|
Alse DeNell stood to meet Tem as she followed Mai through the ruins around the Dome of Truth. The farmer and acting rear guard was about twenty – four years older than the three vereni – and she seemed to consider everyone else in their little party to be obnoxious children. The large stick she carried did nothing to dispel the image, especially when she used it to club Tem upside the head.
"About bloody time," she muttered, her pert nose wrinkling as she watched Mai veer away from the campsite to sit by herself, half in the shadows. A thick, waist-length braid as red as flame swayed as she turned back to Tem. "What kept you?"
Tem did not speak. That seemed to be answer enough for Alse; her stern face softened and she smiled a trifle sadly. "There's nothing you can do. What was meant to be will be. We knew Mai was special even before we knew what that bloody mark was."
"I know." Tem turned away from Alse, suddenly unable to meet her piercing gaze. Mai had answered to the Worldbreaker's name. And she had called Tem something else – someone else. Worse, Tem had almost answered to that name. "Light, how do you stop being someone's friend?"
"You don't. Not when that friend needs you."
Tem could only nod silently. There was nothing else to say.
It was no secret that Mai DeShellay was different – it never had been. Younger and smaller than Tem or Jaia, she had been a fragile child who might not have survived infancy if she had not been so stubborn. Father Gregory of the Order of the Illumined Creator had pointed out dutifully that all children were precious, but rumors of the Dark One's touch had always made Mai a bit of an outcast. The gleaming mark on her face had not helped.
Her family was wealthy, but they had not stood by her except to see to it that she was fed and clothed. It had been her age-mates who had supported her and become her closest companions. Tem herself, always ready to dunk some upstart Tashiri overlord in a rain barrel if it made Mai laugh; quiet, thoughtful Jaia, who had used her towering height to intimidate anyone who tried to bully or malign; Wat, only three days older than Mai and her constant protector before either of them had been able to walk; and even little Dav Gren, ten years old to Mai's sixteen and Wat's self-named tagalong, who had routinely decked sniveling Jak Attwelle for suggesting she was the spawn of a Troc.
And Mai had always been stronger than any of them.
They were all traveling with Quentin now, even Dav. Alse was there, too, along for the adventure. So was hatchet-faced Mel Cobbwaite, a silent lowlife of a man who had lost his outlander wife to the spot-face fever, and Tamla Meridian, a songmistress who claimed Mai belonged in the ballads, and Hal E'Sonn, one of the younger members of the Order who wanted the little group to be fellow missionaries. All of them were following the A'sh'man and his Guardian, Hilden Blueford, to Aravalon.
Light knew why.
***
"Lions sing and mountains fly.
Roses bloom and lilies die."
Dav was playing when Tem finally made her way to the campsite huddled against the back of a half-standing manor. Dark-haired and small, the boy had drawn a pattern of squares on the ground and jumped from one to the other as he chanted. The game looked completely random to those who did not know the rules. What couplet you chanted depended on where the counting stone landed, how many times it had been thrown, and even which way it was pointing. It was called the Travel Game in North Manthrin, although Quentin said it had other names elsewhere.
Wat grinned at Tem as he tossed the counting stone onto the River square – hard to get to in any case, but especially from the Island square that Dav currently occupied. The boy made a face at his older friend, no doubt thinking Wat had chosen such a difficult move on purpose. He was probably right.
The sun-haired shepherd was sitting near his tagalong on what looked like an old pillar, his quarterstaff resting on the ground beside him. "See any hidden treasures in the Dome?"
"Just junk." Tem flopped on the ground beside him, placing her spear across her knees so she could get at it if she needed to. "Looks like there used to be gold or something in the floor, but it's gone now."
"Woman in the Tower, Ogre in the Way,
Midnight in the morning, all gone away."
Wat tossed another stone onto the Valley square and shrugged, leaving Dav to think on his next move. "Gold in the floor? Probably looted years ago. Anyone would come to ruins for that."
"Don't be so sure," Tamla said as she leaned forward to join their conversation. Tem had never been jealous of another woman in her life until she had met the songmistress. To say that Tamla was stunningly beautiful was to compare an ember to the sun. Her black hair hung loose around her heart-shaped face and framed large, liquid brown eyes that would make men swear to the Dark One and be glad for it. Long limbs moved with fluid grace and her voice had a soft, lyrical note. The worst part was how she did not seem to notice. "There are stories of ruins where just touching their gold was death."
Dav paused in his game, balanced precariously between the River square and the Knife Square. "Like what?"
Tamla smiled. "For example: the story of the ruins of Sha'loth, what men called the Waiting Darkness, and of Matrim, the Trickster of many names."
"Light, Mat!" Tem gripped her spear again as Mai's words in the Dome echoed in her head. No. Mat's a common name. The Worldbreaker could have known lots of people named Mat. And it's different than Matrim, right?
A little part of her laughed nastily. Always a bit of a prankster, weren't you? And another voice – that of her mother trying to drill common wisdom into her head. Everyone is reborn in the spinning of the Wheel. Tem swallowed around a suddenly dry throat. "What happened?"
Tamla's perfect lips curved into a smile. "Matrim Hornsounder dared to steal a great blade from Sha'loth – a sword as long as good Lady Blueford's, covered with rubies and emeralds. Against great odds he made his way to safety with his treasure, leaving the Trocs to Ma'sha Mreth, the great beast that had consumed Sha'loth's citizens and hungered for new blood. With that blade Matrim fought the entire guard of the Chanois Lords and left them in despair – but it was a cruel blade shaped by the evil of Ma'sha Mreth. The Twisted One stole it away and cursed it anew with his own evil. It was borne to Arma'gai'din and used to stop the Worldbreaker from placing the last Seal – "
"Thirteen demons, thirteen Fades at Shagul.
One sword, one crown, one shadow, the Dark One's rule."
Tamla glared at Dav, clearly not liking her story interrupted. The boy took no notice; he had made it to the Valley square without a problem. Wat tossed a stone onto the Mountain square and nodded for the songmistress to keep going.
"As I was saying," Tamla continued. "Sha'loth was destroyed by the Worldbreaker and his two powerful sisters, Nynaeve Mashiara, queen of the Hundred Towers, and Gwen the Warrior Ae'dai. And yet its evil continued in that blade. It is said that to atone for the beast he had unleashed on the world, Matrim Bladefinder led the forces of Light after the Worldbreaker fell, and alongside A'Bara of the Golden Eyes he drove all the Trocs back to the Great Waste – "
"You have it wrong, songmistress."
Quentin's cool voice sliced through the campsite. Not a tall man by any means, the A'sh'man kept his black coat open to reveal the neat white shirt he always wore underneath and tied his ajah cord around his waist like a belt instead of wearing it properly on his shoulder. His ageless face made his years impossible to guess, but he could not be very old; no gray touched his dark hair and sometimes a twinkle sparkled in his eyes. "You have it wrong," he echoed calmly. "But perhaps legends are best left legends, since the truth is sometimes too painful to bear."
"We're grown up," Dav said, abandoning his game. "We can learn the truth."
Quentin shook his head. "No. There is more truth to your game than to most of the tales our illustrious songmistress tells, but that is still not close enough."
"You do not know all the truth, either," Tem grumbled.
"I never said that I did. I know more than you; that is all."
"We know enough." Jaia Mideer unfolded herself from her spot by the fire. Taller than any man in Baradell by half a head, the blunt-featured girl had arms as wide as Tem's legs and scared off Tashiri bullyboys by smiling – funny, since she did not have a mean bone in her. She was not so much large as built on a different scale than the rest of the world. Tem did not want to think what she might be like when she was fully grown. "If I may say, Quentin A'sh'man, we know that Mai is the Paladin and we know that we – Tem and I – are vereni like she is. We know that the Dark One doesn't want us to reach Aravalon. What more do we need?"
Quentin eyed her for a moment; he was probably recovering from the shock of hearing her say more than one sentence at a time. "You need a great deal more. If I had the time or the need, I would tell you. Suffice to say that you are important, all of you, or else you would not be here with me. Trust me, I will die before I see any of you taken by the Dark One."
Trust is the color of death. Tem shuddered in spite of herself. Too close. Too close to what she had been thinking earlier. Light, I'm not Matrim Hornsounder. I'm Tem E'Brell. This is all Quentin's fault.
"Quite bloody frankly, we don't trust you." Alse leaned on a crumbling wall and tugged at her braid irritably. "Not until you tell us why you're leading Mai around by the nose."
"And what you want from the rest of us," Hal added, running his fingers through his shaggy brown curls. He looked surprised at his own daring; normally he did not dare to speak against the A'sh'man.
Quentin regarded them all for a long moment. "I came to find one vereni – the Paladin. I found three, something that has not happened since Raine of the Blue found the Worldbreaker and his two companions – A'Bara and Matrim. And with them I found two channelers whose like has not been seen in the Black Tower for many hundreds of years." His eyes touched on Hal and Wat. "Among other things. I want to know why you were all there for me to find, and I want to know if you are all as crucial to the Great Lace as I believe you to be."
"Oh, is that all?" Alse shook her head and spat something that she would have thrashed Tem for even thinking about. Hal touched her on the shoulder, but she shrugged him off. "Does the Great bloody Lace want us being chased around like a Tashiri lord's deer?"
"Do you plan to have the Dark One and his demons hunt us to Shagul itself?" Mel growled, fingering his knife as if he meant to use it on the A'sh'man right then and there.
"I never said that, either."
"You haven't said much of anything," Tem said, suddenly fed up with the A'sh'man and his double-talk. "We're not special, alright? We're vereni, maybe, but that doesn't mean anything. I don't want to be chased just because I was born in the same place as the Paladin." She glanced around the little circle. Quentin's mouth was a tight, thin line and Alse and Mel were nodding approvingly, but everyone else was staring at her as if she had sprouted another head. Even Wat. "Light, I don't know what I'm bloody doing here." She did not want them looking at her right now, not when she was about to leap down the A'sh'man's throat. "I'll take watch," she muttered as she stalked out of the campfire.
We're just vereni caught in Mai's bloody swirl, she thought grimly. All of us, reborn or no. Bloody light, I wish I knew what Quentin was up to. I wish I knew who that Mat was.
She glanced at Mai, sitting off by herself in the shadows. I wish I knew when she's going to destroy us, she added grimly.
|