“Not a war. Me. I can be in Caemlyn in an hour. A raid—right, Mat?— a raid, not a war. I’ll rip Rahvin’s heart out.” His voice was a hammer. He felt as if acid filled his veins. “I could wish I had Elaida’s thirteen sisters to take with me, to smother him, and bring him to justice. Tried and hung for murder. That would be justice. But he’ll just have to die however I can kill him.”
“Tomorrow,” Moiraine said softly.
Rand glared at her. But she was right. Tomorrow would be better. A night to let his rage cool. He needed to be cold when he faced Rahvin. Now he wanted to seize saidin and lay about him, destroying. Asmodean’s music had changed again, to a tune that street musicians in the city had played during the civil war. You could still hear it sometimes when a Cairhienin noble passed. “The Fool Who Thought He Was King.” “Get out, Natael. Get out!”
Asmodean straightened smoothly, bowing, but his face could have done for snow, and he crossed the room quickly, as if uncertain what one second more might bring. He always pushed, but perhaps this time he had pushed too far. As he opened the door, Rand spoke again.
“I will see you tonight. Or I will see you dead.”
Asmodean’s bow was not so graceful this time. “As my Lord Dragon commands,” he said hoarsely, and hurriedly pulled the door shut with him on the other side.
The three women looked at Rand, expressionless, not blinking.
“The rest of you go, too.” Mat practically bounded toward the door. “Not you. I have things to say to you yet.”
Mat stopped short, sighing loudly and fiddling with his medallion. He was the only one who had moved.
“You do not have thirteen Aes Sedai,” Aviendha said, “but you have two. And myself. I may not know as much as Moiraine Sedai, but I am as strong as Egwene, and I am no stranger to the dance.” She meant the dance of spears, what the Aiel called battle.
“Rahvin is mine,” he told her quietly. Maybe Elayne could forgive him a little if he at least avenged her mother. Probably not, but maybe he could forgive himself. A little. He forced his hands to stay at his sides, to not make fists.
“Will you draw a line on the ground for him to step over?” Egwene asked. “Put a chip on your shoulder? Have you considered that Rahvin might not be alone if he calls himself King of Andor now? Much good it will do when you appear if one of his guards puts an arrow through your heart.”
He could remember wishing she would not shout at him, but it had been so much easier then. “Did you think I meant to go alone?” He had; he had never thought of anyone to guard his back, though now he could hear a small whisper, He likes to come from behind, or at your flanks. He could hardly think clearly at all. His anger seemed to have a life of its own, stoking the fires that kept it boiling. “But not you. This is dangerous. Moiraine can come if she wishes.”
Egwene and Aviendha did not look at one another before stepping forward, but they moved as one, not stopping until they were so close even Aviendha had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“Moiraine can come if she wishes,” Egwene said.
If her voice was smooth ice, Aviendha’s was molten stone. “But it is too dangerous for us.”
“Have you become my father? Is your name Bran al’Vere?”
“If you have three spears, do you put two aside because they are newer made?”
“I do not want to risk you,” he said stiffly.
Egwene arched her eyebrows. “Oh?” That was all.
“I am not gai’shain to you.” Aviendha bared her teeth. “You will never choose what risks I take, Rand al’Thor. Never. Know it now.”
He could . . . What? Wrap them in saidin and leave them? He still could not shield them. So they might well snare him in return. A fine mess, all because they wanted to be stubborn.
“You have thought of guards,” Moiraine said, “but what if who is with Rahvin is Semirhage, or Graendal? Or Lanfear? These two might overwhelm one such, but could you face her and Rahvin together alone?”
There had been something in her voice when she said Lanfear’s name. Was she afraid that if Lanfear was there, he might finally join her? What would he do if she was there? What could he do? “They can come,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now will you go?”
“As you command,” Moiraine said, but they were in no hurry about it. Aviendha and Egwene took ostentatious care in rearranging their shawls before they started for the door. Lords and ladies might dart at his word, but never them.
“You did not try to talk me out of it,” he said abruptly.
He meant it for Moiraine, but Egwene spoke first, though to Aviendha, and with a smile. “Stopping a man from what he wants to do is like taking a sweet from a child. Sometimes you have to do it, but sometimes it just isn’t worth the trouble.” Aviendha nodded.
“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,” was Moiraine’s reply. She stood in the doorway looking more Aes Sedai than he ever remembered her, ageless, with dark eyes that seemed ready to swallow him, slight and slender yet so regal she could have commanded a roomful of queens if she could not channel a spark. That blue stone on her forehead was catching the light again. “You will do well, Rand.”
He stared at the door long after it closed behind them.
It was a scuff of boots that recalled him to Mat’s presence. Mat was trying to slide toward the door, moving slowly so as not to be seen.
“I need to talk to you, Mat.”
Mat grimaced. Touching the foxhead like a talisman, he spun to face Rand. “If you think I’m going to put my head on the block just because those fool women did, you can forget it now. I’m no bloody hero, and I don’t want to be one. Morgase was a pretty woman—I even liked her; as much as you can like a queen—but Rahvin is Rahvin, burn you, and I—”
“Shut up and listen. You have to stop running.”
“Burn me if I will! This is no game I chose, and I won’t—”
“I said, shut up!” Rand drove the foxhead against Mat’s chest with a hard finger. “I know where you got this. I was there, remember? I cut the rope you were hanging from. I don’t know exactly what got shoved into your head, but whatever it is, I need it. The clan chiefs know war, but somehow you know it, too, and maybe better. I need that! So this is what you’re going to do, you and the Band of the Red Hand. . . .”
“Be careful tomorrow,” Moiraine said.
Egwene paused at the door to her room. “Of course we’ll be careful.” Her stomach was turning backflips, but she kept her voice steady. “We know how dangerous facing one of the Forsaken will be.” By Aviendha’s expression, they might have been talking about what was for supper. But then, she was never afraid of anything.
“Do you, now,” Moiraine murmured. “Be very careful anyway, whether you think one of the Forsaken is near or not. Rand will need both of you in the days to come. You handle his temper well—though I may say your methods are unusual. He will need people who cannot be driven away or quelled by his rages, who will tell him what he must hear instead of what they think he wants to.”
“You do that, Moiraine,” Egwene told her.
“Of course. But he will still need you. Rest well. Tomorrow will be . . . difficult for us all.” She glided away down the corridor, passing from dimness to pool of lamplight to dimness. Night was already coming to these shadowed halls, and oil was in short supply.
“Will you stay with me awhile, Aviendha?” Egwene asked. “I feel more like talking than eating.”
“I must tell Amys what I have promised to do tomorrow. And I must be in Rand al’Thor’s sleeping chamber when he comes.”
“Elayne can never complain that you haven’t watched Rand closely for her. Did you really drag the Lady Berewin down the hall by her hair?”
Aviendha’s cheeks colored faintly. “Do you think these Aes Sedai in—Salidar?—will help him?”
“Be careful of that name, Aviendha. Rand cannot be allowed to find them without preparation.” The way he was now, they would be more likely to
gentle him, or at least send thirteen sisters of their own, than help him. She would have to stand between them in Tel’aran’rhiod, she and Nynaeve and Elayne, and hope those Aes Sedai had committed themselves too far to back out before they discovered how near the brink he was.
“I will be careful. Rest well. And eat well tonight. In the morning, eat nothing. It is not good to dance the spears with a full stomach.”
Egwene watched her stride away before pressing her hands to her stomach. She did not think she would eat tonight or in the morning. Rahvin. And maybe Lanfear, or one of the others. Nynaeve had faced Moghedien and won. But Nynaeve was stronger than she or Aviendha, when she could channel at all. There might not be another. Rand said the Forsaken did not trust one another. She could almost wish he was wrong, or at least that he was not so certain. It was frightening when she thought she saw another man looking through his eyes, heard another man’s words come out of his mouth. It should not be so; everyone was reborn as the Wheel turned. But everyone was not the Dragon Reborn. Moiraine would not talk of it. What would Rand do if Lanfear was there? Lanfear had loved Lews Therin Telamon, but what had the Dragon felt for her? How much of Rand was still Rand?
“You will work yourself into a tizzy this way,” she said firmly. “You’re not a child. Act like a woman.”
When a serving woman brought her supper of snapbeans and potatoes and fresh baked bread, she made herself eat. It tasted like ashes.
Mat strode through the dimly lit corridors of the palace and flung open the door of the rooms that had been set aside for the young hero of the battle against the Shaido. Not that he had spent much time there; hardly any. Servants had lit two of the stand-lamps. Hero! He was no hero! What did a hero get? An Aes Sedai patting you on the head before she sent you out like a hound to do it again. A noblewoman condescending to favor you with a kiss, or laying a flower on your grave. He stalked back and forth in his anteroom, for once not pricing the flowered Illianer carpet or the chairs and chests and tables gilded and inlaid with ivory.
The stormy meeting with Rand had gone on till the sun set, him dodging, refusing, Rand following as doggedly as Hawkwing after the rout at Cole Pass. What was he to do? If he rode out again, Talmanes and Nalesean would surely follow with as many men as they could put in the saddle, expecting him to find another battle. And he probably would; that was what really put a chill on it. Much as he hated to admit it, the Aes Sedai was right. He was drawn to battle or it to him. Nobody could have tried harder to avoid one on the other side of the Alguenya. Even Talmanes had commented on it. Until the second time his careful creeping away from one lot of Andorans took them where there was no choice but to fight another. And every time he could feel the dice rolling in his head; it was almost like a warning that a fight was just over the next hill, now.
There was always a ship, or might be, down at the docks beside the grain barges. Hard to find yourself in a battle on a ship in the middle of a river. Except the Andorans held one bank of the Alguenya for half its length or more below the city. The way his luck was running, the ship would run aground on the west bank with half the Andoran army camped there.
That left doing what Rand wanted. He could just see it.
“Good morrow, High Lord Weiramon, and all you other High Lords and Ladies. I’m a gambler, a farmboy, and I’m here to take command of your bloody army! The bloody lord Dragon Reborn will be with us as soon as he flaming takes care of one bloody little matter!”
Snatching his black-hafted spear from the corner, he hurled it the length of the room. It struck a wall hanging—a hunting scene—and the stone wall behind with a loud clang, then dropped to the floor, leaving the hunters neatly sliced in two. Swearing, he hurried to pick it up. The two-foot sword-blade was not chipped or marred. Of course not. Aes Sedai work.
He fingered the ravens on the blade. “Will I ever be free of Aes Sedai work?”
“What was that?” Melindhra asked from the door.
He eyed her as he propped the spear against the wall, and for a change it was not spun-gold hair or clear blue eyes or a firm body that he thought of. It seemed that every Aiel went to the river sooner or later, to stare silently at so much water in one place, but Melindhra went every day, just about. “Has Kadere found ships yet?” Kadere would not be going to Tar Valon on grain barges.
“The peddler’s wagons are still there. I do not know about . . . ships.” She pronounced the unfamiliar word awkwardly. “Why do you wish to know?”
“I’m going away for a while. For Rand,” he added hastily. Her face was too still. “I’d take you with me if I could, but you wouldn’t want to leave the Maidens.” A ship, or his own horse? And to where? That was the question. He could reach Tear quicker on a fast rivership than on Pips. If he was fool enough to make that choice. If he had any choice.
Melindhra’s mouth tightened briefly. To his surprise, it was not over his leaving her. “So you slip back into Rand al’Thor’s shadow. You have gained much honor of your own, among the Aiel as well as the wetlanders. Your honor, not honor reflected from the Car’a’carn.”
“He can keep his honor and take it to Caemlyn or the Pit of Doom for all I care. Don’t you worry. I’ll find plenty of honor. I will write you about it. From Tear.” Tear? He would never escape Rand, or Aes Sedai, if he made that choice.
“He is going to Caemlyn?”
Mat suppressed a wince. He was not supposed to say anything about that. Whatever he decided about the rest, he could do that much. “Just a name pulled from my pocket. Because of the Andorans down south, I suppose. I wouldn’t know where he’s—”
He had no warning. One instant she was just standing there, the next her foot was in his middle, driving out breath, doubling him over. Eyes bulging, he fought to keep his feet, to straighten, to think. Why? She spun like a dancer, backwards, and her other foot against the side of his head drove him staggering. Without a pause she leaped straight up, kicking out, her soft bootsole taking him hard flush in the face.
When his eyes cleared enough to see, he was on his back, halfway across the room from her. He could feel blood on his face. His head seemed stuffed with wool, and the room seemed to rock. That was when he saw her take a knife from her pouch, slim blade not much longer than her hand, gleaming in the lamplight. Winding the shoufa around her head in a quick motion, she raised the black veil across her face.
Groggily, he moved by instinct, without thinking. The blade came out of his sleeve, left his hand as if floating through jelly. Only then did he realize what he had done and stretch out desperately, trying to snatch it back.
The hilt bloomed between her breasts. She sagged to her knees, fell back.
Mat pushed himself up, wavering on hands and knees. He could not have stood if his life hung on it, but he crawled to her, muttering wildly. “Why? Why?”
He jerked her veil aside, and those clear blue eyes focused on him. She even smiled. He did not look at the knife-hilt. His knife-hilt. He knew where the heart was in a body. “Why, Melindhra?”
“I always liked your pretty eyes,” she breathed, so faint he had to strain to hear.
“Why?”
“Some oaths are more important than others, Mat Cauthon.” The slim-bladed knife came up swiftly, all her remaining strength behind it, the point driving the dangling foxhead against his chest. The silver medallion should not have stopped a blade, but the angle was just that much wrong, and some hidden flaw in the steel snapped the blade off right at the hilt just as he caught her hand. “You have the Great Lord’s own luck.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Burn you, why?” He knew there would be no answer. Her mouth remained open, as though she might say something more, but her eyes were already beginning to glaze.
He started to pull the veil back up, to cover her face and staring eyes, then let his hand fall. He had killed men, and Trollocs, but never a woman. Never a woman until now. Women were glad when he came into their lives. It was not boasting. Women smiled for him; even when he l
eft them, they smiled as if they would welcome him back. That was all he ever really wanted from women; a smile, a dance, a kiss, and to be remembered fondly.
He realized his thoughts were babbling. Jerking the bladeless hilt from Melindhra’s hand—it was gold-mounted jade, inlaid with golden bees—he hurled it into the marble fireplace, hoping it shattered. He wanted to cry, to howl. I don’t kill women! I kiss them, I don’t . . . !
He had to think clearly. Why? Not because he was leaving, surely. She had hardly reacted to that. Besides, she thought he was chasing off after honor; she had always approved of that. Something she had said tugged at him, and then came back, with a chill. The Great Lord’s own luck. He had heard it differently, many times. The Dark One’s own luck. “A Darkfriend.” A question, or certainty? He wished the thought made what he had done easier in his mind. He was going to carry her face to his grave.
Tear. He had as much as told her he was going to Tear. The dagger. Golden bees in jade. He would wager there were nine without looking. Nine golden bees on a field of green. The sign of Illian. Where Sammael ruled. Could Sammael be afraid of him? How could Sammael even know? It was only a few hours since Rand had asked Mat—told him—and he was not sure himself what he was going to do. Maybe Sammael would not take the chance? Right. One of the Forsaken, afraid of a gambler, however stuffed with other men’s battle knowledge his head might be. That was ridiculous.
It all came down to this. He could believe that Melindhra had not been a Darkfriend, that she had decided to kill him on a whim, that there was no connection between a jade hilt inlaid with golden bees and his maybe going to Tear to lead an army against Illian. He could if he was a bullgoose fool. Better to err toward caution, he always said. One of the Forsaken had noticed him. He certainly was not standing in Rand’s shadow now.