Knife of Dreams

  Elaida breathed heavily, then took a long drink. She seemed to need it. Her hand gripped the goblet so hard that tendons stood out on its back. She advanced across the patterned silk carpet as if she meant to strike at Tarna. "They defy me again. Again! I will have obedience, Tarna. I will have it! Write out an order, and once I sign and seal it, post it in every Ajah's quarters." She stopped almost nose-to-nose with Tarna, her dark eyes glittering like a raven's. "The Sitters of any Ajah that fails to send its fair share of sisters to work on the chain towers will take a daily penance from Silviana until the matter is rectified. Daily! And the Sitters of any Ajah that sends sisters to those . . . those talks will do the same. Write it out for me to sign!"

  Tarna drew a deep breath. Penances might work and they might not, depending on how set the Sitters were, and the Ajah heads—she did not think things had gone so wrong that they might refuse to accept penance at all; that would be an end to Elaida for sure, perhaps an end to the Tower. But posting the order publicly, not allowing the Sitters a scrap to hide behind and maintain their dignity, was the wrong way to go about it. In truth, it might well be the very worst way. "If I may make a suggestion," she began as delicately as she could manage. She had never been known for delicacy.

  "You may not," Elaida cut in harshly. She took another long drink, draining her goblet, and glided across the carpet to refill it. She drank too much, of late. Tarna had even seen her drunk once! "How is Silviana doing with the al'Vere girl?" she said as she poured.

  "Egwene spends near enough half of every day in Silviana's study, Mother." She was careful to keep her tone neutral. This was the first time Elaida had asked after the young woman since her capture, nine days ago.

  "So much? I want her tamed to the Tower's harness, not broken."

  "I. . . doubt she will be broken, Mother. Silviana will be careful of that." And then there was the girl herself. That was not for Elaida's ears, though. Tarna had been shouted at more than enough. She had learned to avoid subjects that only resulted in shouting. Advice and suggestions unoffered were no more useless than advice and suggestions untaken, and Elaida almost never took either. "Egwene's stubborn, but I expect she must come around soon." The girl had to. Galina, beating Tarna's block out of her, had not expended a tenth of the effort Silviana was putting into Egwene. The girl had to yield to that soon.

  "Excellent," Elaida murmured. "Excellent." She looked over her shoulder, her face a mask of serenity. Her eyes still glittered, though. "Put her name on the roster to attend me. In fact, have her attend me tonight. She can serve supper for Meidani and me."

  "It will be as you command, Mother." It seemed yet another visit to the Mistress of Novices was inevitable, but no doubt Egwene would earn just as many of those if she never came near Elaida.

  "And now your reports, Tarna." Elaida sat down again and crossed her legs.

  Replacing her barely touched goblet on the tray, Tarna took up her folder and sat in the chair Meidani had been using. "The redone wards appear to be keeping rats out of the Tower, Mother," for how long was another question; she checked those wards herself every day, "but ravens and crows have been seen in the Tower grounds, so the wards on the walls must be..."

  The midday sun cast dappled light through the leafy branches of the tall trees, mostly oak and leatherleaf and sourgum with a smattering of cottonwoods and massive pines. Apparently there had been a fierce windstorm some years back, because fallen timber, scattered about here and there but all stretched in the same general direction, provided good seating with only a little hatchet work to hack away a few limbs. Sparse undergrowth allowed a good view in all directions, and not far off, a small clear stream splashed over mossy stones.

  It would have been a good campsite if Mat had not been intent on covering as much ground as he could every day, but it did just as well as a place to rest the horses and eat. The Damona Mountains still lay at least three hundred miles to the east, and he intended to reach them in a week. Vanin said he knew a smugglers' pass—purely by hearsay, of course: just something he had overheard by chance, but he knew right where to find it—that would have them inside Murandy two days after that. Much safer than trying to go north into Andor or south toward Illian. In either direction, the distance to safety would be further and the chance of encountering Seanchan greater.

  Mat gnawed the last scrap of meat from a rabbit's hind leg, and tossed the bone on the ground. Balding Lopin darted in, stroking at his beard in consternation, to pick it up and drop it in the pit he and Nerim had made in the mulch-covered forest floor, though the pit would be dug up by animals within a half-hour after their departure. Mat moved to wipe his hands on his breeches. Tuon, nibbling at a grouse leg on the other side of the low fire, gave him a very direct look, her eyebrows raised, while the fingers of her free hand wiggled at Selucia, who had ravaged half a grouse by herself. The bosomy woman did not reply, but she sniffed. Loudly.

  Meeting Tuon's gaze, he deliberately wiped his hands on his breeches. He could have gone over to the stream, where the Aes Sedai were washing their hands, but no one's clothing was going to be pristine by the time they reached Murandy in any case. Besides, when a woman named you Toy all the time, it was natural to take any chance to let her know you were nobody's toy. She shook her head and waggled her fingers again. This time, Selucia laughed, and Mat felt his face heat. He could imagine two or three things she might have said, none of which he would have enjoyed hearing.

  Setalle, sitting on the end of his log, made sure he heard some of them anyway. Reaching an agreement with the onetime Aes Sedai had not shifted her attitudes a hair. "She might have said men are pigs," she murmured without lifting her eyes from her embroidery hoop, "or just that you are." Her dark gray riding dress had a high neck, but she still wore her snug silver necklace with the marriage knife hanging from it. "She may have said you're a mud-footed country lout with dirt in your ears and hay in your hair. Or she might have said—"

  "I think I see the direction you're going," he told her through gritted teeth. Tuon giggled, though the next instant her face belonged on an executioner once more, cold and stern.

  Pulling his silver-mounted pipe and goatskin tabac pouch from his coat pocket, he thumbed the bowl full and lifted the lid on the box of strikers at his feet. It fascinated him the way fire just sprang up, spikes of it darting in all directions at first, when he scratched the lumpy, red-and-white head of a striker down the rough side of the box. He waited until the flame burned away from the head before using it to light his pipe. Pulling the taste and smell of sulphur into his mouth once had been enough for him. He dropped the burning stick and ground it firmly under his boot. The mulch was still damp from the last rain to fall here, but he took no chances with fire in woods. In the Two Rivers, men turned out from miles around when the woods caught fire. Sometimes hundreds of marches burned, even so.

  "The strikers, they should not be wasted," Aludra said, lifting her eyes from the small stones board balanced atop a nearby log. Thom, stroking his long white mustaches, continued to contemplate the cross-hatched board. He rarely lost at stones, yet she had managed to win two games from him since they left the show. Two out of a dozen or more, but Thom took care with anyone who could defeat him even once. She swept her beaded braids back over her shoulders. "Me, I must be in the same place for two days to make more. Men always find ways to make work for women, yes?"

  Mat puffed away, if not contentedly, at least with some degree of pleasure. Women! A delight to look at and a delight to be with. When they were not finding ways to rub salt into a man's hide. It seemed six up and a half dozen down. It truly did.

  Most of the party had finished eating—the best part of two grouse and one rabbit were all that remained on the spits over the fire, but they would be taken along wrapped in linen; the hunting had been good during the morning's ride, yet there was no certainty the afternoon would be as profitable, and flatbread and beans made a poor meal.

  Those who had finished were taking their
ease or, in the case of the Redarms, checking the hobbled packhorses, better than sixty of them on four leads. Buying so many in Maderin had been expensive, but Luca had rushed into town to take care of the bargaining himself once he heard about a merchant dead in the street. He almost—almost but not quite—had been ready to give them packhorses from the show's animals to be rid of Mat after that.

  Many of the animals were loaded with Aludra's paraphernalia and her supplies. Luca had ended up with the greater part by far of Mat's gold, one way and another. Mat had slipped a fat purse to Petra and Clarine, too, but that was friendship, to help them buy their inn a little sooner. What remained in his saddlebags was more than enough to see them comfortably to Murandy, though, and all he needed to replenish it was a common room where dice were being tossed.

  Leilwin, with a curved sword hanging from a broad leather strap that slanted across her chest, and Domon, with a shortsword on one side of his belt and a brass-studded cudgel on the other, were chatting with Juilin and Amathera on yet another log close by. Leilwin—he had come to accept that that was the only name she would stomach—made a point of showing that she would not avoid Tuon or Selucia, or lower her eyes when they met, though she had to steel herself visibly to carry it off. Juilin had the cuffs of his black coat turned back, a sign he felt among friends, or at least people he could trust. The onetime Panarch of Tarabon still clutched the thief-catcher's arm tightly, but she met Leilwin's sharp blue eyes with little flinching. In fact, she often seemed to gaze at the other woman with something approaching awe.

  Seated cross-legged on the ground and unmindful of the dampness, Noal was playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver and spinning wild tales about the lands beyond the Aiel Waste, about some great coastal city that foreigners were not allowed to leave except by ship and the inhabitants were not allowed to leave at all. Mat wished they would find another game to play. Every time they brought out that piece of red cloth with its spiderweb of black lines, it reminded him of his promise to Thom, reminded him the bloody Eelfinn were inside his head somehow, and maybe the flaming Aelfinn, too. The Aes Sedai came up from the stream, and Joline stopped to talk with Blaeric and Fen. Bethamin and Seta, trailing along behind, hesitated until a gesture from the Green sent them to stand behind the log where Teslyn and Edesina sat, as far apart as they could manage, with uncut branches between, and began reading small leather-bound books taken from their belt pouches. Both Bethamin and Seta stood behind Edesina.

  The yellow-haired former sul'dam had come round in spectacular, and painful, fashion. Painful for her and for the sisters. When she first hesitantly asked them to teach her, too, at supper the night before, they refused. They were only teaching Bethamin because she had already channeled. Seta was too old to become a novice, she had not channeled, and that was that. So she duplicated whatever it was that Bethamin had done and had all three leaping about the cookfire and squealing in showers of dancing sparks for as long as she could hold onto the Power. They agreed to teach her then. At least, Joline and Edesina did. Teslyn still was having none of any sul'dam, former or not. All three of them took a hand in switching her, though, and she had spent the morning continually easing herself in her saddle. She still looked afraid, of the One Power and maybe of the Aes Sedai, but strangely, her face somehow seemed . . . content, too. How to understand that was beyond Mat.

  He should have felt content himself. He had avoided a charge of murder, avoided riding blindly into a Seanchan trap that would have killed Tuon, and left the gholam behind for good this time. It would be following Luca's show, and Luca had been warned, for whatever good that would do. In well under two weeks he would be over the mountains into Murandy. The need to figure out how to get Tuon back to Ebou Dar safely, no easy task at all now, especially since he would have to guard against Aes Sedai trying to spirit her away, would mean that much longer to look at her face. And to try puzzling out what went on behind those big beautiful eyes. He should have been as happy as a goat in a corn crib. He was far from it.

  For one thing, all those sword-cuts he had received in Maderin hurt. Some of them were inflamed, though he had managed to keep that from anyone so far. He hated being fussed over nearly as much as he hated anyone using the Power on him. Lopin and Nerim had sewed him up as well as they could, and he had refused Healing despite attempted bullying by all three Aes Sedai. He had been surprised that Joline, of all people, tried to insist, but she did, and flung up her hands in disgust when he failed to relent. Another surprise had been Tuon.

  "Don't be foolish, Toy," she had drawled in his tent, standing over him, arms folded beneath her breasts, while Lopin and Nerim plied their needles and he gritted his teeth. Her proprietary air, very much a woman making sure her property was repaired properly, had been enough to make him grind his teeth, never mind the needles. Or that he was down to his smallclothes! She had just walked in and refused to leave short of manhandling, and he had felt in no condition to manhandle a woman he suspected might be able to break his arm. "This Healing is a wonderful thing. My Mylen knows it, and I taught it to my others, too. Of course, many people are foolish about having the Power touch them. Half my servants would faint at the suggestion, and most of the Blood, too, I shouldn't be surprised. But I wouldn't have expected it of you." If she had a quarter his experience of Aes Sedai, she would have.

  They had ridden off up the road from Maderin as if setting out for Lugard, then taken to the forest as soon as the last farms were out of sight. The moment they entered the trees, the dice started up in his head again. That was the other thing that soured his mood, those bloody dice drumming inside his head for two days. There hardly seemed any way they could stop here in the forest. What kind of momentous event could happen in the woods? Still, he had stayed well clear of the small villages they had passed. Sooner or later the dice would stop, though, and he could only wait for it.

  Tuon and Selucia headed for the stream to wash, wiggling their fingers at one another rapidly. Talking about him, he was sure. When women started putting their heads together, you could be sure—

  Amathera screamed, and every head whipped around toward her. Mat spotted the cause as quickly as Juilin did, a black-scaled snake a good seven feet long wriggling quickly away from the log Juilin was seated on. Leilwin cursed and leaped to her feet drawing her sword, but no faster than Juilin, who tugged his shortsword free of its scabbard and started after the snake so swiftly that his conical red cap fell off.

  "Let it go, Juilin," Mat said. "It's heading away from us. Let it go." The thing probably had a den under that log and had been surprised to come out and find people. Luckily, blacklances were solitary snakes.

  Juilin hesitated before deciding that comforting a shivering Amathera was more important than chasing a snake. "What kind is it, anyway?" he said, folding her in his arms. He was a city man, after all. Mat told him, and for a moment, he looked as though he meant to go after it again. Wisely, he decided against. Blacklances were quick as lightning, and with a shortsword, he would have needed to get close. Anyway, Amathera was clinging to him so hard he would have had a time getting free of her.

  Taking his hat from the butt of his ashandarei, which was driven point-down into the ground, Mat settled it on his head. "Daylight's wasting," he said around his pipestem. "Time we were moving on. Don't dawdle over there, Tuon. Your hands are clean enough." He had tried calling her Precious, but since her claim of victory back in Maderin, she refused to acknowledge that he had even spoken when he did.

  She did not hurry in the slightest, of course. By the time she returned, drying her small hands on a small piece of toweling that Selucia would drape across the pommel of her saddle to dry, Nerim and Lopin had filled in the refuse pit, wrapped the remains of the meal and tucked them into Nerim's saddlebags, and doused the fire with water brought from the stream in folding leather buckets. Ashandarei in hand, Mat was ready to mount Pips.

  "A strange man, who lets poisonous serpents go," Tuon said. "From the fellow's reaction, I assum
e a blacklance is poisonous?"

  "Very," he told her. "But snakes don't bite anything they can't eat unless they're threatened." He put a foot in the stirrup.

  "You may kiss me, Toy."

  He gave a start. Her words, not spoken softly, had made them the object of every eye. Selucia's face was so stiffly expressionless her disapproval could not have been plainer. "Now?" he said. "When we stop tonight, we could take a stroll alone—"

  "By tonight. I may have changed my mind, Toy. Call it a whim, for a man who lets poisonous snakes go." Maybe she saw one of her omens in that?

  Taking off his hat and sticking the black spear back into the ground, he took the pipe from between his teeth and planted a chaste kiss on her full lips. A first kiss was nothing to be rough with. He did not want her to think him pushy, or crude. She was no tavern maid to enjoy a bit of slap and tickle. Besides, he could almost feel all those eyes watching. Someone snickered. Selucia rolled her eyes.

  Tuon folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked up at him through her long eyelashes. "Do I remind you of your sister?" she asked in a dangerous tone. "Or perhaps your mother?" Somebody laughed. More than one somebody, in fact.

  Grimly, Mat tapped the dottle from his pipe on the heel of his boot and stuffed the warm pipe into his coat pocket. He hung his hat back on the ashandarei. If she wanted a real kiss. . . . Had he really thought she would not fill his arms? Slim, she was to be sure, and small, but she filled them very nicely indeed. He bent his head to hers. She was far from the first woman he had kissed. He knew what he was about. Surprisingly—or then again, perhaps not so surprisingly—she did not know. She was a quick pupil, though. Very quick.