Crossroads of Twilight

  “It has to be done,” Aram said, half pleading, half demanding. He was on Masema’s other side, clutching the edges of his green cloak as if to keep his hands from the sword on his back. His eyes were almost as hot as Masema’s. “You taught me that a man does what he must.”

  Perrin forced his fists to unknot. What had to be done, for Faile.

  Berelain and the Aes Sedai came pushing through the crowd, Berelain wrinkling her nose slightly at the sight of the man stretched out between the pegs. The three Aes Sedai might have been looking at a piece of wood for all their expression. Edarra and Sulin were with them, neither more affected. Some of the Ghealdanin soldiers frowned at the two Aiel women and muttered under their breath. Masema’s rumpled, dirty-faced men glared at Aiel and Aes Sedai alike, but most edged away from the three Warders, and those who did not were pulled away by their companions. Some fools knew the limits of stupidity. Masema glared at Berelain with burning eyes before deciding to pretend she did not exist. Some fools knew no limits.

  Bending, Perrin untied the rag around the pegged man’s mouth and tugged the wad from between his teeth. He just man­aged to snatch his hand back from a snap as vicious as any Slayer could have given.

  Immediately, the Aielman threw back his head and began to sing in a deep, clear voice:

  “Wash the spears;

  while the sun climbs high.

  Wash the spears;

  while the sun falls low.

  Wash the spears

  who fears to die?

  Wash the spears;

  no one I know!”

  Masema’s laughter rose in the middle of the singing. Perrin’s hackles rose, too. He had never heard Masema laugh before. It was not a pleasant sound.

  He did not want to lose a finger, so he pulled his axe out of its belt loop and carefully used the top of the axe head against the man’s chin to push his mouth shut. Eyes the color of the sky looked up at him out of a sun-dark face, unafraid. The man smiled.

  “I don’t ask you to betray your people,” Perrin said. His throat hurt with the effort of keeping his voice steady. “You Shaido cap­tured some women. All I want to know is how to get them back. One is named Faile. She’s as tall as one of your women, with dark tilted eyes, a strong nose and a bold mouth. A beautiful woman. You’d remember her, if you had seen her. Have you?” Pulling the axe away, he straightened.

  The Shaido stared at him for a moment, then raised his head and began to sing again, never taking his eyes from Perrin. It was a jolly song, with the rollicking sound of a dance:

  “I once met a man who was far from home.

  His eyes were yellow and his wits were stone.

  He asked me to hold smoke in my hand,

  and said he could show me a watery land.

  He put his head in the ground and his feet in the air,

  and said he could dance like a woman fair.

  He said he could stand till he turned to stone.

  When I blinked my eyes, he was gone.”

  Letting his head fall back, the Shaido chuckled, deep and rich. He could have been lounging at ease on a feather bed.

  “If. . . . If you can’t do this,” Aram said desperately, “then go away. I’ll help see to it.”

  What had to be done. Perrin looked at the faces around him. Arganda, scowling with hatred, at him as much as the Shaido, now. Masema, stinking of madness and filled with a scornful hate. You must be willing and able to hurt a stone. Edarra, her face as unread­able as the Aes Sedai’s, arms folded calmly beneath her breasts. Even Shaido know how to embrace pain. It will take days. Sulin, the scar across her cheek still pale on her leathery skin, her gaze level and her scent implacable. They will yield slowly and as little as possible. Berelain, smelling of judgment, a ruler who had sen­tenced men to death and never lost a night’s sleep. What had to be done. Willing and able to hurt a stone. Embrace pain. Oh, Light, Faile.

  The axe was as light as a feather rising in his hand, and came down like a hammer on the anvil, the heavy blade shearing through the Shaido’s left wrist.

  The man grunted in pain, then reared up convulsively with a snarl, deliberately spraying the blood that gouted from his wrist across Perrin’s face.

  “Heal him,” Perrin said to the Aes Sedai, stepping back. He did not try to wipe his face. The blood was seeping into his beard. He felt hollow. He could not have lifted the axe again if he had to for his life.

  “Are you mad?” Masuri said angrily. “We cannot give the man back his hand!”

  “I said, Heal him!” he growled.

  Seonid was already moving, though, lifting her skirts to glide across the ground and kneel at the man’s head. He was biting at his severed wrist, trying futilely to stem the flow of blood with the pressure of his teeth. But there was no fear in his eyes. Or in his smell. None.

  Seonid gripped the Shaido’s head, and suddenly he convulsed again, flinging his arm out wildly. The spray of blood dwindled as he jerked, and was gone before he slumped back to the ground, gray-faced. Unsteadily, he raised the stump of his left arm to look at the smooth skin that now covered the end. If there was a scar, Perrin could not see it. The man bared teeth at him. He still did not smell afraid. Seonid slumped, too, as if she had strained to her limit. Alharra and Wynter took a step forward, and she waved them away, rising by herself with a heavy sigh.

  “I’ve been told you can hold out for days and still say next to nothing,” Perrin said. His voice sounded too loud in his ears. “I don’t have time for you to show how tough you are, or how brave. I know you’re brave and tough. But my wife’s been a prisoner too long. You’ll be separated and asked about some women. Whether you’ve seen them and where. That’s all I want to know. There’ll be no hot coals or anything else; just questions. But if anybody refuses to answer, or if your answers are too different, then everybody loses something.” He was surprised to find that he could lift the axe after all. The blade was smeared with red.

  “Two hands and two feet,” he said coldly. Light, he sounded like ice. He felt like ice to his bones. “That means you get four chances to answer the same. And if you all hold out, I still won’t kill you. I’ll find a village to leave you in, some place that will let you beg, somewhere the boys will toss a coin to the fierce Aielmen with no hands or feet. You think on it and decide whether it’s worth keeping my wife from me.”

  Even Masema was staring at him as if he had never before seen the man standing there with an axe. When he turned to go, Masema’s men and the Ghealdanin alike parted in front of him as though to let a whole fist of Trollocs through.

  He found the hedge of sharpened stakes in front of him, and the forest a hundred paces or so beyond, but he did not change direction. Carrying the axe, he walked until huge trees surrounded him and the smell of the camp was left behind. The smell of blood he carried with him, sharp and metallic. There was no running from that.

  He could not have said how long he walked through the snow. He barely noticed the sharpening slant of the bars of light that sliced the shadows beneath the forest canopy. The blood was thick on his face, in his beard. Beginning to dry. How many times had he said he would do anything to get Faile back? A man did what he had to. For Faile, anything.

  Abruptly, he raised the axe behind his head in both hands and hurled it as hard as he could. It spun end over end, and slammed into the thick trunk of an oak with a solid thcunk.

  Letting out a breath that seemed locked in his lungs, he sank down on a rough stone outcrop that stuck up as high and broad as a bench, and put his elbows on his knees. “You can show yourself now, Elyas,” he said wearily. “I can smell you there.”

  The other man stepped lightly out of the shadows, yellow eyes glowing faintly beneath the wide brim of his hat. The Aiel were noisy, compared to him. Adjusting his long knife, he took a seat beside Perrin on the outcrop, but for a time he merely sat combing his fingers through the gray-streaked beard that fanned across his chest. He nodded toward the axe stuck in the side of the o
ak. “I told you once to keep that till you got to like using it too much. Did you start liking it? Back there?”

  Perrin shook his head hard. “No! Not that! But. . . .”

  “But what, boy? I think you almost have Masema scared. Only, you smell scared, too.”

  “About time he was scared of something,” Perrin muttered, shrugging uncomfortably. Some things were hard to give voice. Maybe it was time to, though. “The axe. I didn’t notice it, the first time; only looking back. That was the night I met Gaul, and the Whitecloaks tried to kill us. Later, fighting Trollocs in the Two Rivers, I wasn’t sure. But then, at Dumai’s Wells, I was. I’m afraid in a battle, Elyas, afraid and sad, because maybe I’ll never see Faile again.” His heart clenched till his chest hurt. Faile. “Only. . . . I’ve heard Grady and Neald talk about how it is, holding the One Power. They say they feel more alive. I’m too frightened to spit, in a battle, but I feel more alive than any time except when I’m hold­ing Faile. I don’t think I could stand it if I came to feel that way about what I just did back there. I don’t think Faile would have me back if I came to that.”

  Elyas snorted. “I don’t think you have that in you, boy. Listen, danger takes different men in different ways. Some are cold as clockwork, but you never struck me as the cold sort. When your heart starts pounding, it heats your blood. Stands to reason it heightens your senses, too. Makes you aware. Maybe you’ll die in a few minutes, maybe in a heartbeat, but you’re not dead now, and you know it from your teeth to your toenails. Just the way things are. Doesn’t mean you like it.”

  “I would like to believe that,” Perrin said simply.

  “Live as long as I have,” Elyas replied in a dry voice, “and you’ll believe. Till then, just take it that I’ve lived longer than you have, and I’ve been there before you.”

  The two of them sat looking at the axe. Perrin wanted to believe. The blood on his axe looked black, now. Blood had never looked so black before. How long had it been? From the angle of the light sifting through the trees, the sun was falling.

  His ears caught the crunch of hooves in the snow, slowly com­ing toward him. Minutes later, Neald and Aram appeared, the one­time Tinker pointing out tracks and the Asha’man shaking his head impatiently. It was a clear trail, but in truth, Perrin would not have bet on Neald being able to follow it. He was a city man.

  “Arganda thought we ought to wait till your blood cooled,” Neald said, leaning on his saddle and studying Perrin. “Me, I think it can’t get any cooler.” He nodded, a touch of satisfaction around his mouth. He was accustomed to people being afraid of him, because of his black coat and what it represented.

  “They talked,” Aram said, “and they all gave the same answers.” His scowl said he did not like the answers. “I think the threat of leaving them to beg frightened them more than your axe. But they say they’ve never seen the Lady Faile. Or any of the oth­ers. We could try the coals again. They might remember then.” Did he sound eager? To find Faile, or to use the coals?

  Elyas grimaced. “They’ll just give you back the answers you’ve already given them, now. Tell you what you want to hear. It was a small chance, anyway. There’s thousands of Shaido and thousands of prisoners. A man could live his whole life among that many people and never meet more than a few hundred to remember.”

  “Then we have to kill them,” Aram said grimly. “Sulin said the Maidens made sure to take them when they had no weapons, so they could be questioned. They won’t just settle down to be gai’shain. If even one escapes, he can let the Shaido know we’re here. Then they’ll be coming after us.”

  Perrin’s joints felt rusted, aching as he stood up. He could not just let the Shaido go. “They can be guarded, Aram.” Haste had almost lost him Faile completely, and he had been hasty again. Hasty. Such a mild word for cutting off a man’s hand. And to no purpose. He had always tried to think carefully and move carefully. He had to think now, but every thought hurt. Faile was lost in a sea of white-clad prisoners. “Maybe other gai’shain would know where she is,” he muttered, turning back toward the camp. But how to put his hands on any of the Shaido’s gai’shain? They were never allowed outside the camp except under guard.

  “What about that, boy?” Elyas asked.

  Perrin knew what he meant without looking. The axe. “Leave it for whoever finds it.” His voice turned harsh. “Maybe some fool gleeman will make a story out of it.” He strode away toward the camp, never looking back. With its empty loop, the thick belt around his waist was too light. All to no purpose.

  Three days later the carts returned from So Habor, heavy laden, and Balwer entered Perrin’s tent with a tall unshaven man, wearing a dirty woolen coat and a sword that looked much better cared for. At first, Perrin did not recognize him behind an untrimmed month’s growth of beard. Then he caught the man’s scent.

  “I never expected to see you again,” he said. Balwer blinked, as much as a gasp of startlement from anyone else. Doubtless the bird-like little man had been looking forward to presenting a sur­prise.

  “I’ve been searching for . . . for Maighdin,” Tallanvor said roughly, “but the Shaido moved faster than I could. Master Balwer says you know where she is.”

  Balwer gave the younger man a sharp look, but his voice remained as dry and emotionless as his scent. “Master Tallanvor reached So Habor just before I left, my Lord. It was the merest chance that I encountered him. But perhaps a fortunate chance. He may have some allies for you. I will let him tell it.” Tallanvor frowned at his boots and said nothing.

  “Allies?” Perrin prompted. “Nothing less than an army will be much use, but I’ll take any aid you can bring.”

  Tallanvor looked at Balwer, who returned a half bow and a blandly encouraging smile. The unshaven man drew a deep breath. “Fifteen thousand Seanchan, near enough. Most are Taraboners, actually, but they ride under Seanchan banners. And. . . . And they have at least a dozen damane.” His voice quickened with urgency, a need to finish before Perrin could cut him off. “I know it’s like taking help from the Dark One, but they’re hunting the Shaido, too, and I’d take the Dark One’s help to free Maighdin.”

  For a moment, Perrin stared at the two men, Tallanvor ner­vously thumbing his sword hilt, Balwer like a sparrow waiting to see which way a cricket would hop. Seanchan. And damane. Yes, that would be like taking the Dark One’s help. “Sit down and tell me about these Seanchan,” he said.

  CHAPTER 28

  A Cluster of Rosebuds

  From the day they left Ebou Dar, traveling with Valan Luca’s Grand Traveling Show and Magnificent Display of Marvels and Wonders was every bit as bad as Mat’s darkest thoughts had made it. For one thing, it rained almost every day for a few hours and once for three days running, cold winter rain in down­pours little short of snow and icy drizzles that slowly soaked a coat through and left you shivering before you knew it. Water ran off the hard-packed road as if it had been paved in stone, leaving at worst a thin slick of mud, but that long train of wagons and horses and people covered little enough ground when the sun shone. In the beginning, the showfolk had been all eagerness to leave the city where lightning sank ships in the night and strange murders had everyone looking over their shoulders, to be away from a jealous Seanchan nobleman who would be hunting his wife furiously and might take out his anger on anyone associated with spiriting her out her of his clutches. In the beginning, they pressed ahead as fast as the horses could pull the wagons, urging the animals for a quicker step, another mile. But every mile seemed to make them feel that much farther from danger, that much safer, and by the first afternoon. . . .

  “Have to take care of the horses,” Luca explained, watching the team unhitched from his ridiculously painted wagon and led away to the horselines through a light drizzle. The sun still sat little more than halfway down to the horizon, but already gray tendrils were rising from the smoke holes of tents and the metal chimneys of the box-like living wagons. “Nobody’s chasing us, and it’s a long way to Lugard
. Good horses are hard to come by, and expensive.” Luca gave a sour frown and shook his head. Mention of expense always soured him. He was tight with a penny, except where his wife was concerned. “Not many places between here and there worth stopping more than a day. Most villages won’t provide a full crowd even if the whole population turns out, and you can never tell how a town will be until you set up. You’re not paying me enough to give up what I can earn, though.” Hitching his embroi­dered crimson cloak closer against the damp, he glanced over his shoulder toward his wagon. The smell of something bitter drifted through the light rain. Mat was not sure he would want to eat any­thing Luca’s wife cooked. “You’re certain nobody is chasing us, right, Cauthon?”

  Irritably tugging his woolen cap lower, Mat stalked away through the brightly colored sprawl of tents and wagons grinding his teeth. Not paying enough? For what he had offered, Luca should have been willing to run his animals all the way to Lugard. Well, not exactly run - he did not want to kill horses, after all - but that puffed-up popinjay should have been willing to bloody push hard.

  Not far from Luca’s wagon, Chel Vanin was seated on a three-legged stool that he overlapped, stirring some sort of dark stew in a small kettle that hung over a small fire. Rain dripped into the kettle from the drooping brim of his hat, but the fat man did not seem to notice, or care. Gorderan and Fergin, two of the Redarms, grumbled curses as they drove pegs into the muddy ground for the guy ropes of the dirty-brown canvas tent they shared with Harnan and Metwyn. And with Vanin, too, but Vanin possessed skills that he considered put him above raising tents, and the Redarms agreed with only a little reluctance. Vanin was an experienced farrier, but more importantly, he was the best tracker and the best horsethief in the country, unlikely as that seemed to look at him, and you could name the country you chose.