Knife of Dreams

  He could not tear his eyes away. The sinking peddler shrieked loudly enough to be heard over the screaming of his team.

  "Help meeee!" he cried, waving his arms. He seemed to be looking straight at Mat. "Help meeee!" Over and over.

  Mat kept waiting for him to die, hoping for him to die—surely that was better than the other—but the man kept on screaming as he sank to his waist, to his chest. Desperately, he tipped back his head like a man being pulled under water, sucking for one last breath. Then his head vanished, and just his arms remained, frantically waving until they, too, were gone. Only his hat lying on the road said there had ever been a man there.

  When the last of the thatched rooftops and tall chimneys melted away, Mat let out a long breath. Where the village had been was another meadow decked out in cat daisies and jumpups where red and yellow butterflies fluttered from blossom to blossom. So peaceful. He wished he could believe the peddler was dead.

  Except for the few that had followed Luca into the meadow, the show's wagons stood strung out along the road, and everybody was down on the ground, women comforting crying children, men trying to quiet trembling horses, everyone talking fearfully, and loudly, to be heard over the bears and the lions and the leopards. Well, everyone except the three Aes Sedai. They glided hurriedly up the road, Joline heeled by Blaeric and Fen. By their expressions, Aes Sedai and Warders alike, you might have thought villages sinking into the ground were as common as house cats. Pausing beside the peddler's wide hat, the three of them stared down it. Teslyn picked it up and turned over in her hands, then let it drop. Moving into the meadow where the village had stood, the sisters walked about talking, peering at this and that as if they could learn something from wildflowers and grasses. None had taken the time to don a cloak, but for once Mat could not find it in him to upbraid them. They might have channeled, but if so they did not use enough of the Power to make the foxhead turn chilly. He would not have taken them to task if they had. Not today, not after what he had just seen.

  The arguing started right away. No one wanted to cross that patch of hard-packed clay that seemingly had been paved with stone. They shouted over one another, including the horse handlers and the seamstresses, all telling Luca what had to be done, and right now. Some wanted to turn back far enough to find a country road and use those narrower ways to find their way to Lugard. Others were for forgetting Lugard altogether, for striking out for Illian by those country roads, or even going all the way back to Ebou Dar and beyond. There was always Amadicia, and Tarabon. Ghealdan, too, for that matter. Plenty of towns and cities there, and far from this Shadow-cursed spot.

  Mat sat Pips' saddle, idly playing with his reins, and held his peace through all the shouting and arm-waving. The gelding gave a shiver now and then, but he was no longer attempting to bolt. Thom came striding through the crowd and laid a hand on Pips' neck. Juilin and Amathera were close behind, she clinging to him and eyeing the show-folk fearfully, and then Noal and Olver. The boy looked as though he would have liked to cling to someone for comfort, to anyone, but he was old enough not to want it seen if he did. Noal appeared troubled, too, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. He kept peering up the road toward the Aes Sedai. Doubtless by that night he would be claiming to have seen something very like this before, only on a much grander scale.

  "I think we'll be going on alone from here," Thom said quietly. Juilin nodded grimly.

  "If we must," Mat replied. Small parties would stand out for those who were hunting for Tuon, for the kidnapped heir to the Seanchan Empire, else he would have left the show long since. Making their way to safety without the show to hide in would be much more dangerous, but it could be done. What he could not do was turn these people's minds. One glance into any of those frightened faces told him he did not have enough gold for that. There might not have been enough gold in the world.

  Luca listened in silence, a bright red cloak wrapped around him, until most of the showfolk's energy was spent. When their shouts began to trickle away, he flung back the cloak and walked among them. There were no grand gestures, now. Here he clapped a man on the shoulder, there peered earnestly into a woman's eyes. The country roads? They would be half mud, more streams than roads, from the spring rains. It would take twice as long to reach Lugard that way, three times, maybe longer. Mat almost choked to hear Luca invoke speed, but the man was hardly warming up. He talked of the labor of freeing wagons that bogged down, made his listeners all but see themselves straining to help the teams pull them through mud nearly hub-deep on the wagon wheels. Not even a country road would get that bad, but he made them see it. At least, he made Mat see it. Towns of any size would be few and far between along those back roads, the villages tiny for the most part. Few places to perform, and food for so many hard to come by. He said that while smiling sadly at a little girl of six or so who was peering up at him from the shelter of her mother's skirts, and you just knew he was envisioning her hungry and crying for food. More than one woman pulled her children close around her.

  As for Amadicia and Tarabon, and yes, Ghealdan, they would be fine places to perform. Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders would visit those lands and draw immense crowds. One day. To reach any of them now, they must first return to Ebou Dar, covering the same ground they had crossed these past weeks, passing the same towns, where people were unlikely to lay out coin to see again what they had seen so short a time before. A long way, with everyone's purses growing lighter and their bellies tighter by the day. Or, they could press on to Lugard.

  Here his voice began to take on energy. He gestured, but simply. He still moved among them, but stepping more quickly. Lugard was a grand city. Ebou Dar was a shadow beside Lugard. Lugard truly was one of the great cities, so populous they might perform there all spring and always have new crowds. Mat had never been to Lugard, but he had heard it was half a ruin, with a king who could not afford to keep the streets clean, yet Luca made it sound akin to Caemlyn. Surely some of these people had seen the place, but they listened with rapt faces as he described palaces that made the Tarasin Palace in Ebou Dar seem a hovel, talked of the silk-clad nobles by the score who would come to see them perform or even commission private performances. Surely King Roedran would want such. Had any of them ever performed before a king before? They would. They would. From Lugard, to Caemlyn, a city that made Lugard look an imitation of a city. Caemlyn, one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world, where they might perform the whole summer to never-ending throngs.

  "I should like to see these cities," Tuon said, moving Akein nearer to Pips. "Will you show them to me, Toy?" Selucia kept the dun at Tuon's hip. The woman looked composed enough, but doubtless she was shaken by what she had seen.

  "Lugard, maybe. From there I can find a way to send you back to Ebou Dar." With a well-guarded merchant's train and as many reliable bodyguards as he could hire. Tuon might be as capable and dangerous as Egeanin made out, but two women alone would be seen as easy prey by too many, and not just brigands. "Maybe Caemlyn." He might need more time than from here to Lugard, after all.

  "We shall see what we shall see," Tuon replied cryptically, then began exchanging finger-wriggles with Selucia.

  Talking about me behind my back, only doing it right under my nose. He hated it when they did that. "Luca's as good as a gleeman, Thom, but I don't think he's going to sway them."

  Thom snorted derisively and knuckled his long white mustaches. "He's not bad, I'll grant him that, but he's no gleeman. Still, he's caught them, I'd say. A wager on it, my boy? Say one gold crown?"

  Mat surprised himself by laughing. He had been sure he would not be able to laugh again until he could rid his head of the image of that peddler sinking into the road. And the horses. He could almost hear them screaming still, loudly enough that it came near to drowning out the dice. "You want to wager with me? Very well. Done."

  "I wouldn't play at dice with you," Thom said dryly, "but I know a ma
n turning a crowd's head with words when I see it. I've done as much myself."

  Finishing with Caemlyn, Luca gathered himself with a spark of his usual grandiosity. The man strutted. "And from there," he announced, "to Tar Valon itself. I will hire ships to carry us all." Mat did choke at that. Luca would hire ships? Luca, who was tight enough to render mice for tallow? "Such crowds will come in Tar Valon that we could spend the rest of our lives in that vast city's splendor, where Ogier-built shops seem like palaces and palaces are beyond description. Rulers seeing Tar Valon for the first time weep that their cities are villages and their own palaces no more than peasant's huts. The White Tower itself is in Tar Valon, remember, the greatest structure in the world. The Amyrlin Seat herself will ask us to perform before her. We have given shelter to three Aes Sedai in need. Who can believe they will do other than speak for us with the Amyrlin Seat?"

  Mat looked over his shoulder, and found the three sisters no longer wandering about the meadow where the village had vanished. Instead, they stood side by side in the road watching him, perfect images of Aes Sedai serenity. No, they were not watching him, he realized. They were studying Tuon. The three had agreed not to bother her anymore, and being Aes Sedai, were bound by that, but how far did an Aes Sedai's word ever go? They found ways around the Oath against lying all the time. So Tuon would not get to see Caemlyn, and perhaps not Lugard. Chances were, there would be Aes Sedai in both cities. What easier for Joline and the others than to inform those Aes Sedai that Tuon was a Seanchan High Lady? In all likelihood, Tuon would be on her way to Tar Valon before he could blink. As a "guest." of course, to help stop the fighting. No doubt many would say that would be for the good, that he should hand her over himself and tell them who she really was, but he had given his word. He began to calculate how near to Lugard he dared wait before finding her passage back to Ebou Dar.

  Luca had had a difficult time making Tar Valon sound greater than Caemlyn after his spiel on that city, and if they ever reached Tar Valon, some might actually be disappointed comparing his mad descriptions— the White Tower a thousand paces high? Ogier-built palaces the size of small mountains? he claimed there was an Ogier stedding actually inside the city!—but finally he called for a show of hands in favor of pressing on. Every hand shot up, even the children's hands, and they had no vote.

  Mat pulled a purse from his coat pocket and handed over an Ebou Dari crown. "I never enjoyed losing more, Thom." Well, he never enjoyed losing, but in this instance it was better than winning.

  Thom accepted with a small bow. "I think I'll keep this as a memento," he said, rolling the fat gold coin across the back of his fingers. "To remind me that even the luckiest man in the world can lose."

  For all of the show of hands, there was a shadow of reluctance to cross that patch of road ahead. After Luca got his wagon back onto the road, he sat staring, with Latelle clinging to his arm as hard as Amathera ever clung to Juilin. Finally, he muttered something that might have been an oath and whipped his team up with the reins. By the time they reached the fatal stretch, they were at a gallop, and Luca kept them there until well beyond where the paving stones had been. It was the same with every wagon. A pause, waiting until the wagon ahead was clear, then a flailing of reins and a hard gallop. Mat himself drew a deep breath before heeling Pips forward. At a walk, not a gallop, but it was hard not to dig his heels in, especially when passing the peddler's hat. Tuon's dark face and Selucia's pale displayed no more emotion than Aes Sedai's faces did.

  "I will see Tar Valon one day," Tuon said calmly in the middle of that. "I shall probably make it my capital. I shall have you show me the city, Toy. You have been there?"

  Light! She was a tough little woman. Gorgeous, but definitely tough as nails.

  After slowing from his gallop, Luca set the pace at a fast walk rather than the show's usual amble. The sun slid lower, and they passed several roadside meadows sufficiently large to hold the show, but Luca pressed on until their shadows stretched long ahead of them and the sun was a fat red ball on the horizon. Even then he sat holding the reins and peering at a grassy expanse beside the road.

  "It's just a field," he said at last, too loudly, and turned his team toward it.

  Mat accompanied Tuon and Selucia to the purple wagon once the horses had been handed over to Metwyn, but there was to be no meal or games of stones with her that night.

  "This is a night for prayer," she told him before going in with her maid. "Do you know nothing, Toy? The dead walking is a sign that Tarmon Gai'don is near." He did not take this for one of her superstitions; after all, he had thought something very like that himself. He was not much for praying, yet he offered a small one then and there. Sometimes there was nothing else to do.

  No one wanted to sleep, so lamps burned late throughout the camp. No one wanted to be alone, either. Mat ate by himself in his tent, with little appetite and the dice in his head sounding louder than ever, but Thom came to play stones just as he finished, and Noal soon after. Lopin and Nerim popped in every few minutes, bowing and inquiring whether Mat or the others wanted anything, but once they fetched wine and cups—Lopin carried the tall pottery jar and broke the wax seal; Nerim carried the cups on a wooden tray—Mat told them to find Harnan and the other soldiers.

  "I don't doubt they're getting drunk, which seems a good notion to me," he said. "That's an order. You tell them I said to share."

  Lopin bowed gravely over his round belly. "I have assisted the file leader now and again by procuring a few items for him, my Lord. I expect he will be generous with the brandy. Come along, Nerim. Lord Mat wants us to get drunk, and you are getting drunk with me if I have to sit on you and pour brandy down your throat." The abstemious Cairhienin's narrow face grew pinched with disapproval, but he bowed and followed the Tairen out with alacrity. Mat did not think Lopin would need to sit on the man, not tonight.

  Juilin came with Amathera and Olver, so games of Snakes and Foxes, played sprawled on the ground-cloth, were added to stones played at the small table. Amathera proved an adequate player at stones, unsurprising given that she had been a ruler once, but her mouth became even more pouty when she and Olver lost at Snakes and Foxes, although nobody ever won that game. Then again, Mat suspected she had not been a very good ruler. Whoever was not playing sat on the cot. Mat watched the games when it was his turn there, as did Juilin if Amathera was playing. He seldom took his eyes from her except when it was his turn at a game. Noal nattered on with his stories—but then, he spun those tales even while playing, and talking seemed to have no effect on his skill at stones—and Thom sat reading the letter Mat had brought him what seemed a very long time ago. The page was heavily creased from being carried in Thom's coat pocket and much smudged from being read and re-read. He had said it was from a dead woman.

  It was a surprise when Domon and Egeanin ducked through the entry flaps. They had not precisely been avoiding Mat since he moved out of the green wagon, but neither had they gone out of their way to seek him out. Like everyone else, they were in better clothes than they had worn for disguises in the beginning. Egeanin's divided skirts and high-collared coat, both of blue wool and embroidered in a yellow near to gold on the hem and cuffs, had something of a uniform about them, while Domon, in a well-cut brown coat and baggy trousers stuffed into turned-down boots just below his knees, looked every inch the prosperous, if not exactly wealthy, Illianer merchant.

  As soon as Egeanin entered, Amathera, who was on the ground-cloth with Olver, curled herself into a ball on her knees. Juilin sighed and got up from the stool across the table from Mat, but Egeanin reached the other woman first.

  "There's no need for that, with me or anyone else," she drawled, bending to take Amathera by the shoulders and draw her to her feet. Amathera rose slowly, hesitantly, and kept her eyes down until Egeanin put a hand beneath her chin and raised her head gently. "You look me in the eyes. You look everyone in the eyes." The Taraboner woman touched her tongue to her lips nervously, but she did keep looking
straight at Egeanin's face when the hand was removed from her chin. On the other hand, her eyes were very wide.

  "This is a change," Juilin said suspiciously. And with a touch of anger. He stood stiff as a statue carved from dark wood. He disliked any Seanchan, for what they had done to Amathera. "You've called me a thief for freeing her." There was more than a touch of anger in that. He hated thieves. And smugglers, which Domon was.

  "All things change given time," Domon said jovially, smiling to head off more heated words. "Why, you do be looking at an honest man, Master Thief-catcher. Leilwin did make me promise to give up smuggling before she would agree to marry me. Fortune prick me, who did ever hear of a woman refusing to marry a man unless he did give up a lucrative trade?" He laughed as though that were the funniest joke in the world.

  Egeanin fisted him in the ribs hard enough to change his laughter to a grunt. Married to her, his ribs must be a mass of bruises. "I expect you to keep that promise, Bayle. I am changing, and so must you." Eyeing Amathera briefly—perhaps to make sure she was still obeying; Egeanin was big on others doing as she told them—she stuck out a hand toward Juilin. "I am changing, Master Sandar. Will you?"

  Juilin hesitated, then clasped her hand. "I'll make a try at it." He sounded doubtful.

  "An honest try is all I ask." Frowning around the tent, she shook her head. "I've seen orlop decks less crowded than this. We have some decent wine in our wagon, Master Sandar. Will you and your lady join us in a cup or two?"

  Again Juilin hesitated. "He has this game all but won," he said finally. "No point in playing it out." Clapping his conical red hat on his head, he adjusted his dark, flaring Tairen coat unnecessarily, and offered his arm to Amathera formally. She clasped it tightly, and though her eyes were still on Egeanin's face, she trembled visibly. "I expect Olver will want to stay here and play his game, but my lady and I will be pleased to share wine with you and your husband, Mistress Shipless." There was a hint of challenge in his gaze. It was clear that to him, Egeanin had further to go to prove she no longer saw Amathera as stolen property.