Knife of Dreams (41 page)

“Try to embrace
saidar
,” she drawled, stern eyes steady on Joline. Her voice was quite mild in comparison to her gaze, yet plainly she expected obedience. Obedience? She looked a bloody leopard staring at three tethered goats. And strangely, more beautiful than ever. A beautiful leopard
who might rake him with her claws as soon as the goats. Well, he had faced a leopard a few times before this, and those were his own memories. There was an odd sort of exhilaration that came with confronting a leopard. “Go ahead,” she went on. “You know the shield is gone.” Joline gave a small grunt of surprise, and Tuon nodded. “Good. You’ve obeyed for the first time. And learned that you cannot touch the Power while you wear the
a’dam
unless I wish it. But now, I wish you to hold the Power, and you do, though you didn’t try to embrace it.” Joline’s eyes widened slightly, a small crack in her calm. “And now,” Tuon went on, “I wish you not to be holding the Power, and it is gone from you. Your first lessons.” Joline drew a deep breath. She was beginning to look . . . not afraid, but uneasy.

“Blood and bloody ashes, woman,” Mat growled, “do you think you can parade them around on those leashes without anyone noticing?” A heavy thump came from the door. A second produced the sound of cracking wood. Whoever was beating at the wooden window was still at it, too. Somehow, that caused no sense of urgency. If the Warders got in, what could they do?

“I will house them in the wagon they are using and exercise them at night,” she snapped irritably. “I am nothing like these women, Toy.
Nothing
like them. Perhaps I could learn, but I choose not to, just as I choose not to steal or commit murder. That makes all the difference.” Recovering herself with visible effort, she sat down with her hands on the table, focused on the Aes Sedai once again. “I’ve had considerable success with one woman like you.” Edesina gasped, murmured a name too low to be caught. “Yes,” Tuon said. “You must have met my Mylen in the kennels or at exercise. I will train you all as well as she is. You have been cursed with a dark taint, but I will teach you to have pride in the service you give the Empire.”

“I didn’t bring these three out of Ebou Dar so you could take them back,” Mat said firmly, sliding himself along the bed. The foxhead grew colder still, and Tuon made a startled sound.

“How did you . . . do that, Toy? The weave . . . melted . . . when it touched you.”

“It’s a gift, Precious.”

As he stood up, Selucia started toward him, crouching, her hands outstretched in pleading. Fear painted her face. “You must not,” she began.

“No!” Tuon said sharply.

Selucia straightened and backed away, though she kept her eyes on him. Strangely, the fear vanished from her expression. He shook his head in
wonder. He knew the bosomy woman obeyed Tuon instantly—she was
so’jhin
, after all, as much owned as Tuon’s horse, and she actually thought that right and good—but how obedient did you need to be to lose your fear at an order?

“They have annoyed me, Toy,” Tuon said as he put his hands on Teslyn’s collar. Still trembling, tears still streaming down her cheeks, the Red looked as though she could not believe he would actually remove the thing.

“They annoy me, too.” Placing his fingers just so, he pressed, and the collar clicked open.

Teslyn seized his hands and began kissing them. “Thank you,” she wept over and over. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Mat cleared his throat. “You’re welcome, but there’s no need for. . . . Would you stop that? Teslyn?” Reclaiming his hands took some effort.

“I want them to stop annoying me, Toy,” Tuon said as he turned to Joline. From anyone else, that might have been petulant. The dark little woman made it a demand.

“I think they’ll agree to that after this,” he said dryly. But Joline was looking up at him with a stubborn set to her jaw. “You will agree, won’t you?” The Green said nothing.

“I do agree,” Teslyn said quickly. “We do all agree.”

“Yes, we all agree,” Edesina added.

Joline stared at him silently, stubbornly, and Mat sighed.

“I could let Precious keep you for a few days, until you change your mind.” Joline’s collar clicked open in his hands. “But I won’t.”

Still staring into his eyes, she touched her throat as though to confirm the collar was gone. “Would you like to be one of my Warders?” she asked, then laughed softly. “No need to look like that. Even if I would bond you against your will, I couldn’t so long as you have that
ter’angreal
. I agree, Master Cauthon. It may cost our best chance to stop the Seanchan, but I will no longer bother . . . Precious.”

Tuon hissed like a doused cat, and he sighed again. What you gained on the swings, you lost on the roundabouts.

He spent part of that night doing what he liked least in the world. Working. Digging a deep hole to bury the three
a’dam
. He did the job himself because, surprisingly, Joline wanted them. They were
ter’angreal
, after all, and the White Tower needed to study them. That might well have been so, but the Tower would just have to find their
a’dam
elsewhere. He was fairly certain that none of the Redarms would have handed them
over if he told them to bury the things, yet he was taking no chances that they would reappear to cause more trouble. It started raining before the hole was knee-deep, a cold driving rain, and by the time he was done, he was soaked to the skin and mud to his waist. A fine end to a fine night, with the dice bouncing around his skull.

The following day brought a respite, or so it seemed. Tuon, in a blue silk riding dress and her wide tooled-leather belt, not only rode beside him as the show rolled slowly north, she waggled her fingers at Selucia when the woman tried to put her dun between them. Selucia had acquired her own mount, somehow, a compact gelding that could not match Pips or Akein but still surpassed the dapple by a fair margin. The blue-eyed woman, with a green head scarf beneath her cowl today, fell in on Tuon’s other side, and her face would have done an Aes Sedai proud when it came to giving nothing away. Mat could not help grinning. Let
her
hide frustration for a change. Lacking horses, the real Aes Sedai were confined to their wagon; Metwyn was too far away, on the driver’s seat of the purple wagon, to overhear what he said to Tuon; only a few thin clouds remained in the sky from the night’s rain; and all seemed right in the world. Even the dice bouncing in his head could steal nothing from that. Well, there were bad moments, but only moments.

Early on, a flight of ravens winged overhead, a dozen or more big black birds. They flew swiftly, never deviating from their line, but he eyed them anyway until they dwindled to specks and vanished. Nothing to spoil the day there. Not for him, at least. Maybe for someone farther north.

“Did you see some omen in them, Toy?” Tuon asked. She was as graceful in the saddle as she was in everything else she did. He could not recall
seeing her be awkward about anything. “Most omens I know concerning ravens specifically have to do with them perching on someone’s rooftop or cawing at dawn or dusk.”

“They can be spies for the Dark One,” he told her. “Sometimes. Crows, too. And rats. But they didn’t stop to look at us, so we don’t need to worry.”

Running a green-gloved hand across the top of her head, she sighed. “Toy, Toy,” she murmured, resettling the cowl of her cloak. “How many children’s tales do you believe? Do you believe that if you sleep on Old Hob’s Hill under a full moon, the snakes will give you true answers to three questions, or that foxes steal people’s skins and take the nourishment from food so you can starve to death while eating your fill?”

Putting on a smile took effort. “I don’t think I ever heard either one of those.” Making his voice amused required effort, too. What were the odds of her mentioning snakes giving true answers, which the Aelfinn did after a fashion, in the same breath with foxes stealing skins? He was pretty sure that the Eelfinn did, and made leather from it. But it was Old Hob that nearly made him flinch. The other was likely just
ta’veren
twisting at the world. She certainly knew nothing about him and the snakes or the foxes. In Shandalle, the land where Artur Hawkwing had been born, though, Old Hob,
Caisen Hob
, had been another name for the Dark One. The Aelfinn and the Eelfinn both surely deserved to be connected to the Dark One, yet that was hardly anything he wanted to think on when he had his own connection to the bloody foxes. And to the snakes, too? That possibility was enough to sour his stomach.

Still, it was a pleasant ride, with the day warming as the sun rose, though it never could be called warm. He juggled six colored wooden balls, and Tuon laughed and clapped her hands, as well she should. That feat had impressed the juggler he bought the balls from, and it was harder while riding. He told several jokes that made her laugh, and one that made her roll her eyes and exchange finger-twitchings with Selucia. Maybe she did not like jokes about common room serving maids. It had not been the least off-color. He was no fool. He did wish she had laughed, though. She had a marvelous laugh, rich and warm and free. They talked of horses and argued over training methods with stubborn animals. That pretty head held a few odd notions, such as that you could calm a fractious horse by biting its ear! That sounded more likely to send it up like a haystack fire. And she had never heard of humming under your breath to soothe a horse, and would not believe his father had taught him such a skill shy of demonstration.

“Well, I can hardly do that without a horse that needs soothing, can I?” he said. She rolled her eyes again. Selucia rolled hers, too.

There was no heat in the argument, though, no anger, just spirit. Tuon had so much spirit it seemed impossible it could fit into such a tiny woman. It was her silences that put a small damper on the day, more so than snakes or foxes. They were far away, and there was nothing to be done. She was right there beside him, and he had a great deal to do concerning her. She never alluded to what had happened with the three Aes Sedai, or to the sisters themselves either. She never mentioned his
ter’angreal
, or the fact that whatever she had made Teslyn or Joline weave against him had failed. The night before might as well have been a dream.

She was like a general planning a battle, Setalle had said. Trained at intrigue and dissembling from infancy, according to Egeanin. And it was all aimed straight at him. But to what end? Surely it could not be some Seanchan Blood form of courting. Egeanin knew little of that, but surely not. He had known Tuon a matter of weeks and kidnapped her, she called him Toy, had tried to buy him, and only a vain fool could twist that into a woman falling in love. Which left anything from some elaborate scheme for revenge to . . . to the Light alone knew what. She had threatened to make him a cupbearer. That meant
da’covale
, according to Egeanin, though she had scoffed at the notion. Cupbearers were chosen for their beauty, and in Egeanin’s estimation, he fell far short. Well, in his own as well, truth to tell, not that he was likely to admit it to anybody. Any number of women had admired his face. Nothing said Tuon could not complete the marriage ceremony just to make him think himself home free and safe, then have him executed. Women were never simple, but Tuon made the rest look like children’s games.

For a long while they saw not so much as a farm, but perhaps two hours after the sun passed its zenith, they came on a sizable village. The ring of a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil sounded dimly. The buildings, some of three stories, were all heavy timber framing with whitish plaster between and had high-peaked roofs of thatch and tall stone chimneys. Something about them tugged at Mat’s memory, but he could not say what. There was not a farm to be seen anywhere in the unbroken forest. But villages were always tied to farms, supporting them and living off them. They must all be further in from the road, back in the trees.