This time Min’s laugh was a bark. “Hardly. He says he’ll make me work it off sooner or later. Siuan’s the one he really wants to hold on to, the Light knows why.” A slight tensing of her face made Elayne think there was a viewing involved in it, but she did not ask. Min never talked about those unless they concerned you.
She had an ability known to few in Salidar. Elayne and Nynaeve, Siuan and Leane; that was all. Birgitte did not know, but then Min did not know about Birgitte. Or Moghedien. So many secrets. But Min’s was her own. Sometimes she saw images or auras around people, and sometimes she knew what they meant. When she knew, she was always right; for instance, if she said a man and woman would marry, then sooner or later they married, even if they plainly hated one another now. Leane called it “reading the Pattern,” but it had nothing to do with the Power. Most people carried the images only occasionally, but Aes Sedai and Warders always. Min’s retreats here were to escape that deluge.
“Will you carry a letter to Rand for me?”
“Of course.” The other woman’s assent was so quick, her face so open, that Elayne blushed and went on hurriedly. She was not sure she would have agreed had the circumstances been reversed. “You mustn’t let him know about your viewings, Min. Concerning us, I mean.” One thing Min had viewed about Rand was that three women would fall hopelessly in love with him, be tied to him forever, and that one of them would be herself. The second had turned out to be Elayne. “If he learns about the viewing, he might decide it isn’t what we want, only the Pattern, or his being ta’veren. He could decide to be noble and save us by not letting either of us near him.”
“Maybe,” Min said doubtfully. “Men are strange. More likely, if he realizes we’ll both come running when he crooks a finger, he’ll crook it. He won’t be able to help himself. I’ve seen them do it. I think it has something to do with the hair on their chins.” She had such a wondering look that Elayne was not sure whether or not that was a joke. Min seemed to know a lot about men; she had worked mainly in stables — she liked horses — but once she had mentioned serving table in a tavern. “Either way, I won’t tell. You and I will divide him up like a pie. Maybe we’ll let the third have a bit of crust when she shows up.”
“What are we going to do, Min?” Elayne had not meant to say that, certainly not in a near wail. Part of her wanted to say unequivocally that she would never come for a crooked finger; part wanted him to crook it. Part of her wanted to say she would not share Rand, not in any way, not with anyone, even a friend, and Min’s viewings could go to the Pit of Doom; part wanted to box Rand’s ears for doing this to her and Min. It was all so childish she felt like hiding her head, but she could not untangle the snarl in her feelings. Leveling her voice, she answered her own question before Min could. “What we’re going to do is sit here awhile and talk.” She suited the words, choosing a spot where the dead leaves were particularly thick. A tree made a fine backrest. “Only not about Rand. I am going to miss you, Min. It’s so good to have a friend I can trust.”
Min sat cross-legged beside her and idly began digging up pebbles and tossing them into the stream. “Nynaeve is your friend. You trust her. And Birgitte certainly seems to be one; you spend more time with her than you do with Nynaeve, even.” A slight frown creased her forehead. “Does she really believe she’s Birgitte out of the legends? I mean, the bow and the braid — every tale mentions those, even if her bow isn’t silver — and I can’t think she was born with the name.”
“She was born with it,” Elayne said carefully. It was true, in a way. Best to steer the talk another way. “Nynaeve still can’t decide whether I’m a friend or somebody she has to browbeat into doing what she thinks right. And she spends more time remembering I’m her Queen’s daughter than I do. I think she holds it against me sometimes. You never do that.”
“Maybe I’m not so impressed.” Min wore a grin, but on the other she sounded serious. “I was born in the Mountains of Mist, Elayne, at the mines. Your mother’s writ runs pretty thin that far west.” The smile vanished from her face. “I’m sorry, Elayne.”
Stifling a flash of indignation — Min was every bit as much a subject of the Lion Throne as Nynaeve! — Elayne let her head fall back against the tree. “Let’s talk of something happy.” The sun sat molten overhead through the branches; the sky was a clear sheet of blue, unmarked by even one cloud to the horizon. On impulse, she opened herself to saidar and let it fill her, as though all the joy of life in the world had been distilled and every drop in her veins replaced with the essence. If she could make just one cloud form, it would be a sign that everything would come out all right. Her mother would be alive. Rand would love her. And Moghedien . . . would be dealt with. Somehow. She wove a tenuous web through the sky as far as she could see, using Air and Water, searching for the moisture for a cloud. If she only strained hard enough . . . The sweetness quickly built close to pain, the danger sign; draw much more of the Power, and she could still herself. Just one little cloud.
“Happy?” Min said. “Well, I know you don’t want to talk about Rand, but aside from you and me, he’s still the most important thing in the world right now. And the happiest. Forsaken fall dead when he appears, and nations line up to bow. The Aes Sedai here are ready to support him. I know they are, Elayne; they have to. Why, next Elaida will hand the Tower over to him. The Last Battle will be a walk for him. He’s winning, Elayne. We’re winning.”
Releasing the Source, Elayne sagged back, staring at a sky as empty as her mood had become. You did not need to be able to channel to see the Dark One’s hand at work, and if he could touch the world this much, if he could touch it at all . . . “Are we?” she said, but too softly for Min to hear.
The manor house was unfinished yet, the greatroom’s tall wooden panels pale and unstained, but Faile ni Bashere t’Aybara held court every afternoon, as proper for the lord’s wife, in a massive high-backed chair carved with falcons, just in front of a bare stone fireplace that mirrored another at the end of the room. The empty chair by her side, carved with wolves, and a large wolf’s head at its peak, should have been occupied by her husband, Perrin t’Bashere Aybara, Perrin Goldeneyes, Lord of the Two Rivers.
Of course, the manor was only an overgrown farmhouse, the greatroom stretched fewer than fifteen paces — how Perrin had stared when she insisted on it being that big; he was still used to thinking of himself as a blacksmith, or even a blacksmith’s apprentice — and the name given her at birth had been Zarine, not Faile. These things did not matter. Zarine was a name for a languorous woman who sighed tremulously over poems composed to her smiles. Faile, the name she had chosen as a sworn Hunter for the Horn of Valere, meant falcon in the Old Tongue. No one who got a good look at her face, with its bold nose and high cheekbones and dark tilted eyes that flashed when she was angry, could doubt which suited her best. For the rest, intentions counted a great deal. So did what was right and proper.
Her eyes were flashing at the moment. It had nothing to do with Perrin’s stubbornness, and little with the unseasonable heat. Though in truth, futilely working a pheasant feather fan for a breeze against the sweat sliding down her cheeks did not help her temper at all.
This late in the afternoon few remained of the crowd who had come to have her judge their disputes. Actually, they came for Perrin to hear them, but the idea of passing judgment on people he had grown up among horrified him. Unless she managed to corner the man, he vanished like a wolf in fog when it came time for the daily audience. Luckily, the people did not mind it when Lady Faile heard them instead of Lord Perrin. Or few did, anyway, and those wise enough to hide the fact.
“You brought this to me,” she said in a flat voice. The two women perspiring before her chair shuffled their feet uneasily and studied the polished floorboards.
Coppery-skinned Sharmad Zeffar’s plump curves were covered, if far from obscured, by a high-necked, but barely opaque Domani dress, the pale golden silk worn at hem and cuffs, still with a sprinkling of small t
ravel-stains beyond cleaning; silk was silk, after all, and seldom to be had here. Patrols into the Mountains of Mist searching for remnants of the past summer’s Trolloc invasion found few of the bestial Trollocs — and no Myrddraal, thank the Light — but they did find refugees nearly every day, ten here, twenty there, five somewhere else. Most came out of Almoth Plain, but a good many from Tarabon and, like Sharmad, from Arad Doman, all fleeing lands ruined by anarchy on top of civil war. Faile did not want to think of how many died in the mountains. Lacking roads or even paths, the mountains were no easy journey in the best of times, and these were far from the best.
Rhea Avin was no refugee, for all she wore a copy of a Taraboner dress in fine-woven wool, soft gray folds that molded and emphasized almost as much as Sharmad’s thinner garb. Those who survived the long trek over the mountains brought more than troubling rumors, skills previously unseen in the Two Rivers, and hands to work farms depopulated by the Trollocs. Rhea was a pretty, round-faced woman born not two miles from where the manor now stood, her dark hair in a wrist-thick braid to her waist. In the Two Rivers, girls did not braid their hair until the Women’s Circle said they were old enough to marry, whether that was fifteen or thirty, though few went beyond twenty. In fact, Rhea was a good five years older than Faile, her hair four years braided, but at the moment she looked as if she still wore it loose on her shoulders and had just realized that what had seemed a wonderful idea at the time was really the stupidest thing she could have done. For that matter, Sharmad seemed even more abashed, for all she had a year or two on Rhea; for a Domani to find herself in this situation must be humiliating. Faile wanted to slap the pair of them cross-eyed — except that a lady could not do that.
“A man,” she said as levelly as she could manage, “is not a horse or a field. Neither of you can own him, and to ask me to say which has the right to him . . . ” She drew a slow breath. “If I thought Wil al’Seen had been leading you both on, I might have something to say on the matter.” Wil had an eye for the women, and they for him — he had very well-turned calves — but he never made promises. Sharmad looked ready to sink into the floor; Domani women had a reputation for twining men around their fingers, after all, not the other way around. “As it is, this is my judgment. You will both go to the Wisdom and explain matters to her, leaving nothing out. She will handle this. I expect to hear that she’s seen you before nightfall.”
The pair flinched. Daise Congar, the Wisdom here in Emond’s Field, would not tolerate this sort of nonsense. In fact, she would go well beyond not tolerating it. But they curtsied, muttering “Yes, my Lady” in forlorn unison. If not already, they soon would sorely regret wasting Daise’s time.
And mine, Faile thought firmly. Everyone knew Perrin rarely sat in audience, or they would never have brought their fool “problem.” Had he been here where he belonged, they would have slipped away rather than air it in front of him. Faile hoped the heat had Daise in a prickle. Too bad there was no way to get Daise to take Perrin in hand.
Cenn Buie replaced the women almost before they could get out of the way on dragging feet. Despite leaning heavily on a walking staff nearly as gnarled as himself, he managed a florid bow, then spoiled it by raking bony fingers through lank thinning hair. As usual, his rough brown coat looked slept in. “The Light shine on you, my Lady Faile, and on your honored husband, the Lord Perrin.” The grand words sounded odd in his scratchy voice. “Let me add my wishes for your continued happiness to those of the Council. Your intelligence and beauty make our lives brighter, as does the justice of your pronouncements.”
Faile drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair before she could stop herself. Flowery praises instead of the normal sour grumbling. Reminding her that he sat on the Emond’s Field Village Council and so was a man of influence, due respect. And playing for sympathy with that staff; the thatcher was as spry as anyone half his age. He wanted something. “What do you bring me today, Master Buie?”
Cenn straightened, forgetting to prop himself up with his stick. And forgetting to keep the acrid note out of his voice. “It’s all these outlanders flooding in, bringing all sorts of things we don’t want here.” He seemed to have forgotten she was an outlander, too; most Two Rivers folks had. “Strange ways, my Lady. Indecent clothes. You’ll be hearing from the women about the way those Domani hussies dress, if you haven’t already.” She had, as it happened, from some of them, though a momentary gleam in Cenn’s eye said he would regret it if she gave in to their demands. “Strangers stealing the food from our mouths, taking away our trade. That Taraboner fellow and his fool tile-making, for example. Taking up hands that could be put to useful work. He doesn’t care about good Two Rivers people. Why, he . . . “
Fanning herself, she stopped listening while giving every appearance of paying close attention; it was a skill her father had taught her, necessary at times like this. Of course. Master Hornval’s roof tiles would compete with Cenn’s thatchwork.
Not everyone felt as Cenn did about the newcomers. Haral Luhhan, the Emond’s Field blacksmith, had gone into partnership with a Domani cutler and a whitesmith from Almoth Plain, and Master Aydaer had hired three men and two women who knew furniture making and carving, and gilding as well, though there certainly was no gold lying about for that. Her chair and Perrin’s were their work, and as fine as she had seen anywhere. For that matter, Cenn himself had taken on half a dozen helpers, and not all Two Rivers folk; a good many roofs had burned when the Trollocs came, and new houses were going up everywhere. Perrin had no right to make her listen to this nonsense alone.
The people of the Two Rivers might have proclaimed him their lord — as well they might after he led them to victory over the Trollocs — and he might be beginning to realize he could not change that — as he certainly should, when they bowed and called him Lord Perrin to his face right after he told them not to — yet he dug in his heels at the trappings that went with being a lord, all the things that people expected from their lords and ladies. Worse, he balked at the duties of a lord. Faile knew those things exactly, as the eldest surviving child of Davram t’Ghaline Bashere, Lord of Bashere, Tyr and Sidona, Guardian of the Blightborder, Defender of the Heartland, Marshal-General to Queen Tenobia of Saldaea. True, she had run away to become a Hunter for the Horn — and then given that up for a husband, which sometimes still stunned her — but she remembered. Perrin listened when she explained, and even nodded his head in the proper places, but trying to make him actually do any of it was like trying to make a horse dance the sa’sara.
Cenn finally ran down in splutters, only just remembering to swallow the invective that bubbled behind his teeth.
“Perrin and I chose to use thatch,” Faile said calmly. While Cenn was still nodding in self-satisfaction, she added, “You haven’t finished it, yet.” He gave a start. “You seem to have taken on more roofs than you can handle, Master Buie. If ours isn’t done soon, I fear we will have to ask Master Hornval about his tiles.” Cenn’s mouth worked in vigorous silence; if she put a tile roof on the manor, others would follow. “I have enjoyed your discourse, but I am sure you would rather finish my roof than waste time in idle conversation, however pleasant.”
Lips thinning, Cenn glowered for a moment, then made a sketchy bow. Muttering something unintelligible except for a strangled “my Lady” at the end, he stalked out thumping the bare floor with his stick. The things people found to waste her time. Perrin was going to do his share of this if she had to tie him hand and foot.
The rest were not so provoking. A once-stout woman, her patched flower-embroidered dress hanging on her like a sack, who had come all the way from Toman Head, beyond Almoth Plain, wanted to deal in herbs and cures. Hulking Jon Ayellin rubbing his bald head and skinny Thad Torfinn twisting the lapels of his coat, disputing the boundaries of their fields. Two dark Domani men in long leather vests, with close-trimmed beards, miners who thought they had seen signs of gold and silver nearby on their way through the mountains. And iron, though they
were less interested in that. And finally, a wiry Taraboner, a transparent veil across her narrow face and her pale hair in a multitude of thin braids, who claimed to have been a master carpet-weaver and to know the making of rug looms.
The woman with an interest in herbs Faile directed to the local Women’s Circle; if Espara Soman knew what she was about, they would find her a place under one of the village Wisdoms. With all the new people coming in, many in a bad way from the journey, not a Wisdom in the Two Rivers but had an apprentice or two, and all were on the lookout for more. Maybe not exactly what Espara wanted, but where she would have to start. A few questions made it plain that neither Thad nor Jon really remembered where the boundary lay — apparently they had been arguing it since before she was born — so she directed them to split the difference. Which seemed to be what each had thought the Village Council would decide, the reason for keeping the argument between themselves so long.
The others she granted the permission they sought. They did not really need permission, but it was best to let them know where authority lay from the start. In return for her consent and enough silver to buy supplies, Faile made the two Domani agree to give Perrin a tenth part of what they found, as well as to locate the iron mentioned in passing. Perrin would not like it, but the Two Rivers had nothing like taxes, and a lord was expected to do things and provide things that required money. And the iron would be as useful as the gold. As for Liale Mosrara, if the Taraboner claimed more skill than she had, her enterprise would not last long, but if she did . . . Three cloth-weavers already insured that the merchants would find more than raw wool when they came down from Baerlon next year, and decent carpets would be another trade item to bring in more coin. Liale promised the first and finest from her looms to the manor, and Faile nodded a gracious acceptance of the gift; she could give more if and when the carpets appeared. The floors did need covering. All in all, everyone seemed reasonably satisfied. Even Jon and Thad.