Crossroads of Twilight

  “What is happening today means danger,” Therava said with the air of someone tired of repeating herself. And perhaps about to draw the knife at her belt. She caressed the hilt as she spoke, and not entirely absently, Faile thought. “We need to put as much dis­tance between ourselves and whatever it is as we possibly can, and as soon as we can. There are mountains to the east. Once we reach them, we can be safe until we gather all the septs together again. Septs that would never have been separated if you had not been so sure of yourself, Sevanna.”

  “You speak of safety?” Sevanna laughed. “Have you grown so old and toothless you need to be fed bread and milk? Look. These mountains of yours are how distant? How many days, or weeks, when we must crawl through this cursed snow?” She gestured to the table between them where a map lay spread out, weighted down with two thick golden bowls and a heavy three-pronged golden candlestick. Most Aiel disdained maps, but Sevanna had taken to them along with other wetland customs. “Whatever hap­pened is far away, Therava. You agreed it is so, as did every Wise One. This city is full of food, enough to feed us for weeks, if we remain here. Who is there to challenge us, if we do? And if we do. . . . You have heard the runners, the messages. In two or three weeks, four at the most, ten more septs will have joined me. Perhaps more! This snow will have melted by then, if these wet-landers from the city can be believed. We will travel quickly instead of having to drag everything on sleds.” Faile wondered whether any of the city people had mentioned mud.

  “Ten more septs will join you” Therava said, her voice flat except for the last word. Her hand tightened on the knife hilt. “You speak for the clan chief, Sevanna, and so I was chosen to advise you as a clan chief, who must listen to advice for the good of our clan. I advise you to move east and keep moving east. The other septs can join us as easily in those mountains as here, and if we must go a little hungry on the way, who among us is a stranger to privation?”

  Sevanna fingered her necklaces, a large emerald on her right hand like green fire in the light of the stand-lamps. Her mouth tightened, and seemed hungrier for it. She might have known pri­vation, but despite the lack of warmth in the tent, she no longer chose to. “I speak for the chief, and I say we will remain here.” There was more than a hint of challenge in her voice, but she did not give Therava a chance to meet it. “Ah, I see that Faile has come. My good, obedient gai’shain.” Taking something wrapped in a cloth from the table, she stripped away the cloth. “Do you recognize this, Faile Bashere?”

  What Sevanna held was a knife with a single-edged blade a hand and a half long, a simple tool of the sort that thousands of farmers carried. Except that Faile recognized the pattern of rivets in the wooden handle, and the chip in the edge. It was the knife that she had stolen and hidden away with such care. She said noth­ing. There was nothing to say. Gai’shain were forbidden to possess any weapon, even a knife except when cutting meat or vegetables for cooking. She could not help jerking when Sevanna went on, though.

  “As well Galina brought me this before you could use it. For whatever purpose. If you stabbed someone, I would have to be very angry with you.”

  Galina? Of course. The Aes Sedai would not allow them to escape before they did as she wanted.

  “She is shocked, Therava.” Sevanna’s laughter was amused. “Galina knows what is required of gai’shain, Faile Bashere. What should I do with her, Therava? That is advice you can give me. Sev­eral wetlanders have been killed for hiding weapons, but I would hate to lose her.”

  Therava tipped Faile’s chin up with a finger and stared into her eyes. Faile met that gaze without blinking, but she felt her knees tremble. She did not try telling herself it was only the cold. Faile knew she was not a coward, but when Therava looked at her, Faile saw herself as a rabbit in that eagle’s talons, alive and waiting for the beak to descend. It had been Therava who first told her to spy on Sevanna, and however circumspect the other Wise Ones might have been, Faile had no doubt that Therava would slit her throat without the slightest qualm if she failed her. There was no use pre­tending the woman did not frighten her. She just had to control that fear. If she could.

  “I think she was planning to run away, Sevanna. But I think she can learn to do as she is told.”

  The rough wooden table had been set out between the tents in the nearest open space to Sevanna’s tent, a hundred paces away. At first, Faile thought that the shame of being naked would be the worst of it, that and the icy cold that pebbled her skin. The sun sat low in the sky; the air had grown colder, and it would get much colder before morning. She had to stay there till morning. The Shaido were good at learning what shamed wetlanders, and they used shame as a punishment. She thought she would die of blushing whenever anyone looked at her, but the Shaido who passed by did not even pause. In itself, nudity was no reason for shame among Aiel. Aravine appeared in front of her, but she stopped only long enough to whisper, “Keep your courage,” and then she was gone. Faile understood. Whether or not the woman was loyal, she did not dare do anything to help.

  After a very short time, Faile no longer worried about shame. Her wrists had been tied behind her, and then her ankles had been doubled back and tied to her elbows. She understood now why Lacile and Arrela had been panting. Breathing was an effort in this position. The cold bit deeper and deeper, until she was shivering uncontrollably, but even that soon seemed secondary. Cramps began to burn in her legs, her shoulders, her sides, bunching mus­cles that seemed on fire, twisting tighter and tighter and tighter. She focused on not screaming. That became the center of her exis­tence. She - would - not - scream. But, oh, Light, she hurt!

  “Sevanna ordered that you were to remain here till dawn, Faile Bashere, but she did not say you could not have company.”

  She had to blink several times before she could see clearly. Sweat stung her eyes. How could she be sweating when she was frozen to the marrow? Rolan was standing in front of her, and strangely, he was carrying a pair of low bronze braziers full of glow­ing coals, with pieces of cloth wrapped around a leg of each to pro­tect his hands from the heat. Seeing her stare at the braziers, he shrugged. “Once, a night in the cold would not have bothered me, but I have grown soft since I crossed the Dragonwall.”

  She almost gasped when he set the braziers beneath the table. Warmth flooded up through the cracks between the planks. Her muscles still shrieked with cramps, but oh, the blessed warmth. She did gasp when the man put an arm across her chest and the other across her bent knees. Suddenly she realized the pressure was gone from her elbows. He had . . . squeezed . . . her. One of his hands began working at her thigh, and she almost screamed as his fingers dug into knotted muscles, but she felt the knots begin to loosen. They still hurt, his massaging hurt, but the pain in that one thigh muscle was changing in kind. Not growing less, exactly, but she knew that it would, if he continued.

  “You do not mind if I occupy myself while I try to think of a way to make you laugh, do you?” he asked.

  Suddenly she realized that she was laughing, and not hysterically. Well, it was only partly hysteria. She was trussed like a goose for the oven and being saved from the cold for the second time by a man she thought maybe she would not stab after all, Sevanna would be watching her like a hawk from now on, and Therava might be trying to kill her as an example; but she knew she was going to escape. One door never closed but another opened. She was going to escape. She laughed until she cried.

  Chapter 10

  A Blazing Beacon

  The wide-eyed maid was more used to kneading bread dough than doing up rows of tiny buttons, but eventually she finished buttoning Elayne into her dark green riding dress, curtsied and stepped back breathing heavily, though whether from the effort of concentration or just from being in the presence of the Daughter-Heir was hard to tell. The Great Serpent ring on Elayne’s left hand might have had something to do with it, too. Just over twenty miles in a straight line would take you from the manor of House Matherin to the River Erinin and all its great co
mmerce, but the distance was far greater in actual miles to be covered through the Chishen Mountains, and people here were more accustomed to cattle raids across the border from Murandy than any sort of visitor, especially a visitor who wrapped the Daughter-Heir and an Aes Sedai into one package. The honor seemed beyond what some of the servants could bear. Elsie had been painfully conscientious in folding the blue silk gown that Elayne had worn last night and packing it away in a large leather traveling chest, one of a pair in the apartment’s dressing room, so conscientious that Elayne had nearly taken over the task herself. She had slept poorly at first, fitful and waking, then slept late when she could sleep, and she was beyond chafing to be on her way back to Caemlyn.

  This was the fifth time she had spent a night out of Caemlyn since learning the city was threatened, and on each trip she had given a day to visiting three or four manors, once five, all the prop­erty of men and women bound to House Trakand by blood or oaths, and every visit took time. The press of time weighed down her bones, yet presenting the proper image was necessary. Riding clothes were needed to travel from one manor to the next lest she arrived rumpled and looking a fugitive, but she had to change before settling in whether it was for the night or just a few hours. Half those hours might be taken up by shifting from riding clothes to a gown and back again, but riding clothes spoke of haste and need, perhaps of desperation, while the coronet of the Daughter-Heir and an embroidered gown trimmed with lace, unpacked from a set of traveling cases and donned after washing, portrayed confi­dence and strength. She would have brought her own maid to add to the impression if Essande had been up to keeping the pace in winter, though she suspected the white-haired woman’s slowness would have had her chewing her tongue in frustration. Still, Essande could not have been as slow as this goggled-eyed young Elsie.

  At last Elsie handed her her fur-lined crimson cloak with a curtsy, and she slung the cloak around her shoulders hastily. A fire blazed on the stone hearth, but the room was nowhere near warm, and recently she could not seem to ignore the cold with any relia­bility. The girl bobbed as she asked whether she could fetch men to carry down the chests if it pleased Her Majesty. The first time she had done that, Elayne had gently explained that she was not yet Queen, but Elsie seemed horrified at the idea of addressing her simply as my Lady, or even as Princess, though in truth the last was considered very old-fashioned. Proper or not, it usually pleased Elayne to hear someone acknowledge her right to the throne, but this morning she was too tired to be anything but anxious to be on the road. Suppressing a yawn, she told Elsie curtly to fetch the men and be quick about it, and turned for the paneled door. The girl rushed to open it for her, which took longer than if she had done it herself, with a curtsy before opening and yet another after. Her divided silk skirts whispered furiously against each other as she strode out of the room tugging on her red riding gloves. If Elsie had delayed her one more second, she thought she would have screamed.

  It was the girl who shrieked, however, before Elayne had gone three paces, a horrified howl that sounded ripped from her throat. The cloak flared as Elayne spun around, embracing the True Source, feeling the richness of saidar flood through her. Elsie was standing on the strip of carpet that ran along the middle of the pale brown floor tiles, staring the other way down the hall with both hands pressed to her mouth. Two crossing corridors opened in that direction, but there was not another soul in sight.

  “What is it, Elsie?” Elayne demanded. She had several weaves already on the edge of forming, ranging from a simple net of air to a fireball that would have demolished half the walls in front of her, and in her present humor, she wanted to use one of them, to strike out with the Power. Her moods were uncertain of late, to say the least.

  The girl looked back over one shoulder, trembling, and if her eyes had been wide before, they bulged now. Her hands remained clamped to mouth as if to prevent another scream. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, tall and plump-bosomed in House Matherin’s gray-and-blue livery, she was not really a girl - Elsie might be four or five years older than herself - but the way she behaved made it dif­ficult to think of her any other way.

  “What is it, Elsie? And don’t tell me it was nothing. You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  The girl flinched. “I did,” she said unsteadily. That she gave Elayne no title showed just how unsteady she was. “Lady Nelein, as was Lord Aedmun’s grandmother. She died when I was little, but I remember even Lord Aedmun tiptoed around her temper, and the maids used to jump if she looked at them, and other ladies who visited, too, and the lords, as well. Everybody was afraid of her. She was right there in front of me, and she scowled so furious - ” She broke off, blushing, when Elayne laughed.

  It was more a laugh of relief than anything else. The Black Ajah had not somehow followed her to Lord Aedmun’s manor. There were no assassins waiting with knives in their fists, no sisters loyal to Elaida wanting to whisk her back to Tar Valon. Sometimes she dreamed about those things, about all of them in the same dream. She released saidar, reluctantly as always, regretful as that fullness of joy and life drained out of her. Matherin supported her, but Aedmun might have taken it amiss if she had ruined half his home place.

  “The dead cannot harm the living, Elsie,” she said gently. The more gently because she had laughed, not to mention wanting to box the ninny’s ears. “They’re not of this world anymore, and they can’t touch anything in it, including us.” The girl nodded, and dropped another curtsy, but by the size of her eyes and the trem­bling of her lips she was unconvinced. Elayne had no time to cosset her, though. “Fetch the men for my cases, Elsie,” she said firmly, “and don’t worry about ghosts.” With yet another curtsy the girl dashed off, her head swiveling anxiously in case the Lady Nelein leaped out of the paneled walls. Ghosts! The fool girl was a ninny!

  Matherin was an old House, if not large or strong, and the main stairs, leading down to the entry hall, were broad and trimmed with marble railings. The entry hall itself was a generous space, with gray-and-blue floor tiles and mirrored oil lamps hang­ing on chains from the ceiling twenty feet above. There was noth­ing in the way of gilding and little inlay, but ornately carved chests and cabinets stood along the sides of the hall, and two wall hang­ings were displayed on one wall. One showed men hunting leop­ards from horseback, a chancy business at best, and the other women of House Matherin presenting a sword to the first Queen of Andor, an event that Matherin treasured and that might or might not have actually happened.

  Aviendha was already down, pacing restlessly in the hall, and Elayne sighed at the sight. They would have shared a room, if not for the implication that Matherin could not provide adequately for two visitors of note, but Aviendha did not really understand that the smaller the House, the loftier the pride. Often, the smaller Houses possessed little more. Pride, she should have understood, since a fierce pride and strength all but shone from her. Straight-backed and even taller than Elayne, a thick dark shawl draped over her pale blouse and a folded gray head scarf holding back her long reddish hair, she was the very picture of a Wise One despiteonly a year older than Elayne. Wise Ones who could channel often appeared to be much younger than they were, and Aviendha had the dignity. At this moment she did, anyway, though the pair of them had giggled together often enough. Of course, her only jew­elry was a long, silver Kandori necklace, an amber brooch in the shape of a turtle and a wide ivory bracelet, and Wise Ones always wore festoons of necklaces and bracelets, but Aviendha was not a Wise One yet, merely an apprentice. Elayne never thought of Aviendha as merely anything, but it did present problems now and then. Sometimes she thought the Wise Ones considered her an apprentice of some sort as well, or at least a student. A silly thought, to be sure, but sometimes. . . .

  As Elayne reached the foot of the stairs, Aviendha adjusted her shawl and asked, “Did you sleep well?” Her tone was untroubled, but anxiety nestled around her green eyes. “You did not send for wine to help you sleep, did you? I made sure your wine was watered whe
n we ate, but I saw you looking at the wine pitcher.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Elayne said in a sickly sweet voice. “No, Mother. I was wondering how Aedmun got his hands on such a fine vintage, Mother. It was a shame to water it. And I drank the goat’s milk before I went to sleep.” If anything brought her to birthing sickness, it would be goat’s milk! And to think she used to like it.

  Aviendha planted her fists on her hips, such an embodiment of indignation that Elayne had to laugh. There were inconveniences to being with child, ranging from abrupt swings in her temper to tenderness in her breasts to always being tired, but the coddling was the worst, in some ways. Everyone in the Royal Palace knew she was pregnant - a good many had known before she did, courtesy of Min’s viewing and Min being too free with her tongue - and she did not think she could have been so mothered when she was an infant. Still, she put up with all the bother with as much grace as she could muster. Usually, she did. They were only trying to be helpful. She just wished every woman she knew did not believe that pregnancy had made her brainless. Nearly every woman she knew. Those who had never borne a child themselves were the worst.