Knife of Dreams (67 page)

Cadsuane had raised her head and was staring at the stout Brown sister. “Thank you for repeating what you told us yesterday, Verin,” she said dryly. Verin blinked, then took up her knitting again, frowning at it as though she, too, were unsure what it was going to be.

Min caught Rand’s eyes, shaking her head slowly, and he sighed. The bond held irritation and wariness, the last a deliberate warning to him, he suspected. At times, she seemed able to read his mind. Well, if he needed Cadsuane, and Min said he did, then he needed her. He just wished he knew what she was supposed to teach him aside from how to grind his teeth.

“Advise me, Cadsuane. What do you think of my plan?”

“At last the boy asks,” she murmured, setting her embroidery down beside her sewing basket. “All his schemes in motion, some I’ve not been made privy to, and
now
he asks. Very well. Your peace with the Seanchan will be unpopular.”

“A truce,” he broke in. “And a truce with the Dragon Reborn will last
only as long as the Dragon Reborn. When I die, everyone will be free to go to war with the Seanchan again if they wish.”

Min slammed her book shut and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Don’t you talk that way!” she said, red-faced with anger. The bond also carried fear.

“The Prophecies, Min,” he said sadly. Not sad for himself, but for her. He wanted to protect her, her and Elayne and Aviendha, but he would hurt them in the end.

“I said don’t you talk that way! The Prophecies
don’t
say you have to die! I’m not going to let you die, Rand al’Thor! Elayne and Aviendha and I won’t let you!” She glared at Alivia, who her viewing had said would help Rand die, and her hands slid down her arms toward her cuffs.

“Behave, Min,” he said. Her hands shot away from her cuffs, but she set her jaw, and the bond suddenly was flooded with stubbornness. Light, was he going to have to worry about Min trying to kill Alivia? Not that she was likely to succeed—as well try throwing a knife at an Aes Sedai as at the Seanchan woman—but she might get herself injured. He was not sure Alivia
knew
any weaves but those for weapons.

“Unpopular, as I say,” Cadsuane said firmly, raising her voice. She favored Min with a brief frown before turning her attention back to Rand. Her face was smooth, composed, an Aes Sedai’s face. Her dark eyes were hard, like polished black stones. “Especially in Tarabon, Amadicia and Altara, but also elsewhere. If you agree to allow the Seanchan to keep what they’ve already taken, what lands will you give away next? That is how most rulers will see matters.”

Rand dropped back into his chair, stretching his legs in front of him and crossing his ankles. “It doesn’t matter how unpopular it is. I went through that doorframe
ter’angreal
in Tear, Cadsuane. You know about that?” Golden ornaments bobbled as she nodded impatiently. “One of my questions for the Aelfinn was ‘How can I win the Last Battle?’ ”

“A dangerous question to pose,” she said quietly, “touching on the Shadow as it does. Supposedly, the results can be quite unpleasant. What was the answer?”

“ ‘The north and the east must be as one. The west and the south must be as one. The two must be as one.’ ” He blew a smoke ring, put another in the middle of it as it expanded. That was not the whole of it. He had asked how to win and survive. The last part of his answer had been ‘To live, you must die.’ Not something he was going to bring up in front of Min anytime soon. In front of anyone except Alivia, for that matter. Now he just had to
figure out how to live by dying. “At first, I thought it meant I had to conquer everywhere, but that wasn’t what they said. What if it means the Seanchan hold the west and south, as you could say they already do, and there’s an alliance to fight the Last Battle, the Seanchan with everybody else?”

“It’s possible,” she allowed. “But if you’re going to make this . . . truce . . . why are you moving what seems to be a considerable army to Arad Doman and reinforcing what is already in Illian?”

“Because Tarmon Gai’don
is
coming, Cadsuane, and I can’t fight the Shadow and the Seanchan at the same time. I’ll have a truce, or I’ll crush them whatever the cost. The Prophecies say I have to bind the nine moons to me. I only understood what that meant a few days ago. As soon as Bashere returns, I’ll know when and where I’m to meet the Daughter of the Nine Moons. The only question now is how do I bind her, and she’ll have to answer that.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, now and then blowing a smoke ring for punctuation. Reactions varied. Loial just wrote very fast, trying to capture every word, while Harilin and Enaila went on with their game. If the spears had to be danced, they were ready. Alivia nodded fiercely, doubtless hoping it would come to crushing those who had kept her wearing an
a’dam
for five hundred years. Logain had found another winecup and filled it with the last of what was in the pitcher, but he merely held the cup rather than drinking, his expression unreadable. Now it was Rand whom Verin studied intently. But then, she had always been curious about him. But why in the Light would Min feel bone-deep sadness? And Cadsuane. . . .

“Stone cracks from a hard enough blow,” she said, her face an Aes Sedai mask of calm. “Steel shatters. The oak fights the wind and breaks. The willow bends where it must and survives.”

“A willow won’t win Tarmon Gai’don,” he told her.

The door creaked open again, and Ethin tottered in. “My Lord Dragon, three Ogier have arrived. They were most pleased to learn that Master Loial is here. One of them is his mother.”

“My mother?” Loial squeaked, and even that sounded like a hollow wind gusting in caverns. He leaped up so fast that his chair fell over backward, wringing his hands, ears wilting. His head swung from side to side as if he were hunting for a way out besides the door. “What am I going to do, Rand? The other two must be Elder Haman and Erith. What am I going to do?”

“Mistress Covril said she was most anxious to speak with you, Master Loial,” Ethin said in that creaky voice. “Most anxious. They are all damp
from the rain, but she said they will wait for you in the Ogier sitting room upstairs.”

“What am I going to do, Rand?”

“You said you want to marry Erith,” Rand said as gently as he could. Gentleness was difficult except with Min.

“But my book! My notes aren’t complete, and I’ll never find out what happens next. Erith will take me back to Stedding Tsofu with her.”

“Phaw!” Cadsuane picked up her embroidery again and began working the needle delicately. She was making the ancient symbol of Aes Sedai, the Dragon’s Fang and the Flame of Tar Valon melded into a disc, black and white separated by a sinuous line. “Go to your mother, Loial. If she’s Covril, daughter of Ella daughter of Soong, you don’t want to keep her waiting. As I expect you know.”

Loial seemed to take Cadsuane’s words as a command. He began wiping his pen nib again, capping his ink jar. But he did everything very slowly, with his ears drooping. Every so often he moaned sadly, half under his breath, “My book!”

“Well,” Verin said, holding up her knitting for inspection, “I believe I have done all that I can here. I think I’ll go find Tomas. The rain makes his knee ache, though he denies it even to me.” She glanced at the window. “It does seem to be slowing.”

“And I think I’ll go find Lan,” Nynaeve said, gathering her skirts. “The company is better where he is.” That with a sharp tug on her braid and a glare divided between Alivia and Logain. “The wind tells me a storm is coming, Rand. And you know I don’t mean rain.”

“The Last Battle?” Rand asked. “How soon?” When it came to weather, listening to the wind could sometimes tell her when the rains would come to the hour.

“It may be, and I don’t know. Just remember. A storm is coming. A terrible storm.” Overhead, thunder rolled.

Uneasy, Loial watched Nynaeve glide off down the lamp-lit corridor in one direction and Verin in the other. Neither was much taller than his waist, but they were Aes Sedai. The fact knotted his tongue sufficiently that by the time he had worked up his nerve to ask one of them to accompany him, both were out of sight around sharp corners. The manor house was a rambling place, added to over many years with no real overall plan that he could discern, and hallways frequently met at odd angles. He really wished he had an Aes Sedai for company when he faced his mother. Even Cadsuane, although she made him very nervous with how she was always pinching at Rand. Sooner or later, Rand was going to explode. He was not the same man Loial first met in Caemlyn, or even the man he had left in Cairhien. The mood around Rand was dark and stony now, a dense patch of lion’s claw and treacherous ground underfoot. The whole house felt that way with Rand in it.

A lean, gray-haired serving woman carrying a basket of folded towels gave a start, then shook her head and muttered something under her breath before offering him a brief curtsy and walking on. She made a small sidestep as though she was moving around something. Or someone. He stared at the spot and scratched behind his ear. Maybe he could only see Ogier dead. Not that he actually wanted to. It was sad enough just knowing that human dead could no longer rest. Having the same confirmed for Ogier
would be enough to break his heart. Most likely they would appear only inside
stedding
, in any case. He would very much like to see a town vanish, though. Not a real town, but a town that was as dead as those spirits the humans claimed to see. You might be able to walk its streets before it melted and see what people were like before the War of the Hundred Years, or even the Trolloc Wars. So Verin said, and she seemed to know a very great deal about it. That would certainly be worth a mention in his book. It was going to be a fine book. Scratching his beard with two fingers—the thing itched!—he sighed. It would have been a fine book.

Standing there in the corridor was only putting off the inevitable. Put off clearing the brush and you always find chokevine in it, so the old saying went. Only he felt as though the chokevine was tight around him instead of a tree. Breathing hard, he followed the serving woman all the way to the wide stairs that led up to the Ogier rooms. The staircase had two sturdy bannisters, shoulder-high on the gray-haired woman and stout enough to give a decent handhold. He was often afraid just to brush against stair rails made for humans for fear he might break them. One ran down the middle, with the steps along the wood-paneled wall pitched for human feet, those on the outside for Ogier.

The woman was old as humans counted years, yet she climbed more quickly than he and was scurrying down the corridor by the time he reached the top. Doubtless she was taking the towels to his mother’s room, and to Elder Haman’s and Erith’s. Surely they would prefer to get dry before talking. He would suggest that. It would gain him time to think. His thoughts seemed as sluggish as his feet, and his feet felt like millstones.

There were six bedrooms built for Ogier along the corridor, which itself was properly scaled for them—his upstretched hands would have come a pace short of touching the ceiling beams—along with a storeroom, a bathing room with a large copper tub, and the sitting room. This was the oldest part of the house, dating back nearly five hundred years. A lifetime for a very old Ogier, but many lifetimes for humans. They lived such brief lives, except for Aes Sedai; that had to be why they flitted about like hummingbirds. But even Aes Sedai could be nearly as precipitous as the rest. That was a puzzlement.

The sitting room door was carved with a Great Tree, not Ogier work, yet finely detailed and instantly recognizable. He stopped, tugging his coat straight, combing his hair with his fingers, wishing he had time to black his boots. There was an ink stain on his cuff. No time to do anything about that, either. Cadsuane was right. His mother was not a woman to be kept
waiting. Strange that Cadsuane knew of her. Perhaps knew her, by the way she had spoken. Covril, daughter of Ella daughter of Soong, was a famous Speaker, but he had not realized she was known Outside. Light, he was all but panting with anxiety.