

  Berelain blinked in surprise, but no one laughed. It was fool talk, yet Perrin thought the hair on the back of his neck really was standing stiff. Something was very wrong, here. The Aes Sedai seemed not to sense it. Then again, Aes Sedai could hide anything behind those smooth masks of cool serenity. The beads in Annoura’s thin braids clicked faintly as she shook her head. Masuri ran an icy gaze along the men on the wall.

  “If I must prove I am alive, you will regret it,” Seonid announced loudly in crisp Cairhienin accents, a little more heated than her face suggested. “If you continue to point that crossbow at me, you will regret it even more.” Several of the men hastily raised their crossbows to point at the sky. Not all, though.

  More whispers rustled along the top of the wall, but someone must have recognized Aes Sedai. At last, the gates squealed open on massive rusty hinges. A gagging stench swept out of the town, the stink Perrin had been smelling, only stronger. Old dirt and old sweat, decaying middens and chamber pots too long unemptied. Perrin’s ears tried to lie back. Gallenne half-lifted his red helmet as if to replace it on his head before urging his dun through the gates. Perrin booted Stayer to follow, easing his axe in its belt loop.

  Just inside the gate, a filthy man in a torn coat poked Perrin’s leg with a finger, then darted back when Stayer snapped at him. The fellow had been fat, once, but his coat sagged and his skin hung loose. “Just wanted to be sure,” he muttered, scratching his side absently. “My Lord,” he added, a tick late. His eyes seemed to focus on Perrin’s face for the first time, and his scratching fingers froze. Golden yellow eyes were not a common sight, after all.

  “Do you see many dead men walking?” Perrin asked wryly, trying to make a joke of it, as he patted the bay’s neck. A trained warhorse wanted to be rewarded for protecting his rider.

  The fellow flinched as if the horse had bared teeth at him again; his mouth twitched into a rictus smile, and he edged sideways. Until he bumped solidly into Berelain’s mare. Gallenne was right behind her, still looking ready to don his helmet, his one eye trying to watch six ways at once.

  “Where can I find your lord or lady?” she demanded impatiently. Mayene was a small nation, but Berelain was unaccustomed to being ignored. “Everyone else seems to have gone mute, but I heard you use your tongue. Well, man? Speak up.”

  The fellow stared up at her, licking his lips. “Lord Cowlin . . . Lord Cowlin is . . . away. My Lady.” His eyes darted toward Perrin, then flickered away. “The grain merchants. . . . They’re who you want. They can always be found at the Golden Barge. That way.” He thrust out a hand pointing vaguely deeper into the town, then suddenly scrambled away, looking back over his shoulder at them as though fearful of pursuit.

  “I think we should find somewhere else,” Perrin said. That fellow had been afraid of more than yellow eyes. This place felt . . . askew.

  “We are already here, and there is nowhere else,” Berelain replied in a very practical voice. In all that stink, he could not catch her scent; he would have to go by what he heard and saw, and her face was calm enough for an Aes Sedai. “I’ve been in towns that smelled worse than this, Perrin. I’m sure I have. And if this Lord Cowlin is gone, it won’t be the first time I’ve dealt with merchants. You don’t really believe they’ve seen the dead walking, do you?” What was a man to say to that without sounding a pure wool head?

  In any case, the others were already crowding through the gates, though not in any neat array, now. Wynter and Alharra heeled Seonid like mismatched guard dogs, the one fair, the other dark, and both ready to rip out throats at the blink of an eye. They certainly had the feel of So Habor. Kirklin, riding beside Masuri, looked unwilling to wait for that eye to blink; his hand rested on the hilt of his sword. Kireyin had a hand to his nose, and a glare in his eye that said someone was going to pay for making him smell this. Medore and Latian looked ill, too, but Balwer merely peered about, tilting his head, then drew the pair of them off into a narrow side street leading north. As Berelain said, they were there already.

  The colorful banners looked decidedly out of place as Perrin rode through the cramped winding streets of the town. Some of the streets were actually quite wide for the size of So Habor, but they felt close, as if the stone buildings on either side somehow loomed higher than their two or three stories and were about to topple on his head, to boot. Imagination made the streets seem dim, too. It had to be imagination. The sky was not that gray. People filled the dirty stone paving, but not enough to account for all the farms in the area being abandoned, and everyone scurried, heads down. Not hurrying toward something; hurrying away. No one looked at anyone else. With a river practically on their doorsteps, they had forgotten how to wash, too. He did not see a face without a coating of grime or a garment that did not look to have been worn for a week, and hard work in muck with it. The stink only worsened the deeper into the town they rode. He supposed you could get used to anything, in time. Worst of all was the quiet, though. Villages were quiet sometimes, if not so still as the woods, but a town always held a faint murmur, the sound of shopkeepers bargaining and people going about their lives. So Habor did not even whisper. It barely seemed to breathe.

  Getting better directions was difficult, since most people darted away if spoken to, but eventually they dismounted in front of a prosperous-appearing inn, three stories of neatly dressed gray stone under a slate roof, with a sign hanging out front announcing the Golden Barge. The sign even had a touch of gilt on the lettering, and on the grain mounded high in the barge and uncovered as it never would be for shipping. No grooms appeared from the stableyard beside the inn, so the bannermen had to serve as horse holders, a task that did not make them happy. Tod put so much attention into peering at the flow of dirty people that scurried by and fondling the hilt of his short-sword that Stayer very nearly got a couple of his fingers when he took the stallion’s reins. The Mayener and the Ghealdanin seemed to be wishing they had lances rather than banners. Flann just looked wild-eyed. In spite of the morning sun, the light did seem . . . shadowy. Going inside did not make things any better.

  At first glance, the common room bore out the inn’s prosperity, with polished round tables and proper chairs instead of benches, standing beneath a high, stout-beamed ceiling. The walls were painted with fields of barley and oats and millet, ripening under a bright sun, and a colorfully painted clock stood on the carved mantel above a wide fireplace of white stone. The fireplace was cold, though, the air nearly as icy as outside. The clock had run down and the polish dulled. Dust lay on everything. The only people in the room were six men and five women huddling over their drinks around an oval table, larger than the rest, that stood in the middle of the floor.

  One of the men leaped to his feet with an oath, face paling underneath the dirt, when Perrin and the others entered. A plump woman with lank greasy hair shoved her pewter cup to her mouth and tried to gulp so fast that wine spilled over her chin. Maybe it was his eyes. Maybe.

  “What happened in this town?” Annoura said firmly, tossing back her cloak as though a fire blazed on the hearth. The calm gaze she ran across the people at the table froze every one of them. Abruptly Perrin realized that neither Masuri nor Seonid had followed him inside. He doubted very much that they were waiting in the street with the horses. What they and their Warders were doing was any man’s guess.

  The man who had jumped up tugged at his coat collar with a finger. The coat had been fine blue wool once, with a row of gilded buttons to his neck, but he appeared to have been spilling food down the front of it for
some time. Maybe more than had gone into him. He was another whose skin hung slack. “H-happened, Aes Sedai?” he stammered.

  “Be quiet, Mycal!” a haggard woman said quickly. Her dark dress was embroidered on the high neck and along the sleeves, but dirt made the colors uncertain. Her eyes were sunken pits. “What makes you think something happened, Aes Sedai?”

  Annoura would have continued, but Berelain stepped in as the Aes Sedai opened her mouth again. “We are looking for the grain merchants.” Annoura’s expression never changed, but her mouth snapped shut with an audible click.

  Long looks passed between the people around the table. The haggard woman studied Annoura for a moment, quickly passing on to Berelain and obviously taking in the silks and firedrops. And the diadem. She spread her skirts in a curtsy. “We are the merchant’s guild of So Habor, my Lady. What’s left of—” Breaking off, she took a deep, shuddering breath. “I am Rahema Arnon, my Lady. How may we serve you?”

  The merchants seemed to brighten a little on learning that their visitors had come for grain and other things that they could supply, oil for lamps and cooking, beans and needles and horseshoe nails, cloth and candles and a dozen things more that the camp needed. At least, they grew a little less fearful. Any ordinary merchant hearing the list Berelain gave would have been hard-pressed not to smile greedily, but this lot . . .

  Mistress Arnon shouted for the innkeeper to bring wine—“the best wine; quickly, now; quickly”—but when a long-nosed woman stuck her head hesitantly into the common room, Mistress Arnon had to rush over and catch her soiled sleeve to keep her from vanishing again. The fellow in the food-stained coat called for someone named Speral to bring the sample jars, but after shouting three times with no response, he gave a nervous laugh and darted into a back room to return a moment later, his arms around three large cylindrical wooden containers that he sat on the table, still laughing nervously. The others wore a collection of twitching smiles as they bowed and curtsied Berelain to a seat at the head of the oval table, greasy-faced men and women scratching at themselves without appearing to notice what they were doing. Perrin tucked his gauntlets behind his belt and stood against a painted wall, watching.

  They had agreed to leave the bargaining to Berelain. She was willing to admit, reluctantly, that he knew more of horseflesh than she, but she had negotiated treaties covering the sale of years’ worth of the oilfish harvest. Annoura had smiled thinly at the suggestion that a jumped-up country lad might take a hand. She did not call him that—she could “my Lord” him as smoothly as Masuri or Seonid—yet it was clear she thought some things clearly above his ability. She was not smiling now, standing behind Berelain and studying the merchants as if to memorize their faces.

  The innkeeper brought wine, in pewter cups that had last seen a polishing cloth weeks ago if not months, but Perrin only peered into his and swirled it in the cup. Mistress Vadere, the innkeeper, had dirt under her fingernails and embedded in her knuckles like part of her skin. He noticed that Gallenne, standing with his back to the opposite wall and one hand on his sword hilt, only held his cup, too, and Berelain never touched hers. Kireyin sniffed at his, then drank deeply and called for Mistress Vadere to bring him a pitcher.

  “Thin stuff, to be called your best,” he told the woman through his nose, and looking down it, “but it might wash away the stink.” She stared at him blankly, then fetched a tall pewter pitcher to his table without saying a word. Kireyin apparently took her silence for respect.

  Master Crossin, the fellow in the food-stained coat, unscrewed the tops of the wooden containers and spilled out hulled samples of the grain they had to offer in piles on the table, yellow millet and brown oats, the barley only a little darker brown. There would have been no rain before the harvest. “The finest quality, as you can see,” he said.

  “Yes, the finest.” The smile slid off Mistress Arnon’s face, and she jerked it back. “We sell only the finest.”

  For people touting their wares as the finest, they did not seem to bargain very hard. Perrin had watched men and women back home selling the wool clip and the tabac to merchants down from Baerlon, and they always disparaged the buyers’ offers, sometimes complaining the merchants were trying to beggar them when the price was twice what it had been the year before or even suggesting they might wait till next year to sell at all. It was a dance as intricate as any at a feastday.

  “I suppose we might lower the price further for such a large quantity,” a balding man told Berelain, scratching at his gray-streaked beard. It was cut short, and greasy enough to cling close to his chin. Perrin wanted to scratch his own beard just watching the fellow.

  “It’s been a hard winter,” a round-faced woman muttered. Only two of the other merchants bothered to frown at her.

  Perrin set his winecup down on a nearby table and walked over to the gathering in the middle of the room. Annoura gave him one sharp, warning glance, but several of the merchants looked at him curiously. And cautiously. Gallenne had made his introductions all over again, but these folk were not entirely clear where Mayene was, exactly, or how powerful, and the Two Rivers only meant good tabac, to them. Two Rivers tabac was known everywhere. If not for the presence of an Aes Sedai, his eyes might have set them running. Everyone fell silent as Perrin scooped up a handful of millet, the tiny spheres smooth and vivid yellow on his palm. This grain was the first clean thing he had seen in the town. Letting the grain spill back onto the table, he picked up the lid of one of the containers. The threads cut into the wood were sharp and unworn. The lid would fit tightly. Mistress Arnon’s eyes slid away from his, and she licked her lips.

  “I want to see the grain in the warehouses,” he said. Half the people around the table twitched.

  Mistress Arnon drew herself up, blustering. “We don’t sell what we don’t have. You can watch our laborers load every sack on your carts, if you wish to spend hours in the cold.”

  “I was about to suggest a visit to a warehouse,” Berelain put in. Rising, she drew her red gloves from behind her belt and began tugging them on. “I would never buy grain without seeing the warehouse.”

  Mistress Arnon sagged. The bald-headed man put his head down on the table. No one said anything, though.

  The dispirited merchants did not bother to fetch their cloaks before leading them into the street. The breeze had picked up to a wind, cold as only a late winter wind could be, when people were already thinking ahead to spring, but they did not seem to notice. The hunch of their shoulders had nothing to do with cold.

  “Can we go now, Lord Perrin?” Flann asked anxiously when Perrin and the others appeared. “This place makes me want a bath.” Annoura gave him a frown in passing that made him flinch like one of the merchants. Flann tried a placating smile on her, but it was a sickly effort, and too late for anything but her back.

  “As soon as I can arrange it,” Perrin said. The merchants were already scurrying down the street, heads down and not looking at anyone. Berelain and Annoura managed to follow without appearing to rush, gliding along, one as composed as the other, two fine ladies out for a stroll and never mind the filth underfoot, or the stink in the air, or the dirty people who started at the sight of them and sometimes all but ran away as fast as they could. Gallenne had finally donned his helmet, and openly held his sword hilt with both hands, ready to draw. Kireyin was carrying his helmet on his hip, his other hand occupied with his winecup. Contemptuously eyeing the grimy-faced folk who hurried by, he sniffed at the wine as if it were a pomander to fight off the stench of the town.

  The warehouses were located on a stone-paved street barely wider than a wagon, between the town’s two walls. The smell was better there, close to the river, but the windblown street was empty except for Perrin and the others. There was not even a stray dog to be seen. Dogs disappeared when a town grew hungry, but why would a town with enough grain to sell be hungry? Perrin pointed to a two-story warehouse chosen at random, no different from any other, a windowless stone building
with a wide pair of wooden doors held shut by a wooden bar that could have done for a ceiling beam at the Golden Barge.

  The merchants suddenly recalled that they had forgotten to bring men to lift the bars. They offered to go back for them. The Lady Berelain and Annoura Sedai could rest in front of the fire at the Golden Barge while workmen were fetched. They were sure Mistress Vadere would lay a fire. Their tongues went still when Perrin placed his hand beneath the thick beam and shoved it up out of the wooden brackets. The thing was heavy, but he backed up with it to give him room to turn and toss it down on the street with a crash. The merchants stared. This might have been the first time they had ever seen a man in a silk coat do anything that could be called work. Kireyin rolled his eyes and took another sniff at his wine.

  “Lanterns,” Mistress Arnon said weakly. “We’ll need lanterns, or torches. If . . .”

  A ball of light appeared floating above Annoura’s hand, glowing bright enough in the gray morning to cast everyone in faint shadows on the paving and the stone walls. Some of the merchants put hands up to shield their eyes. After a moment, Master Crossin tugged one of the doors open by an iron ring.

  The smell inside was the familiar sharp scent of barley, almost strong enough to overcome the stench of the town, and something more. Small dim shapes slunk away into the shadows ahead of Annoura’s light. He could have seen better without it, or at least deeper into the darkness. The glowing ball cast a large pool of light, and walled off what lay beyond. He smelled cat, closer to feral than not. And rat, too. A sudden squeal in the black depths of the warehouse, suddenly cut off, spoke of cat meeting rat. There were always rats in grain barns, and cats to hunt them. It was comforting, and normal. Almost enough to soothe his uneasiness. Almost. He smelled something else, a smell he should know. A fierce yowl deep in the warehouse turned to rising cries of pain that died abruptly. Apparently the rats of So Habor sometimes hunted back. Perrin’s hackles stirred again, but surely there was nothing here the Dark One would want to spy on. Most rats were just rats.