Текст книги "Towers of midnight"

Автор книги: Robert Jordan

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Текущая страница: 63 (всего у книги 65 страниц)

"You spoke with Mezar?" Androl asked.

"Sure did," Norley replied. "Shared a lunch with him." Norley waved at Mishraile as they passed him supervising a group of soldiers practicing their weaves. The golden-haired man turned away dismissively.

"And?" Androl asked, tense.

"It's not really Mezar," Norley said. "Oh, it has Mezar's face, right enough. But it's not him. I can see it in his eyes. Trouble is, whatever the thing is, it has Mezar's memories. Talks right like him. But the smile is wrong. All wrong."

Androl shivered. "It has to be him, Norley."

"It ain't. I promise you that."

"But—"

"It just ain't," the stout man said.

Androl took a deep breath. When Mezar had returned a few days back—explaining that Logain was well and that all would soon be resolved with Taim—Androl had begun to hope that there was a way out of this mess. But something had seemed off about the man. Beyond that, the M'Hael had made a great show of accepting Mezar as a full Asha'man; the Dragon had raised him. And now Mezar—once fiercely loyal to Logain—was spending his time with Coteren and Taim's other lackeys.

"This is getting bad, Androl," Norley said softly, smiling and waving toward another group of practicing men. "I'd say it's time for us to leave here, whether or not it's against orders."

"We'd never get past those guard posts," Androl said. "Taim won't even let those Aes Sedai leave; you heard the fit that plump one threw at the gates the other day. Taim doubles the guard at night, and gateways don't work."

"Well, we have to do something, don't we? I mean… what if they've got Logain? What then?"

"I… I don't know. Go talk to the others who are loyal to Logain. I'm going to move us to a shared barrack. Them and their families. We'll tell the M'Hael that we want to give more space for his new recruits. Then we'll post a guard at nights."

"That's going to be a little obvious."

"The division is already obvious," Androl said. "Go do it."

"Sure thing. But what are you going to do?"

Androl took a deep breath. "I'm going to find us some allies."

Norley moved off to the left, but Androl continued down the path, through the village. It seemed that fewer and fewer people were showing him respect these days. Either they were afraid to do so, or they'd thrown their lot in with Taim.

Packs of black-coated man stood, with arms folded, watching him. Androl tried not to feel a chill. As he walked, he noted Mezar—hair graying at the sides, skin a Domani copper—standing with a group of lackeys. The man smiled at him. Mezar hadn't ever been one who smiled easily. Androl nodded to him, meeting his eyes.

And he saw what Norley had seen. Something was deeply wrong, something not-quite-alive inside those eyes. This didn't seem to be a man, but a parody of one. A shadow stuffed inside human skin.

Light help us all, Androl thought, hurrying by. He made his way to the southern side of the village, to a group of small huts with bleached white wood walls and thatched roofs that needed to be replaced.

Androl hesitated outside. What was he doing? This was where the women of the Red Ajah were staying. They said they'd come to bond the Asha'man, but they hadn't done it so far. That was obviously some kind of ruse. Perhaps they'd come here to try to find a way to gentle the entire lot.

But if that were the case, then at least he could count on them not siding with Taim. When you stared down the gullet of a lionfish, a pirate's brig didn't seem so bad. Androl had heard the saying once while working a fisher's boat in the south.

Taking a deep breath, he knocked. The plump Red answered the door. She had the ageless face of an Aes Sedai—not young, really, but also not old. She eyed him.

"I hear you want to leave the Black Tower," Androl said, hoping he was doing the right thing.

"Has your M'Hael changed his mind?" she asked, sounding hopeful. She actually smiled. A rare action for an Aes Sedai.

"No," Androl said, "so far as I know, he still forbids you to leave."

She frowned. "Then—"

Androl lowered his voice. "You're not the only one who would like to leave this place, Aes Sedai."

She looked at him, her face becoming perfectly calm. She doesn't trust me, he thought. Odd, how the mere lack of emotion could itself convey meaning.

Desperate, he took a step forward, laying a hand on the frame of the door. "Something's wrong in this place. Something worse than you understand. Once, long ago, men and women who worked the Power strove together. They were stronger for it. Please. Hear me out."

She stood for a moment longer, then pulled the door open. "Come in, quickly. Tarna—the woman I share this hut with—is away. We must be done before she returns."

Androl stepped up into the building. He didn't know whether he was stepping into the pirate's brig or the lionfish's mouth. But it would have to do.

CHAPTER 57

A Rabbit for Supper

Mat hit uneven ground, blinded by the flash of light. Cursing, he used the ashandarei to steady himself on the springy earth. He smelled foliage, dirt and rotting wood. Insects buzzed in the shade.

The whiteness faded, and he found himself standing outside the Tower of Ghenjei. He had half-expected to reappear in Rhuidean. It seemed that the spear returned him to his world in the place where he had entered. Thom sat on the ground, propping up Moiraine, who was blinking and looking about her.

Mat spun on the tower and pointed upward. "I know you're watching!" he said, thrilled. He had made it. He had bloody made it out alive! "I beat you, you crusty boot-leavings! I, Matrim Cauthon, survived your traps! Ha!" He raised the ashandarei over his head. "And you gave me the way out! Chew on that bitterness for lunch, you flaming, burning, misbegotten liars!"

Mat beamed, slamming the spear down butt first onto the ground beside him. He nodded. Nobody got the better of Matrim Cauthon. They had lied to him, told him vague prophecies and threatened him, and then they had hanged him. But Mat came out ahead in the end.

"Who was the other?" Moiraine's soft voice asked from behind. "The one I saw, but did not know?"

"He didn't make it out," Thom said somberly.

That dampened Mat's spirits. Their victory had come at a price, a terrible one. Mat been traveling with a legend all this time?

"He was a friend," Thom said softly.

"He was a great man," Mat said, turning and pulling his ashandarei from where he had planted it in the dirt. "When you write the ballad of all this, Thom, make sure you point out that he was the hero."

Thom glanced at Mat, then nodded knowingly. "The world will want to know what happened to that man." Light. As Mat thought about it Thom had not been at all surprised to hear Noal was Jain Farstrider. He had known. When had he figured it out? Why had he said nothing to Mat? Some friend Thom was.

Mat just shook his head. "Well, we're out, one way or another. But Thom, next time I want to do the bloody negotiating, sneak up behind and hit me on the head with something large, heavy and blunt. Then take over."

"Your request is noted."

"Let's move on a little way. I don't like that bloody tower looming over me."

"Yes," Moiraine said, "you could say that they feed off emotion. Though I wouldn't call it 'feeding off' so much as 'delighting in' emotion. They don't need it to survive, but it pleases them greatly."

They sat in a wooded hollow a short walk from the tower, next to the meadow beside the Arinelle. The thick tree canopy cooled the air and obscured their view of the tower.

Mat sat on a small, mossy boulder as Thom made a fire. He had a few of Aludra's strikers in his pocket as well as some packets of tea, though there was nothing to warm the water in.

Moiraine sat on the ground, still wrapped in Thom's cloak, leaning back against a fallen log. She held the cloak closed from the inside, letting it envelop her completely, save for her face and those dark curls. She looked more a woman than Mat remembered—in his memories, she was like a statue. Always expressionless, face like polished stone, eyes like dark brown topaz.

Now she sat with pale skin, flushed cheeks, hair curled and falling naturally around her face. She was fetching, save for that ageless Aes Sedai face. Yet that face showed far more emotion than Mat remembered, a look of fondness when she glanced at Thom, a faint shiver when she spoke of her time in the tower.

She glanced at Mat, and her eyes were still appraising. Yes, this was the same Moiraine. Humbled, cast down. That made her seem stronger to him for some reason.

Thom blew at a hesitant flame that curled a lock of smoke into the air before flickering out. The wood was probably too wet. Thom cursed.

"It's all right, Thom," Moiraine said softly. "I will be well."

"I won't have you catching cold the moment we free you from that place," Thom said. He got out a striker, but suddenly the wood sparked, and then fire sputtered to life as it consumed the too-wet tinder.

Mat glanced at Moiraine, who had a look of concentration on her face.

"Oh," Thom said, then chuckled. "I'd forgotten about that, nearly…"

"It's all I can manage now on my own," Moiraine said, grimacing. Light, had Moiraine grimaced before? She been too high-and-mighty for that, had she not? Or was Mat remembering her wrong?

Moiraine. He was talking to flaming Aloirainel Though he had gone into the tower with the distinct purpose of rescuing her, it seemed incredible that he was speaking with her. It was like talking to…

Well, like talking to Birgitte Silverbow or Jain Farstrider. Mat smiled, shaking his head. What a world this was, and what a strange place he had in it.

"What did you mean by that, Moiraine?" Thom asked, nurturing the fire with some sticks. "It's all you can manage?"

"The Aelfinn and Eelfinn," she explained, voice calm. "They savor and relish powerful emotions. For some reason the effects of a ta'veren are even more intoxicating to them. There are other things that they enjoy."

Thom glanced at her, frowning.

"My Power, Thom," she explained. "I could hear them barking and hissing to one another as they fed on me, both Aelfinn and Eelfinn in turn. They have not often had an Aes Sedai to themselves, it seems. While draining my ability to channel, they were fed twofold—my sorrow at what I was losing and the Power itself. My capacity has been greatly reduced.

"They claimed to have killed Lanfear by draining her too quickly, though I think they may have been trying to make me afraid. A man was there once, when they woke me. He said I was not the one he wanted." She hesitated, then shivered. "Sometimes I wished that they would drain me quickly and end my life."

The small camp grew silent save for the popping of the fire. Thom looked toward Moiraine, seeming helpless.

"Do not show me such sorrow, Thom Merrilin," Moiraine said, smiling. "I have felt terrible things, but all people know such moments of despair. I believed that you would come." She removed her hand from the cloak—revealing a slender, pale shoulder and collarbone—and reached toward him. He hesitated, then took the hand and squeezed it.

Moiraine looked to Mat. "And you, Matrim Cauthon. Not a simple farm lad any longer. Does your eye pain you much?"

Mat shrugged.

"I would Heal the wound if I could," Moiraine said. "But even were I still as strong as I once was, I couldn't restore your eye." She looked down releasing Thom's hand and holding up her arm. "Do you have the angreal?"

"Oh, yes," Thom said, fishing the strange bracelet out of his pocket. He put it on her arm.

"With this," Moiraine said. "I will be strong enough to at least take the pain away. They placed it on me to let me draw more of the Power, to make their feeding more succulent. I asked for it, actually, as one of my three demands. I did not realize they would end up using it against me."

"They gave you your three demands?" Mat asked, frowning.

"I passed through the ter'angreal," she said. "The ancient treaty held for both of us, though with the doorway destroyed, there was no simple return. I knew from… previous events that I would not escape unless you came for me, no matter what my demands were or how carefully I worded them. So I used them for the best."

"What did you ask for?" Mat asked. "Beyond the angreal?"

She smiled. "I shall keep that to myself, for now. You do have my thanks, young Matrim. For my life."

"Then I guess we're equal," he said. "You saved me from life in the Two Rivers. Burn me if I haven't had a nice gallop of it since then."

"And your wound?"

"Doesn't hurt so much." Actually, it throbbed. Really, really badly. "No need for you to waste strength on it."

"Still afraid of the One Power, I see."

He bristled. "Afraid?"

"I should think you have good reason for that wariness." She looked away from him. "But take care. The most displeasing of events in our lives are sometimes for our good."

Yes, she was still Moiraine. Quick with a moral and advice. But perhaps she had a right—after what she had been through—to lecture on suffering. Light! She had known what she would have to go through, and yet she had still pulled Lanfear into that ter'angreal? Maybe Mat was not the hero here, and maybe Noal was not either.

"So what now?" Thom said, settling back on a stump. The warmth of the fire did feel good.

"I must find Rand," Moiraine said. "He will need my help. I trust he has done well in my absence?"

"I don't know about that," Mat said. "He's half mad and the whole bloody world is at one another's throats." Colors swirled. Rand eating a meal with Min. Mat dispelled the image.

She raised an eyebrow.

"But," Mat acknowledged, "he's got most everybody pointed toward the Last Battle. And Verin says he managed to clean the taint from saidin."

"Blessed Light," Moiraine whispered. "How?"

"I don't know."

"This changes everything," she said, smile deepening. "He has fixed what he once set wrong. 'By the Dragon came our pain, and by the Dragon was the wound repaired.'"

"Mat keeps saying we should be having a festival or something to celebrate," Thom noted. "Though maybe he only wants a good excuse to get drunk."

"I'd say that's a certainty," Mat added. "Anyway, Rand's been busy. Elayne says he's got some kind of meeting arranged with the monarchs under him coming up soon."

"Elayne is Queen, then?"

"Sure is. Her mother was killed by Rahvin," Mat said.

"So you told me."

"I did? When?"

"A lifetime ago, Matrim," she replied, smiling.

"Oh. Well, Rand finished him off. So that's good."

"And the other Forsaken?" Moiraine asked.

"Don't know," Mat said.

"Mat's been too busy to keep track," Thom added. "He's been spending his time marrying the Empress of the Seanchan."

Moiraine blinked in surprise. "You did what?"

"It was an accident," Mat said lamely, hunching down.

"You accidentally married the Seanchan Empress?"

"They've got some odd customs," Mat said, pulling his hat down. "Strange folk." He forced out a chuckle.

"Ta'veren," Moiraine said.

Somehow, he had known she would say that. Light. Well, it was good to have her back. Mat was surprised at how strongly he felt that. Who would have thought it? Affection for an Aes Sedai, from him?

"Well," she said, "I can see there are many tales I need to be told. But for now, we will need to seek out Rand."

He had also known that she would try to take charge. "You find him Moiraine, but I've got things to do in Caemlyn. Don't mean to argue and all, but that's the fact of it. You should come there, too. Elayne's more likely than anyone else to be able to help you with Rand."

Bloody colors. As if having one eye were not bad enough, he had those flaming visions bunching up his sight every time he so much as thought of Ran– Burn those visions!

Moiraine raised an eyebrow as he shook his head, then blushed. He probably looked like he was having a fit.

"We shall see, Matrim," she said, then glanced at Thom, who stood holding the packets of tea. Mat half thought he would try to boil water in his own hands, if only to get some warm tea for Moiraine. Thom looked at her, and she held out her hand again.

"Dearest Thom," she said. "I would have you for a husband, if you'll have me for a wife."

"What?" Mat said, standing up. He raised a hand to his forehead, nearly knocking his hat free. "What did you say?"

"Hush, Mat," Thom said. He did not take Moiraine's offered hand. "You know I've never much liked women who can channel the One Power, Moiraine. You know it held me back in the past."

"I don't have much of the Power now, dearest Thom. Without this angreal, I wouldn't be strong enough to be raised Accepted in the White Tower. I will throw it away, if you wish it of me." She lifted out her other hand, barely staying modest. She pulled off the angreal.

"I don't think so, Moiraine," Thom said, kneeling down, taking her hands. "No, I won't rob you of anything."

"But with it I'll be very strong, stronger in the Power than before I was taken."

"So be it, then," he said. He put the bracelet back on her wrist. "I'll marry you now, if you wish it."

She smiled deeply.

Mat stood, stunned. "And who's going to bloody marry you?" he blurted out. "It sure as thunder isn't going to be me, I'll tell you that."

The two glanced at him, Thom with a flat stare, Moiraine with a hint of a smile. "I can see why the Seanchan woman had to have you, Mat," she noted. "You certainly have a mind for romance."

"I just…" He pulled off his hat, holding it awkwardly, looking back and forth between them. "I just—burn me! How did I miss this? I was with the two of you most the time you were together! When did you become affectionate?"

"You weren't watching very closely," Thom said. He turned back to Moiraine. "I assume you'll want me as a Warder, too."

She smiled. "My previous Gaidin has been appropriated by another by now, I hope."

"I'll take the job," Thom said, "though you'll have to explain to Elayne why her court-bard is someone's Warder." He hesitated. "You think they can make one of those color-changing cloaks with some patches on it?"

"Well, you two have gone bloody insane, I see," Mat said. "Thom, didn't you once tell me once that the two most painful places for you to be were Tar Valon and Caemlyn? Now you're running headlong down the hillside that will end with you living in one or the other!"

Thom shrugged. "Times change."

"I never have spent much of my time in Tar Valon," Moiraine said. "I think we shall enjoy traveling together, Thom Merrilin. Should we survive the months to come." She looked at Mat. "You should not spurn the Warder bond so easily, Mat. The blessings it provides will be of great use to men in these days."

Mat pulled his hat back on. "That may be true, but you'll never see me bloody trapped by one. No offense, Moiraine. I like you well enough. But to be bonded to a woman? Isn't going to happen to Matrim Cauthon."

"Is that so?" Thom asked, amused. "Didn't we determine that your Tuon would be capable of channeling, should she decide to learn?"

Mat froze. Bloody ashes. Thom was right. But channeling would make her marath'damane. She would not do such a thing. He did not have to worry.

Did he?

He must have made a face at the thought, for Thom chuckled and Moiraine smiled again. The two of them soon lost interest in sporting with Mat, however, and turned to a soft discussion. That affection in their eyes was true. They did love each other. Light! How had Mat missed it? He felt like a man who had brought a hog to a horse race.

He decided to make himself scarce, leaving the two of them alone. He went to scout the area where their gateway was supposed to appear. It had better. They had no supplies, and Mat did not fancy flagging down a ship and riding the long way back to Caemlyn.

It was a short hike across the meadow to the banks of the Arinelle. Once there, he made a small cairn for Noal, then tipped his hat to it and sat down to wait and think.

Moiraine was safe. Mat had survived, though that bloody socket throbbed like nothing else. He still was not certain if the Aeifinn and Eelfinn had strings around him or not, but he had gone into their den and come out unscathed. Mostly, anyway.

One eye lost. What would that do to his ability to fight? That worried him more than anything. He had put on a brave front, but inside he trembled. What would Tuon think of a husband missing an eye? A husband who might not be able to defend himself?

He pulled out a knife, flipping it. Then, on a whim, he tossed it behind him without looking. He heard a soft screech, then turned to see a rabbit slump to the ground, speared by the idly thrown knife.

He smiled, then turned back to the river. There, he noticed something caught between two large river stones along the shore. It was an overturned cooking pot, with a copper bottom, barely used, only dinged on the sides a couple of times. It must have been dropped by a traveler walking up the river.

Yes, he might not be able to judge distance, and he might not be able to see as well. But luck worked better when you were not looking anyway.

He smiled wider, then fetched the rabbit—he would skin that for supper—and plucked the pot out of the river.

Moiraine would get her tea after all.