Egwene let it pass. The bowl was important, they could take care of themselves, and she knew very well they were not looking in the Tarasin Palace. She almost let it pass, anyway. “You are making use of Mat, aren’t you?”
“We—” Abruptly Elayne became aware of her dress and gave a start. For some reason, though, it seemed to be the small knife that truly startled her. Eyes popping, she clutched the hilt, a mass of large red and white glass beads, and her face went absolutely crimson. An instant later she was in a high-necked Andoran gown of green silk.
The funny thing was, Nynaeve realized what she was wearing only a heartbeat behind Elayne, and reacted exactly the same. Exactly. Except maybe that if Elayne blushed like a sunset, Nynaeve blushed for two. She was back into Two Rivers woolens even before Elayne changed.
Clearing her throat, Elayne said breathily, “Mat is quite useful, I’m sure, but we cannot allow him to get in our way, Egwene. You know how he is. You can be sure, though, if we do anything dangerous, we will have him and all his soldiers cheek to cheek around us.” Nynaeve was silent, and looking sour. Perhaps remembering Mat’s threat.
“Nynaeve, you won’t push at Mat too hard, will you?”
Elayne laughed. “Egwene, she is not pushing at him at all.”
“That’s the simple truth,” Nynaeve put in quickly. “I’ve not said a cross word to him since we arrived in Ebou Dar.”
Egwene nodded doubtfully. She could reach the bottom of this, but it would take. . . . She glanced down to make sure the stole had not reappeared, and saw only a flicker that even she could not recognize.
“Egwene,” Elayne said, “have you been able to speak with the dream-walkers yet?”
“Yes,” Nynaeve said. “Do they know what the problem is?”
“I have.” Egwene sighed. “They don’t, not really.”
It had been an odd meeting, only a few days ago, begun by finding Bair’s dreams. Bair and Melaine had met her in the Stone of Tear; Amys had said she would not teach Egwene more, and she did not come. At first, Egwene felt awkward. She could not bring herself to tell them she was Aes Sedai, much less Amyrlin, afraid they might believe it another lie. There had certainly been no difficulty with the stole appearing then. And then there was her toh to Melaine. She brought it up, thinking all the while about how many miles she had to spend in a saddle the next day, but Melaine was so full of pleasure that she was going to have daughters—she rhapsodized over Min’s viewing—that she not only announced straight away that Egwene had no toh toward her, but said she was going to name one of the girls Egwene. That had been a small pleasure in a night full of futility and irritation.
“What they said,” she went on, “was that they had never heard of anyone trying to find something with need again after they had already found it. Bair thought maybe it was like trying to eat the same . . . apple twice.” The same motai was what Bair had said; a motai was a kind of grub found in the Waste. Quite sweet and crunchy—until Egwene found out what she was eating.
“You mean we just can’t go back to the storeroom?” Elayne sighed. “I was hoping we were doing something wrong. Oh, well. We’ll find it anyway.” She hesitated, and her dress changed again, though she did not seem to notice. It was still Andoran, but red, with the White Lions of Andor climbing the sleeves and marching across the bodice. A queen’s dress, even without the Rose Crown resting on her red-gold curls. But a queen’s dress with a close-fitting bodice that showed perhaps more cleavage than an Andoran queen would. “Egwene, did they say anything about Rand?”
“He’s in Cairhien, lolling about in the Sun Palace, it seems.” Egwene managed to not wince. Neither Bair nor Melaine had been very forthcoming, but Melaine muttered darkly about Aes Sedai while Bair said that they should all be beaten at regular intervals; whatever Sorilea said, a simple beating should be enough. Egwene was very much afraid that somehow Merana had managed to put a foot very wrong. At least he was putting Elaida’s emissaries off; she did not think he knew how to handle them nearly as well as he thought he did. “Perrin is with him. And Perrin’s wife! He married Faile!” That brought exclamations; Nynaeve said Faile was much too good for him, but said it smiling broadly; Elayne said she hoped they would be happy, but she sounded doubtful for some reason. “Loial is there, too. And Min. All it needs is Mat and the three of us.”
Elayne bit her underlip. “Egwene, would you pass a . . . a message to the Wise Ones for Min? Tell her. . . .” She hesitated, chewing her lip in thought. “Tell her I hope she can come to like Aviendha as much as she likes me. I know that sounds odd,” she laughed. “It’s a private matter between us.” Nynaeve looked at Elayne as oddly as Egwene knew she herself was.
“I will, of course. I don’t mean to talk with them again for some time, though.” There was not much point when they were as uncommunicative concerning Rand as they were. And as hostile toward Aes Sedai.
“Oh, that is fine,” Elayne said quickly. “It really isn’t important. Well, if we can’t use need, then we must use feet, and in Ebou Dar, mine are aching right now. If you don’t mind, I will go back to my body and get some real sleep.”
“You go ahead,” Nynaeve said. “I will be just a little while.” When Elayne vanished, she turned to Egwene. Her dress had changed too, and Egwene thought she knew very well why. It was a soft blue, cut low. There were flowers in her hair, and ribbons through her braid, as there would be for her wedding back home. Egwene’s heart went out to her. “Have you heard anything of Lan?” Nynaeve asked quietly.
“No, Nynaeve, I haven’t. I am so sorry; I wish I could tell you better. I know he’s still alive, Nynaeve. And I know he loves you as much as you love him.”
“Of course he is alive,” Nynaeve said firmly. “I won’t allow anything else. I mean to make him mine. He is mine, and I won’t let him be dead.”
When Egwene woke herself, Siuan was sitting beside her cot, dimly seen in the darkness. “Is it done?” Egwene asked.
The glow surrounded Siuan as she wove a small ward against eavesdropping around the pair of them. “Of the six sisters on duty beginning at midnight, only three have Warders, and those Gaidin will be on guard outside. They will have mint tea brought to them, with a small addition they shouldn’t taste.”
Egwene closed her eyes for a moment. “Am I doing the right thing?”
“You ask me?” Siuan choked out. “I did as I was commanded, Mother. I’d as soon jump into a school of feeding silverpike as help that man escape if it were up to me.”
“They will gentle him, Siuan.” Egwene had been over this with her, but she needed to go over it again for herself, to convince herself she was not making a mistake. “Even Sheriam doesn’t listen to Carlinya anymore, and Lelaine and Romanda are pressing for it. That or someone really will do what Delana has been hinting at. I won’t allow murder! If we cannot try a man and execute him, we have no right to arrange for him to die. I will not let him be murdered, and I cannot allow him to be gentled. If Merana really has put Rand’s back up somehow, that will be tossing fat-wood in the fire. I just wish I could be sure he will go to Rand and join him instead of running off the Light knows where, doing the Light knows what. At least that way there might be some way to control what he does.” She heard Siuan shift in the darkness.
“I always thought the stole weighed about as much as three good men,” Siuan said quietly. “The Amyrlin has few easy decisions to make, and fewer where she can be sure. Do what you must, and pay the price if you’re wrong. Sometimes if you are right, too.”
Egwene laughed softly. “It does seem to me I have heard that before.” After a while her mirth died. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone leaving, Siuan.”
“As you command, Mother.”
“This is terrible,” Nisao muttered. “If it becomes known, the condemnation will be enough to drive you into exile, Myrelle. And me with you. Four hundred years ago, it might have been commonplace, but no one will think it so today. Some will call it crime.”
M
yrelle was glad the moon was down already. It hid her grimace. She could handle the Healing herself, but Nisao had been studying how to deal with sicknesses of the mind, things the Power could not touch. Myrelle was not sure this counted as a sickness, but she would try whatever tool might work. Nisao could say what she would; Myrelle knew she would cut off her own hand rather than pass up this chance to further her studies.
She could feel him out there in the night, coming closer. They were well away from the tents, well beyond the soldiers, with only scattered trees round them. She had felt him from the moment his bond passed to her, the crime Nisao fretted over. A Warder’s bond passed from one Aes Sedai to another without his consent. Nisao was right in one point; they would have to keep this secret as long as they could. Myrelle could feel his wounds, some almost healed, some almost fresh. Some badly infected. He would not have gone aside to seek battle. He had to come to her, as surely as a boulder tipped down a mountain had to roll on to the bottom. He would not have moved one foot to stand aside from battle either. She had felt his journey in distance and blood; his blood. Across Cairhien and Andor, Murandy and now Altara, through lands infested with rebels and rogues, bandits and Dragonsworn, focused on her like an arrow speeding to the target, carving his way through any armed man who stood in his path. Even he could not do that unharmed. She toted up his injuries in her mind, and wondered that he was still alive.
The sound of a horse’s hooves came to her first, a steady walk, and only then did she make out the tall black war horse in the night. Night seemed to be the rider, too. He would be wearing his cloak. The horse stopped a good fifty paces from her.
“You shouldn’t have sent Nuhel and Croi out to find me,” the unseen rider called in a rough voice. “I almost killed them before I saw who they were. Avar, you might as well come out from behind that tree.” Off to the right, the night seemed to move; Avar wore his cloak too, and he would not have expected to be seen.
“This is madness,” Nisao muttered.
“Be quiet,” Myrelle hissed. In a louder voice, she called, “Come to me.” The horse did not move. A wolfhound mourning his dead mistress did not come to a new mistress willingly. Delicately she wove Spirit and touched the part of him that contained her bond; it had to be delicate, or he would be aware of it, and only the Creator knew what sort of explosion might result. “Come to me.”
This time the horse came forward, and the man swung down to stride the last paces, a tall man, moonshadows making his angular face seemed carved of stone. Then he was standing in front of her, standing over her, and as she stared up into Lan Mandragoran’s cold blue eyes, she saw death. The Light help her. How was she ever to keep him alive long enough?
CHAPTER
53
The Feast of Lights
The people dancing in the streets of Cairhien exasperated Perrin; making a way through was near to impossible. A line-dance snaked past him behind a big-nosed fellow with a flute and no shirt; last in line pranced a round little woman who laughed merrily and took a hand from the waist of the man in front of her to try pulling Perrin in behind. He shook his head, and either his yellow eyes frightened her or his face looked as grim as he felt, because she swallowed her mirth and let the line lead her on, glancing back over her shoulder at him until the crowd hid her. A graying woman, still handsome, with slashes of color halfway to the waist of her dark silk dress, flung slender arms around Perrin’s neck and stretched up her mouth hungrily toward his. She looked startled when he picked her up gently under the arms and set her down out of his way. A group of men and women his own age, capering to tambours, bumped into him, laughing gaily and plucking at his coat. They ignored his head-shaking until finally he pushed one of the men away hard and snarled a lead-wolf growl at the others. Laughter vanished in gaping astonishment for a moment, but they were roaring again, and trying to imitate his growl, before they frolicked away into the throng.
It was the first day of the Feast of Lights, the shortest day of the year, the last day of the year, and the city celebrated in ways Perrin could never have imagined. There would be dancing in the Two Rivers, but this . . . ! The Cairhienin seemed determined to make up for a year of staid reserve in the two days of the feast. Propriety had gone down the well and with it every barrier between common and noble, in public at least. Perspiring women in plain rough wool seized sweaty men in color-striped dark silks and pulled them into the dance; men in carters’ coats and stablemen’s vests whirled women whose dresses bore slashes of color sometimes to the waist. Bare-chested men poured wine over themselves and anyone else close to them. Apparently any man could kiss any woman, any woman kiss any man, and they were doing so with great abandon everywhere Perrin looked. He tried not to look too closely. Some of the noblewomen with their hair in elaborate towers of curls were bare to the waist beneath light cloaks that they made little effort to keep closed. Among the commoners, few women who had abandoned blouses bothered with any sort of covering beyond their hair, and that seldom near long enough; they flung wine over themselves and everyone else as wildly as any man. Boisterous laughter warred with a thousand different tunes from flutes and drums and horns, zithers and bitterns and dulcimers.
The Women’s Circle in Emond’s Field would have had a screaming fit, and the Village Council swallowed their tongues in apoplexy, but the depraved goings-on were only a small burr added to Perrin’s irritation. A few hours, Nandera had said, but Rand had been gone six days now. Min had either gone with him or was staying with the Aiel. And no one seemed to know anything. Except for the one called Sorilea, the Wise Ones were evasive as any Aes Sedai when Perrin managed to corner one; Sorilea told him bluntly to tend to his wife and keep his nose out of affairs that did not concern wetlanders. How Sorilea knew of the trouble between Faile and him, he had no idea, but he did not care. He could feel Rand’s need like an itch everywhere under his skin, stronger every day. He was coming from Rand’s school now, a last resort, but everyone there was as caught in drink, dance and debauchery as the rest of Cairhien. A woman named Idrien had been named to him as the head of the school, but after he managed, with some difficulty and no small embarrassment, to interrupt her kissing a man young enough to be her son, long enough to ask his question, all she could say was that maybe a man named Fel might know something, and Fel turned out to be dancing with three young women who could have been his granddaughters. With all three at once. Fel hardly seemed able to remember his own name, perhaps not surprising in the circumstances. Burn Rand! He had gone off without a word, when he knew about Min’s viewing, knew he was going to need Perrin desperately. Even the Aes Sedai had grown disgusted, apparently. Just that morning Perrin had learned they were three days on their way back to Tar Valon, having said there was no further point in remaining. What was Rand up to? That itch had Perrin wanting to bite something.
When he reached the Sun Palace, every lamp was lit and candles burned everywhere one could be placed; the corridors glittered like gems in the sun. In the Two Rivers, too, every house would be illuminated, with every available lamp and candle, until sunrise the day after tomorrow. Most of the palace servants were out in the streets, and the few who remained seemed to laugh and dance and sing as much as work. Even here some women were bare to the waist, girls barely old enough to have their hair braided in the Two Rivers and gray-haired grandmothers. The Aiel in the corridors looked disgusted when they noticed, which in truth they did not seem to do very often. The Maidens in particular appeared furious, though Perrin suspected that had nothing to do with Cairhienin women exposing themselves; the Maidens had been more and more cats lashing their tails every day since Rand went.
Perrin strode through the hallways openly for a change. He almost wanted Berelain to pounce on him. The image that flashed in his mind was of him seizing the scruff of her neck in his teeth and shaking her until she was ready to run away with her tail curled under. Perhaps fortunately, he reached his rooms without seeing a hair of her.
Faile almost looked up
from the stones board when he entered; Perrin was sure she did. The scent of jealousy still wafted from her, but it was not the strongest; anger was sharper, if not at its worst, and most powerful was a flat, dull odor he identified as disappointment. Why was she disappointed in him? Why would she not speak to him? One word even hinting at everything returning to how it had been, and he would be on his knees to accept blame for anything she wanted to pile on his head. But she only placed a black stone and murmured, “It is your turn, Loial. Loial?”
Loial’s ears were twitching uneasily, and his long eyebrows drooped. The Ogier might have no sense of smell to speak of—well, no better than Faile’s, say—but he could sense mood where no human would see anything. When Perrin and Faile were in the same room, Loial looked as though he wanted to cry. Now he just sighed like wind blowing through a cavern and put a white stone where he would begin trapping a large part of Faile’s stones if she did not notice. She probably would; she and Loial were evenly matched, far better players than Perrin.
Sulin came to the bedchamber door with a pillow in her arms, frowning at Faile and at Perrin. Her scent reminded Perrin of a she-wolf who had taken about all of cubs nipping her tail in play that she could stand. She also smelled worried. And afraid, oddly. Though why a white-haired serving woman smelling afraid should be odd—even one with Sulin’s scarred leathery face—Perrin did not understand.
Scooping up a book with a leather cover worked in gilt, Perrin sank into a chair and flung the volume open. Yet he did not read, or even see the book well enough to know which one he had picked up. He inhaled deeply, filtering out everything but Faile. Disappointment, anger, jealousy, and underneath that, underneath even the faint fresh herbal smell of her soap, was her. Perrin breathed her in hungrily. One word; that was all she had to say.
When a knock sounded at the door, Sulin stalked out of the bedroom, flouncing her red-and-white skirts and glaring at Perrin and Faile and Loial as if wondering why one of them had not answered it. She sneered quite openly when she saw Dobraine—she seemed to do that quite often since Rand left—but then took a deep breath as if steeling herself and visibly forced an almost cringing mildness. Her deep curtsy might have done to greet a king who enjoyed being his own headsman, and there she remained, her face nearly on the floor. Suddenly she began trembling. The smell of her anger melted, and even the worry was overwhelmed by a scent like thousands of hair-fine, needle-sharp splinters. Perrin had smelled shame from her before, but this time he would have said she might die from it. He smelled the bitter sweetness women gave off when they wept from emotion.
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