The Dragon Reborn (85 page)

By simple trial and error she had learned a little of the rules of
Tel’aran’rhiod
—even this World of Dreams, this Unseen World, had its rules, if odd ones; she was sure she did not know a tenth of them—and one way to make herself go where she wanted. Closing her eyes, she emptied her mind as she would have to embrace
saidar
. It was not as easy, because the rosebud kept trying to form, and she kept sensing the True Source, kept aching to embrace it, but she had to fill the emptiness with something else. She pictured the Heart of the Stone, as she had seen it in these dreams, formed it in every detail, perfect within the void. The huge, polished redstone columns. The age-worn stones of the floor. The dome, far overhead. The crystal sword, untouchable, slowly revolving hilt-down in midair. When it was so real she was sure she could reach out and touch it, she opened her eyes, and she was there, in the Heart of the Stone. Or the Heart of the Stone as it existed in
Tel’aran’rhiod
.

The columns were there, and
Callandor
. And around the sparkling sword, almost as dim and insubstantial as shadows, thirteen women sat
cross-legged, staring at
Callandor
as it revolved. Honey-haired Liandrin turned her head, looking straight at Egwene with those big, dark eyes, and her rosebud mouth smiled.

Gasping, Egwene sat up in bed so fast she almost fell off the side.

“What is the matter?” Elayne demanded. “What happened? You look frightened.”

“You only just closed your eyes,” Nynaeve said softly. “This is the first time since the very beginning that you’ve come back without us waking you. Something did happen, didn’t it?” She tugged her braid sharply. “Are you all right?”

How did I get back?
Egwene wondered.
Light, I do not even know what I did
. She knew she was only trying to put off what she had to say. Unfastening the cord around her neck, she held the Great Serpent ring and the larger, twisted
ter’angreal
on her palm. “They are waiting for us,” she said finally. There was no need to say who. “And I think they know we are in Tear.”

Outside, the storm broke over the city.

Rain drumming on the deck over his head, Mat stared at the stones board on the table between him and Thom, but he could not really concentrate on the game, even with an Andoran silver mark riding on the outcome. Thunder crashed, and lightning flashed in the small windows. Four lamps lit the captain’s cabin of the
Swift. Bloody ship may be as sleek as the bird, but it’s still taking too bloody long
. The vessel gave a small jolt, then another; the motion seemed to change.
He had better not run us into the bloody mud! If he is not making the best time he can wring out of this buttertub, I will stuff that gold down his throat!
Yawning—he had not slept well since leaving Caemlyn; he could not stop worrying enough to sleep well—yawning, he set a white stone on the intersection of two lines; in three moves, he would capture nearly a fifth of Thom’s black stones.

“You could be a good player, boy,” the gleeman said around his pipe, placing his next stone, “if you put your mind to it.” His tabac smelled like leaves and nuts.

Mat reached for another stone from the pile at his elbow, then blinked and let it lie. In the same three moves, Thom’s stones would surround over a third of his. He had not seen it coming, and he could see no escape. “Do you ever lose a game? Have you ever lost a game?”

Thom removed his pipe and knuckled his mustaches. “Not in a long while. Morgase used to beat me about half the time. It is said good commanders of soldiers and good players of the Great Game are good at stones, as well. She is the one, and I’ve no doubt she could command a battle, too.”

“Wouldn’t you rather dice some more? Stones take too much time.”

“I like a chance to win more than one toss in nine or ten,” the white-haired man said dryly.

Mat bounded to his feet as the door banged open to admit Captain Derne. The square-faced man whipped his cloak from his shoulders, shaking the rain off and muttering curses to himself. “The Light sear my bones, I do not know why I ever let you hire
Swift
. You, demanding more flaming speed in the blackest night or the heaviest rain. More speed. Always more bloody speed! Could have run on a bloody mudflat a hundred times over by now!”

“You wanted the gold,” Mat said harshly. “You said this heap of old boards was fast, Derne. When do we reach Tear?”

The captain smiled a tight smile. “We are tying off to the dock, now. And burn me for a bloody farmer if I carry anything that can flaming talk ever again! Now, where is the rest of my gold?”

Mat hurried to one of the small windows and peered out. In the harsh glare of lightning flashes he could see a wet stone dock, if not much else. He fished the second purse of gold from his pocket and tossed it to Derne.
Whoever heard of a riverman who didn’t dice!
“About time,” he growled.
Light send I’m not too late
.

He had stuffed all of his spare clothes and his blankets into the leather scrip, and he hung that on one side of him and the roll of fireworks on the other, from the cord he tied to it. His cloak covered it all, but gapped a little in the front. Better he got wet than the fireworks. He could dry out and be as good as new; a test with a bucket had shown fireworks could not.
I guess Rand’s da was right
. Mat had always thought the Village Council would not set them off in the rain because they made a better show on clear nights.

“Aren’t you about ready to sell those things?” Thom was settling his gleeman’s cloak on his shoulders. It covered his leather-cased harp and flute, but his bundle of clothes and blankets he slung on his back outside the patch-covered cloak.

“Not until I figure out how they work, Thom. Besides, think what fun it will be when I set them all off.”

The gleeman shuddered. “As long as you don’t do it all at once, boy. As
long as you don’t throw them in the fireplace at supper. I’d not put it past you, the way you’ve been behaving with them. You’re lucky the captain here did not throw us off the ship two days ago.”

“He wouldn’t.” Mat laughed. “Not while that purse was in the offing. Eh, Derne?”

Derne was tossing the purse of gold in his hand. “I have not asked before this, but you’ve given me the gold, now, and you’ll not take it back. What is this all about? All this flaming speed.”

“A wager, Derne.” Yawning, Mat picked up his quarterstaff, ready to go. “A wager.”

“A wager!” Derne stared at the heavy purse. The other just like it was locked in his money chest. “There must be a flaming kingdom riding on it!”

“More than that,” Mat said.

Rain bucketed down on the deck so hard that he could not see the gangplank except when lightning crackled above the city; the roar of the downpour barely let him hear himself think. He could see lights in windows up a street, though. There would be inns, up there. The captain had not come on deck to see them ashore, and none of the crew had stayed out in the rain, either. Mat and Thom made their way to the stone dock alone.

Mat cursed when his boots sank into the mud of the street, but there was nothing for it, so he kept on, striding along as fast as he could with his boots and the butt of his staff sticking at every step. The air smelled of fish, rank even with the rain. “We’ll find an inn,” he said, loudly, so he could be heard, “and then I will go out looking.”

“In this weather?” Thom shouted back. Rain was rolling down his face, but he was more interested in keeping his instruments covered than his face.

“Comar could have left Caemlyn before us. If he had a good horse instead of the crowbaits we were riding, he could have set out downriver from Aringill maybe a full day ahead of us, and I don’t know how much of that we caught up with that idiot Derne.”

“It was a quick passage,” Thom allowed. “
Swift
deserves its name.”

“Be that as it may, Thom, rain or no rain, I have to find him before he finds Egwene and Nynaeve, and Elayne.”

“A few more hours won’t make much difference, boy. There are hundreds of inns in a city the size of Tear. There may be hundreds more outside the walls, some of them little places with no more than a dozen rooms to let, so tiny you could walk right by them and never know they were there.” The
gleeman hitched the hood of his cloak up more, muttering to himself. “It will take weeks to search them all. But it will take Comar the same weeks. We can spend the night in out of the rain. You can wager whatever coin you have left that Comar won’t be out in it.”

Mat shook his head.
A tiny inn with a dozen rooms
. Before he left Emond’s Field, the biggest building he had ever seen was the Winespring Inn. He doubted if Bran al’Vere had any more than a dozen rooms to let. Egwene had lived with her parents and her sisters in the rooms at the front of the second floor.
Burn me, sometimes I think we should never any of us have left Emond’s Field
. But Rand surely had had to, and Egwene would probably have died if she had not gone to Tar Valon.
Now she might die because she did go
. He did not think he could settle for the farm again; the cows and the sheep certainly would not play dice. But Perrin still had a chance to go home.
Go home, Perrin
, he found himself thinking.
Go home while you still can
. He gave himself a shake.
Fool! Why would he want to?
He thought of bed, but pushed it away.
Not yet
.

Lightning streaked across the sky, three jagged bolts together, casting a stark light over a narrow house that seemed to have bunches of herbs hanging in the windows, and a shop, shut up tight, but a potter’s from the sign with its bowls and plates. Yawning, he hunched his shoulders against the driving rain and tried to pull his boots out of the clinging mud more quickly.

“I think I can forget about this part of the city, Thom,” he shouted. “All this mud, and that stink of fish. Can you see Nynaeve or Egwene—or Elayne!—choosing to stay here? Women like things neat and tidy, Thom, and smelling good.”

“May be, boy,” Thom muttered, then coughed. “You would be surprised what women will put up with. But it may be.”

Holding his cloak to keep the roll of fireworks covered, Mat lengthened his stride. “Come on, Thom. I want to find Comar or the girls tonight, one or the other.”

Thom limped after him, coughing now and again.

They strode through the wide gates in the city—unguarded, in the rain—and Mat was relieved to feel paving stones under his feet again. And not more than fifty paces up the street was an inn, the windows of the common room spilling light onto the street, music drifting out into the night. Even Thom covered that last fifty paces through the rain quickly, limp or no limp.

The White Crescent had a landlord whose girth made his long blue
coat fit snugly below the waist as well as above, unlike those of most of the men in the low-backed chairs at the tables. Mat thought the landlord’s baggy breeches, tied at the ankle above low shoes, had to be big enough for two ordinary men to fit inside, one in each leg. The serving women wore dark, high-necked dresses and short white aprons. There was a fellow playing a hammered dulcimer between the two stone fireplaces. Thom eyed the fellow critically and shook his head.

The rotund innkeeper, Cavan Lopar by name, was more than glad to give them rooms. He frowned at their muddy boots, but silver from Mat’s pocket—the gold was running low—and Thom’s patch-covered cloak smoothed his fat forehead. When Thom said he would perform for a small fee some nights, Lopar’s chins waggled with pleasure. Of a big man with a white streak in his beard, he knew nothing, nor of three women meeting the descriptions Mat gave. Mat left everything but his cloak and his quarterstaff in his room, barely looking to see that it had a bed—sleep was enticing, but he refused to let himself think of it—then wolfed down a spicy fish stew and rushed back out into the rain. He was surprised that Thom came with him.

“I thought you wanted to be in where it’s dry, Thom.”

The gleeman patted the flute case he still had under his cloak. The rest of his things were up in his room. “People talk to a gleeman, boy. I may learn something you would not. I’d not like to see those girls harmed any more than you.”

There was another inn a hundred paces down the rain-filled street on the other side, and another two hundred beyond that, and then more. Mat took them as he came to them, ducking in long enough for Thom to flourish his cloak and tell a story, then let someone buy him a cup of wine afterwards while Mat asked around after a tall man with a white streak in his close-cut black beard and three women. He won a few coins at dice, but he learned nothing, and neither did Thom. He was just glad the gleeman seemed to be taking only a few sips of wine at each inn; Thom had been close to abstemious on the boat, but Mat had not been certain he would not dive back into the wine once they reached Tear. By the time they had visited two dozen common rooms, Mat felt as if his eyelids had weights. The rain had lessened a bit, but it still fell steadily in big drops, and as the rain fell off the wind had freshened. The sky had the dark gray look of coming dawn.

“Boy,” Thom muttered, “if we don’t go back to The White Crescent, I am going to go to sleep here in the rain.” He stopped to cough. “Do you
realize you’ve marched right past three inns? Light, I am so tired I can’t think. Do you have a scheme of where to go that you have not told me?”

Mat stared blearily up the street at a tall man in a cloak hurrying around a corner.
Light, I
am
tired. Rand is five hundred leagues from here, playing at being the bloody Dragon
. “What? Three inns?” They were standing almost in front of another, The Golden Cup according to the sign creaking in the wind. It looked nothing like a dice cup, but he decided to give it a try anyway. “One more, Thom. If we don’t find them here, we’ll go back and go to bed.” Bed sounded better than a dice game with a hundred gold marks riding on the toss, but he made himself go in.

Two steps into the common room Mat saw him. The big man wore a green coat with blue stripes down puffy sleeves, but it was Comar, close-cut black beard with a white streak over his chin and all. He sat in one of the strangely low-backed chairs, at a table on the far side of the room, rattling a leather dice cup and smiling at the man across from him. That fellow wore a long coat and baggy breeches, and he was not smiling. He stared at the coins on the table as if wishing he had them back in his purse. Another dice cup sat at Comar’s elbow.