Towers of Midnight

  Mat fell to his knees, spear clattering to the ground as he raised hands to his face. He felt slickness on his cheek, and he screamed again as his fingers felt the empty hole where his eye had been.

  He threw his head back and yelled inro the room, bellowing in agony.

  Eelfinn watched with their hottid, almost-human faces, eyes narrowed in ecstasy as they fed on something rising from Mat. An almost invisible vapor of red and white.

  "The savor!" one Eelfinn exclaimed.

  "So long!" cried another.

  "How it twists around him!" said the one who had taken his eye. "How it spins! Scents of blood in the air! And the gambler becomes the center of all! I can taste fate itself!"

  Mat howled, his hat falling back as he looked through a single, tear-muddled eye toward the darkness above. His eye socket seemed to be on fire! Blazing! He felt the blood and sera dry on his face, then flake away as he screamed. The Eelfinn drew in deeper breaths, looking drunk.

  Mat let out one final scream. Then he clenched his fists and shut his jaw, though he could not stop a low groan a growl of anger and pain from sounding deep within his throat. One of the Eelfinn males collapsed, as if overwhelmed. He was the one who had taken Mat's eye. He clutched it in his hands, curling around it. The others stumbled away, finding their way to pillars or the sides of the room, resting against them for support.

  Noal dashed to Mat's side, Thom following mote carefully, still cradling Moiraine.

  "Mat?" Noal asked.

  Teeth still clenched against the pain, Mat forced himself to reach back and snatch his hat off the white floor. He was not leaving his hat, burn him. It was a bloody good hat.

  He stumbled to his feet.

  "Your eye, Mat . . ." Thom said.

  "Doesn't matter," Mat said. Burn me for a fool. A bloody, goat-headed fool. He could barely think through the agony.

  His other eye blinked tears of pain. It really did seem he had lost half of the light of the world. It was like looking through a window with one half blackened. Despite the blazing pain in his left socket, he felt as he should be able to open his eye.

  But he could not. It was gone. And no Aes Sedai channeling could replace that.

  He pulled on his hat, defiantly ignoring the pain. He pulled the brim down on the left, shading the empty socket, then bent down and picked up his ashandarei, stumbling but managing it.

  "I should have been the one to pay," Thom said, voice bitter. "Not you, Mat. You didn't even want to come."

  "It was my choice," Mat said. "And I had to do it, anyway. It's one of the answers I was told by the Aelfinn when I first came. I'd have to give up half the light of the wotld to save the world. Bloody snakes."

  "To save the world?" Thom asked, looking down at Moitaine's peaceful face, het body wrapped in the patchwork cloak. He had left his pack on the floor.

  "She has something yet to do," Mat said. The pain was retreating somewhat. "We need her, Thom. Burn me, but it's probably something to do with Rand. Anyway, this had to happen."

  "And if it hadn't?" Thom asked. "She said she saw . . ."

  "It doesn't matter," Mat said, turning toward the doorway. The Eelfinn were still overwhelmed. One would think they had been the ones to lose an eye, looking at those expressions! Mat set his pack on his shoulder, leaving Thorn's where it sat. He could not carry two, not and be able to fight.

  "Now I've seen something," Noal said, looking ovet the room and its occupants. "Something no man has ever seen, I warrant. Should we kill them?"

  Mat shook his head. "Might break our bargain."

  "Will they keep it?" Thom asked.

  "Not if they can wiggle out of it," Mat said, then winced again. Light, but his head hurt! Well, he could not sit around and cry like he had lost his favorite foal. "Let's go."

  They made their way out of the gtand hall. Noal carried a torch, though he had reluctantly left his staff behind, favoring his shortsword.

  There were no openings in the hallway this time, and Mat heard Noal muttering at that. It felt right. He had demanded a straight pathway back. The Eelfinn were liars and cheats, but they seemed to be liars and cheats like the Aes Sedai. Mat had made his demands carefully this time, rather than spouting out whatever occurred to him.

  The hallway went on for a long while. Noal was growing more and more nervous; Mat kept on forward, footsteps in time with his throbbing skull. How would missing an eye change how he fought? He would have to be more careful of that left side. And he would have trouble judging distance now. In fact, he had that trouble now walls and floor were disturbingly hard to judge.

  Thom clutched Moiraine close to his chest, like a miser holding his gold. What was she to him, anyway? Mat had assumed that Thom was along for the same reason that Mat was because it felt as if it needed to be done. That tenderness in Thorn's face was not what Mat had expected to see.

  The hallway ended abruptly in a five-sided arch. The room beyond appeared to be the one with the melted slag on the floor. No signs of the fight before were visible, no blood on the floor.

  Mat took a deep breath and led the way through. He tensed as he saw Eelfinn here, crouching or standing in the shadows, hissing and growling. They did not move, did not strike, though some yipped quietly. Shadows made them seem even more like foxes. If Mat looked right at one, he could almost mistake them for ordinary men and women, but the way they moved in darkness, sometimes on all fours . . . No man walked like that, with the anxious tension of a chained predator. Like an angry hound, separated from you by a fence and fiercely eager to get to your throat.

  But they held to their bargain. None attacked, and Mat began to feel right good about himself once they reached the other side of the room. He had beaten them. Last time, they had gotten the better end, but that was only because they had fought like cowards, punching a man who did not know the fight had started.

  This time he had been ready. He had shown them that Matrim Cauthon was no fool.

  They entered a corridor with the faintly glowing white steam at the top. The floor was of those black, interlocking triangles, curved on the sides like scales. Mat began to breathe easier as they entered one of the rooms with the twisting steam rising from the corners, though his eye socket still hurt like the nethers of a freshly gelded stallion.

  He stopped in the center of the room, but then continued forward. He had demanded a straight pathway. That was what he would get. No doubling back and forth this time. "Blood and bloody ashes!" Mat said, realizing something as he walked.

  "What?" Thom asked, looking up from Moiraine with alarm.

  "My dice," Mat said. "I should have included getting my dice back in the bargain."

  "But we discovered you don't need them to guide us."

  "It's not about that," Mat grumbled. "I like those dice." He pulled his hat down again, looking down the hallway ahead. Was that motion he saw? All the way in the distance, a good dozen rooms away? No, it must be a trick of the shadows and the shifting steam.

  "Mat," Noal said. "I've mentioned that my Old Tongue isn't what it once was. But I think I understood what you said. The bargain you made."

  "Yes?" Mat said, only half-listening. Had he been speaking in the Old Tongue again? Burn him. And what was that down the hallway?

  "Well," Noal said, "you said as part of the bargain something like 'you foxes can't knock us down or try to kill us or anything.' "

  "Sure did," Mat said.

  "You said foxes, Mat," Noal said. "The foxes can't hurt us."

  "And they let us pass."

  "But what about the others?" Noal asked. "The Aelfinn? If the Eelfinn can't hurt us, are the Aelfinn required to leave us be as well?"

  The shadows in the far-distant corridor resolved into figures carrying long, sinuous bronze swords with curving blades. Tall figures, wearing layers of yellow cloth, the hair on their heads straight and black. Dozens of them, who moved with an unnatural gtace, eyes staring forward. Eyes with pupils that were vettical slits.

 
Bloody and bloody ashes!

  "Run!" Mat yelled.

  "Which direction?" Noal asked, alarmed.

  "Any direction!" Mat yelled. "So long as it's away from them!"

  CHAPTER 55

  The One Left Behind

  A loud boom shook the hallways, making the entire structure rumble. Mat stumbled, leaning against the wall for support as smoke and chips of rock sprayed out of the opening behind them.

  He ducked his head around and looked down the hallway as Thom and Noal ran onward, Thom clutching Moiraine. Noal had tossed his torch aside and gotten out a drum to try to soothe the Aelfinn. That had not worked, and so Mat had turned to the exploding cylinders and nightflowers.

  Light, but the cylinders were deadly! He saw corpses of Aelfinn lying scattered through the hallway, their glistening skin ripped and torn, evil-looking smoke steaming from their blood. Others slid out of doorways and alcoves, pushing through the smoke. They walked on two legs, but they seemed to slither as they walked, waving back and forth through the hallway, their hissing growing angrier and angrier.

  Heart pounding, Mat charged after Mat and Noal. "They still following?" Noal called.

  "What do you think?" Mat said, catching up to the other two. "Light, but those snakes are fasti"

  Mat and the other two burst into another room, identical to all of the others. Vaguely off-scale square walls, steam rising from the corners, black triangle-pattern floor tiles. There was no triangular opening at the center to get them out. Blood and bloody ashes.

  Mat glanced at the three ways out, holding his ashandarei in sweaty hands. They could not do the same trick as before, bouncing back and forth between the same two rooms. Not with the Aelfinn behind them. He needed to invoke his luck. He prepared to spin, and

  "We have to keep moving!" Noal yelled. He had stopped by the doorway, dancing from one toe to the next in anxiety. "Mat! If those snakes catch us . . ."

  Mat could hear them behind, hissing. Like the rush of a river. He picked a direction and ran.

  "Throw another cylinder!" Thom said.

  "That was the last one!" Mat said. "And we've only got three night-flowers." His pack was feeling light.

  "Music doesn't work on them," Noal said, throwing aside his drum. "They're too angry."

  Mat cursed and lit a nightflower with a striker, then tossed it over his shoulder. The three of them barreled into another room, then continued on directly through the doorway on the other side.

  "I don't know what way to go, lad," Thom said. He sounded so winded! "We're lost."

  "I've been picking directions at random!" Mat said.

  "Only you can't go backward," Thom said. "That's probably the direction the luck wants us to go!"

  The nightflower boomed, the explosion echoing through the corridors. It was not nearly as great as that of the cylinders. Mat risked a glance over his shoulder, seeing smoke and sparks fly through the tunnel. The fire slowed the Aelfinn, but soon the more daring members of the band slithered through the smoke.

  "Maybe we can negotiate!" Thom panted.

  "They look too angry!" Noal said.

  "Mat," Thom said, "you mentioned that they knew about your eye. They answered a question about it."

  "They told me I'd bloody give up half the light of the world," Mat said, skull still throbbing. "I didn't want to know, but they told me anyway."

  "What else did they say?" Thom asked. "Anything that can be a clue? How did you get out last time?"

  "They threw me out," Mat said.

  He and the others burst into another room no doorway then dashed out the left-hand exit. What Thom had said before was correct. They probably needed to double back. But they could not, not with that nest of vipers following so closely!

  "They threw me out of the dootframe in the Aelfinn realm," Mat said, feeling winded. "It leads to the basement of the Stone of Tear."

  "Then maybe we can find that!" Thom said. "Your luck, Mat. Have it take us to the Aelfinn realm."

  It might work. "All right," he said, closing his eye and spinning about.

  Mat pointed in a direction and opened his eye. He was pointing directly toward the gang of Aelfinn, weaving up the corridor toward them.

  "Bloody ashes!" Mat cursed, turning and running away from them, picking another corridor at random.

  Thom joined him, but was looking very wearied. Mat could take Moiraine from him for a while, but Thom would be so tired he would not be able to fight. The Aelfinn were going to run them ragged, as they had Birgitte centuries ago.

  In the next room, Thom stumbled to a halt, drooping, though he still held Moitaine. Like all of the chambers, this one had fout ways out. But the only way that mattered was one directly toward the Aelfinn. The one they couldn't take.

  "There's no winning this game," Thom said, panting. "Even if we cheat, there's no winning."

  "Thom . . ." Mat said urgently. He handed Thom his ashandarei, then picked up Moiraine. She was so light. A good thing, too, otherwise Thom would never have lasted as long as he had.

  Noal glanced at them, then down the corridor. The Aelfinn would be on them in moments. Noal met Mat's eye. "Give me your pack. I need those nightflowers."

  "But "

  "No arguing!" Noal said. He dashed over and snagged one of the nightflowers. It had a vety short fuse. He lit it and tossed it into the corridor. The Aelfinn were close enough that Mat could hear them scream and hiss as they saw the firework.

  The boom came, sparks spurting out of the corridor and lighting the datk room. Where sparks came close to one of the rising columns of steam, that steam shied back, dancing away from the flames. The air smelled strongly of smoke and sulphur. Light, his socket was throbbing again.

  "Now, Mat," Noal said, Mat's ears still tinging from the blast, "give me the pack."

  "What are you doing?" Mat said warily as Noal took the pack, then fished out the last nightflower.

  "You can see it, Mat," Noal said. "We need more time. You have to get far enough ahead of those vipers that you can double back a few times, let your luck work you out of this."

  Noal nodded to one of the corridors "These corridors are narrow. Good choke points. A man could stand there and only have to fight one or two at a time. He'd last maybe a few minutes."

  "Noal!" Thom said, wheezing, standing with his hands on his knees, near Mat's ashandarei leaning against the wall. "You can't do this."

  "Yes I can," Noal said. He stepped up to the corridor, beyond which the Aelfinn gathered. "Thom, you're in no shape to fight. Mat, you're the one whose luck can find the way out. Neither of you can stay. But I can."

  "There will be no coming back for you," Mat said grimly. "As soon as we double back, this flaming place will take us somewhere else."

  Noal met his eye, that weathered face determined. "I know. A price, Mat. We knew this place would demand a price. Well, I've seen a lot of things, done a lot of things. I've been used, Mat, one too many times. This is as good a place as any to meet the end."

  Mat stood up, lifting Moiraine, then nodded in respect to Noal. "Come on, Thom."

  "But "

  "Come on." Mat barked, dashing to one of the other doorways. Thom hesitated, then cursed and joined him, carrying Mat's torch in one hand and his ashandarei in the other. Noal stepped into the corridor behind, hefting his shortsword. Shapes moved in the smoke beyond him.

  "Mat," Noal called, glancing over his shoulder.

  Mat waved Thom on, but hesitated, looking back.

  "If you ever meet a Malkieri," Noal said, "you tell him Jain Farstrider died clean."

  "I will, Jain," Mat said. "May the light hold you."

  Noal turned back to face the Aelfinn and Mat left him. There was another boom as a nightflower went off. Then Mat heard Noal's voice echo down the corridor as he screamed a battlecry. It was not in any tongue Mat had ever heard.

  He and Thom entered another chamber. Thom was weeping, but Mat held his tears. Noal would die with honor. Once, Mat would have thought th
at kind of thinking foolish what good was honor if you were dead? But he had too many memories of soldiers, had spent too much time with men who fought and bled for that honor, to discredit such notions now.

  He closed his eye and spun, Moiraine's weight almost unbalancing him. He picked a direction and found himself pointing back the way they had come. He charged down the corridor, Thom following.

  When they reached the end of the cottidor, it did not open into the toom where they had left Noal. This room was round and was filled with yellow columns, made in the shape of enormous vines twisting around one anothet with an open cylinder of space at the center. Coiled lamp stands held globes of white that gave the room a soft light, and the floor was tiled in the pattern of white and yellow strips, spiraling out from the center. It smelled pungently of dry snakeskin.

  Matrim Cauthon, you're no hero, he thought, glancing over his shoulder. That man you left behind, he's the hero. Light illumine you, Noal.

  "Now what?" Thom asked. He seemed to have recovered some of his strength, so Mat handed back Moiraine and took his spear. There were only two doorways in this room, the one behind and one directly across the chamber. But Mat spun with his eye closed anyway. The luck pointed them to the doorway opposite the one they had entered.

  They took it. The windows in this hallway looked out at the jungle, and they were now down in the thick of it. Mat occasionally spotted those three spires. The place where they had been moments ago, the place where Noal bled.

  "This is where you got your answers, isn't it?" Thom asked. Mat nodded.

  "You think I could get some of those myself?" Thom asked. "Three questions. Any answers you like. . . ."

  "You don't want them," Mat said, tugging down the brim of his hat. "Trust me, you don't. They aren't answers. They're threats. Promises.

  We "

  Thom stopped beside him. In Thorn's arms, Moiraine was beginning to stir. She let out a soft groan, eyes still closed. But that was not what made Mat freeze.

  He could see another circular yellow room up ahead. Sitting in the middle of that room was a redstone doorway. Or what was left of it.