Crossroads of Twilight

  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.

  There was no need to go very far in. Coarse sacks filled the darkness, in high slant-sided stacks on low wooden platforms to keep the sacks off the stone floor. Rows and rows of stacks piled nearly to the ceiling, and likely the same on the floor above. If not, this building still held enough grain to feed his people for weeks. Walking to the nearest stack, he drove his belt knife into a pale brown sack and sliced down through the tough jute fibers. A flood of barleycorns spilled out. And, clear in the glow of Annoura’s bril­liant light, wriggling black specks. Weevils, almost as many as there were barleycorns. Their scent was sharper than that of the barley. Weevils. He wished the hair on his neck would stop trying to rise. The cold should have been enough to kill weevils.

  That one sack was proof, and his nose knew the smell of wee­vils, now, but he moved to another stack, then another, and another, each time slicing open one sack. Each released a spill of pale brown barley and black weevils.

  The merchants were standing huddled together in the door­way, daylight behind them, but Annoura’s light cast their faces in sharp relief. Worried faces. Despairing faces.

  “We would be most happy to winnow each sack we sell,” Mis­tress Arnon said unsteadily. “For only a slight additional - ”

  “For half the last price I offered,” Berelain cut in sharply. Wrinkling her nose in disgust, she moved her skirts clear of the weevils scuttling among the grain on the floor. “You will never get all of them.”

  “And no millet,” Perrin said grimly. His men needed food, and so did the soldiers, but the millet grains were hardly bigger than the weevils. Winnow as they would, he would bring back weevils and millet in equal weight. “We’ll take extra beans instead. But they get winnowed, too.”

  Suddenly someone shrieked outside in the street. Not a cat or a rat, but a man in terror. Perrin did not even realize he had drawn his axe until he found the haft in his hand as he pushed through the merchants in the doorway. They huddled closer together, lick­ing their lips and not even trying to see who had screamed.

  Kireyin was backed up against the wall of a warehouse across the way, his shining helmet with the white plume lying on the pavement beside his winecup. The man’s sword was half out of the scabbard, but he seemed frozen, staring with bulging eyes at the wall of the building Perrin had just come out of. Perrin touched his arm, and he jumped.

  “There was a man,” the Ghealdanin said uncertainly. “He was just there. He looked at me, and. . . .” Kireyin scrubbed a hand over his face. Despite the cold, sweat glistened on his forehead. “He walked through the wall. He did. You must believe me.” Someone moaned; one of the merchants, Perrin thought.

  “I saw the man, too,” Seonid said behind him, and it was his turn to give a start. His nose was useless in this place!

  Giving the wall Kireyin had indicated a last glance, the Aes Sedai stepped away from it with a palpable unwillingness. Her Warders were tall men, towering over her, but they stayed only far enough away to gain room to draw their swords. Though what the grim-eyed Warders were to fight if Seonid was serious, Perrin could not imagine.

  “I find it difficult to lie, Lord Perrin,” Seonid said dryly when he expressed doubt, but her tone quickly became as serious as her face, and her eyes were so intent that they alone began to make Perrin feel uneasy. “The dead are walking in So Habor. Lord Cowlin fled the town for fear of his wife’s spirit. It seems there was doubt as to how she died. Hardly a man or woman in the town has not seen someone dead, and a good many have seen more than one. Some say people have died from the touch of someone dead. I can­not verify that, but people have died of fright, and others because of it. No one goes out at night in So Habor, or walks into a room unannounced. People strike out at shadows and surprises with whatever is to hand, and sometimes they have found a husband, wife or neighbor dead at their feet. This is not hysteria or a tale to frighten children, Lord Perrin. I have never heard of the like, but it is real. You must leave one of us here to do what we can.”

  Perrin shook his head slowly. He could not afford to lose an Aes Sedai if he was to free Faile. Mistress Arnon began to weep even before he said, “So Habor will have to face its dead alone.”

  But fear of the dead only explained so much. Maybe people were too frightened to think of washing, but it seemed unlikely that fear would take everyone that way. They just did not seem to care anymore. And weevils thriving in winter, in freezing cold? There was worse wrong in So Habor than spirits walking, and
every instinct told him to leave at a dead run, without looking back. He purely wished that he could.

  CHAPTER 27

  What Must Be Done

  The winnowing took place on the snowy eastern riverbank, where there was nothing to cut the sharp north wind. Men and women from the town hauled sacks across the bridges in four-horse wagons and one-horse carts even barrows pushed by hand. Normally buyers brought their own wagons to the warehouses, or at worst the grain and dried beans only had to be carried as far as the wharf, but Perrin had no intention of send­ing his cart drivers into So Habor. Or anyone else, for that matter. Whatever was wrong in that town might be catching. Anyway, the drivers were uneasy enough as it was, frowning at the dirty townsfolk, people who never spoke, but laughed nervously when they accidentally met someone’s eye. The grimy-faced merchants overseeing the work were no better. In the drivers’ native Cairhien, merchants were clean, respectable people, at least outwardly, who very seldom twitched just because someone moved at the corner of their vision. Between merchants with a tendency to peer suspi­ciously at anyone they did not know, and townsfolk who dragged their feet recrossing the bridges, clearly reluctant to go back inside their own walls, the cart drivers were right on edge. They gathered in little clusters, pale, dark-clad men and women, gripping the hilts of their belt knives and peering at the caller locals as if at murderous madmen.

  Perrin rode about slowly, watching the winnowing, examining the row of carts that stretched up the rise and out of sight waiting to be loaded, or the town’s wagons and carts and barrows rolling across the bridges. He made sure he was in plain view. He was not sure why the sight of him pretending to be unconcerned should settle anyone else’s nerves, yet it seemed to. Enough that no one started running, at least, though they continued to look askance at the people of So Habor. They kept their distance, too, and just as well. Let the notion that some of those folk might not be alive get into the Cairhienin’s heads, and half would whip up their cart horses to flee then and there. Most of the rest might not wait much past dark. That sort of tale could twist anyone’s head, come night. The wan sun, nearly hidden by gray overcast, still sat less than halfway to its noonday peak, yet increasingly it was obvious they would have to be there through the night. Maybe more than one. His jaw knotted with the effort of not grinding his teeth, and even Neald began to avoid his scowls. He did not snap at anyone. He just wanted to.