Shadow Rising, The (36 page)

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Authors: Robert Jordan

BOOK: Shadow Rising, The
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“If you do not go to Rhuidean,” the woman on the right said, “you will die.”
The bell tolled again, louder this time; Mat felt its tremor through his boots. The looks the three shared were plainly anxious. He opened his mouth, but they were only concerned with each other.
“The strain,” one of the women said hurriedly. “It is too great.”
“The savor of him,” the other woman said on her heels. “It has been so very long.”
Before she was done the man spoke. “The strain is too great. Too great. Ask. Ask!”
“Burn your soul for a craven heart,” Mat growled, “I will that! Why will I die if I do not go to Rhuidean? I very likely will die if I try. It makes no—”
The man cut him off and spoke hurriedly. “You will have sidestepped the thread of fate, left your fate to drift on the winds of time, and you will be killed by those who do not want that fate fulfilled. Now, go. You must go! Quickly!”
The yellow-clad guide was suddenly there at Mat’s side, tugging at his sleeve with those too-long hands.
Mat shook him off. “No! I will not go! You have led me from the questions I wanted to ask and given me senseless answers. You will not leave it there. What fate are you talking about? I will have one clear answer out of you, at least!”
A third time the bell sounded mournfully, and the entire room trembled.
“Go!” the man shouted. “You have had your answers. You must go before it is too late!”
Abruptly a dozen of the yellow-clad men were around Mat, seeming to appear out of the air, trying to pull him toward the door. He fought with fists, elbows, knees. “What fate? Burn your hearts, what fate?” It was the room itself that pealed, the walls and floor quivering, nearly taking Mat and his attackers off their feet. “What fate?”
The three were on their feet atop the pedestals, and he could not tell which shrieked which answer.
“To marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons!”
“To die and live again, and live once more a part of what was!”
“To give up half the light of the world to save the world!”
Together they howled like steam escaping under pressure. “Go to Rhuidean, son of battles! Go to Rhuidean, trickster! Go, gambler! Go!”
Mat’s assailants snatched him into the air by his arms and legs and ran, holding him over their heads. “Unhand me, you white-livered sons of goats!” he shouted, struggling. “Burn your eyes! The Shadow take your souls, loose me! I will have your guts for a saddle girth!” But writhe and curse as he would, those long fingers gripped like iron.
Twice more the bell tolled, or the palace did. Everything shook as in an earthquake; the walls rang with deafening reverberations, each louder than the last. Mat’s captors stumbled on, nearly falling but never stopping their pell-mell race. He did not even see where they were taking him until they suddenly stopped short, heaving him into the air. Then he saw the twisted doorway, the
ter’angreal
, as he flew toward it.
White light blinded him; the roar filled his head till it drove thought away.
He fell heavily onto a dusty floor in dim light and rolled up against the barrel holding his lamp in the Great Hold. The barrel rocked, packets and figurines toppling to the floor in a crash of breaking stone and ivory and porcelain. Bounding to his feet, he threw himself back at the stone doorframe. “Burn you, you can’t throw me—!”
He hurtled through—and stumbled against the crates and barrels on the other side. Without a pause, he turned and leaped at it again. With the same result. This time he caught himself on the barrel holding his lamp, which nearly fell onto the already shattered things littering the floor under
his boots. He grabbed it in time, burning his hand, and fumbled it back to a steadier perch.
Burn me if I want to be down here in the dark
, he thought, sucking his fingers.
Light, the way my luck is running, it probably would have started a fire and I’d have burned to death!
He glared at the
ter’angreal
. Why was it not working? Maybe the folk on the other side had shut it off somehow. He understood practically nothing of what had happened. That bell, and their panic. You would have thought they were afraid the roof would come down on their heads. Come to think of it, it very nearly had. And Rhuidean, and all the rest of it. The Waste was bad enough, but they said he was fated to marry somebody called the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Marry! And to a noblewoman, by the sound of it. He would sooner marry a pig than a noblewoman. And that business about dying and living again.
Nice of them to add the last bit!
If some black-veiled Aielman killed him on the way to Rhuidean, he would find out how true it was. It was all nonsense, and he did not believe a word of it. Only … . The bloody doorway
had
taken him somewhere, and they had only wanted to answer three questions, just the way Egwene had said.
“I won’t marry any bloody noblewoman!” he told the
ter’angreal
. “I’ll marry when I’m too old to have any fun, that’s what! Rhuidean my bloody—!”
A boot appeared, backing out of the twisted stone doorway, followed by the rest of Rand, with that fiery sword in his hands. The blade vanished as he stepped clear, and he heaved a sigh of relief. Even in the dim light, Mat could see he was troubled, though. He gave a start when he saw Mat. “Just poking around, Mat? Or did you go through, too?”
Mat eyed him warily for a moment. At least that sword was gone. He did not seem to be channeling—though how was anybody to tell?—and he did not look particularly like a madman. In fact, he looked very much as Mat remembered. He had to remind himself they were not back home any longer, and Rand was
not
what he remembered. “Oh, I went through, all right. A bunch of bloody liars, if you ask me! What are they? Made me think of snakes.”
“Not liars, I think.” Rand sounded as if he wished they were. “No, not that. They were afraid of me, right from the first. And when that tolling started … . The sword kept them back; they wouldn’t even look at it. Shied away. Hid their eyes. Did you get your answers?”
“Nothing that makes sense,” Mat muttered. “What about you?”
Suddenly Moiraine appeared from the
ter’angreal
, seeming to step
gracefully out of thin air, flowing out. She would be a fine one to dance with if she were not Aes Sedai. Her mouth tightened at the sight of them.
“You! You were both in there. That is why … !” She made a vexed hiss. “One of you would have been bad enough, but two
ta’veren
at once—you might have torn the connection entirely and been trapped there. Wretched boys playing with things you do not know the danger of. Perrin! Is Perrin in there, too? Did he share your …
exploit
?”
“The last I saw of Perrin,” Mat said, “he was getting ready to go bed.” Maybe Perrin would give him the lie by being the next to step out of the thing, but he might as well deflect the Aes Sedai’s anger if he could. No need for Perrin to face it, too.
Maybe he’ll make it clear of her, at least, if he gets away before she knows what he’s doing. Bloody woman! I’ll wager
she
was noble born
.
That Moraine was angry there was no doubt. The blood had drained out of her cheeks, and her eyes were dark augers boring into Rand. “At least you escaped with your lives. Who told you of this? Which one of them? I will make her wish I had peeled off her hide like a glove.”
“A book told me,” Rand said calmly. He sat down back on the edge of a crate that creaked alarmingly under his weight and crossed his arms. All very cool; Mat wished he could emulate it. “A pair of books, in fact.
Treasures of the Stone
and
Dealings with the Territory of Mayene
. Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn’t it?”
“And you?” She shifted that drilling gaze to Mat. “Did you read it in a book, too? You?”
“I do read sometimes,” he said dryly. He would not have been averse to a little hide-peeling for Egwene and Nynaeve after what they had done to make him tell where he had hidden the Amyrlin’s letter—tying him up with the Power was bad enough, but the rest!—yet it was more fun to tweak Moiraine’s nose. “
Treasures. Dealings
. Lots of things in books.” Luckily, she did not insist that he repeat the titles; he had not paid attention once Rand brought up books.
Instead she swung back to Rand. “And your answers?”
“Are mine,” Rand replied, then frowned. “It wasn’t easy, though. They brought a … woman … to interpret, but she talked like an old book. I could hardly understand some of the words. I never considered they might speak another language.”
“The Old Tongue,” Moiraine told him. “They use the Old Tongue—a rather harsh dialect of it—for their dealings with men. And you, Mat? Was your interpreter easily understood?”
He had to work moisture back into his mouth. “The Old Tongue? Is that what it was? They didn’t give me one. In fact, I never got to ask any questions. That bell started shaking the walls down, and they hustled me out like I was tracking cow manure on the rugs.” She was still staring, her eyes still digging into his head. She knew about the Old Tongue slipping out of him, sometimes. “I … almost understood a word here and there, but not to know it. You and Rand got answers. What do they get out of it? The snakes with legs. We aren’t going upstairs to find ten years gone, are we, like Bili in the story?”
“Sensations,” Moiraine replied with a grimace. “Sensations, emotions, experiences. They rummage through them; you can feel them doing it, making your skin crawl. Perhaps they feed on them in some manner. The Aes Sedai who studied this
ter’angreal
when it was in Mayene wrote of a strong desire to bathe afterward. I certainly intend to.”
“But their answers are true?” Rand said as she started to turn away. “You are sure of it? The books implied as much, but can they really give true answers about the future?”
“The answers are true,” Moiraine said slowly, “so long as they are in regard to your own future. That much is certain.” She watched Rand, and himself, weighing the effect of her words. “As to how, though, there is only speculation. That world is … folded … in strange ways. I cannot be clearer. It may be that that allows them to read the thread of a human life, read the various ways it may yet be woven into the Pattern. Or perhaps it is a talent of the people. The answers are often obscure, however. If you need help working out what yours mean, I offer my services.” Her eyes flickered from one of them to the other, and Mat nearly swore. She did not believe him about no answers. Unless it was simply general Aes Sedai suspicion.
Rand gave her a slow smile. “And will you tell me what you asked, and what they answered?”
For answer, she returned a level, searching look, then started for the door. A small ball of light, as bright as a lantern, was suddenly floating ahead of her, illuminating her way.
Mat knew he should leave it alone, now. Just let her go and hope she forgot he had ever been down here. But a knot of anger still burned inside him. All those ridiculous things they had said. Well, maybe they were true, if Moiraine said so, but he wanted to grab those fellows by the collar, or whatever passed for a collar in those wrappings, and make them explain a few things.
“Why can’t you go there twice, Moiraine?” he called after her. “Why not?” He very nearly asked why they worried about iron and musical instruments, too, and bit his tongue. He could not know about those if he had not understood what they were saying.
She paused at the door to the hall, and it was impossible to see if she was looking at the
ter’angreal
or at Rand. “If I knew everything, Matrim, I would not need to ask questions.” She peered into the room a moment longer—she
was
staring at Rand—then glided away without another word.
For a time Mat and Rand looked at each other in silence.
“
Did
you find out what you wanted?” Rand asked finally.
“Did you?”
A bright flame leaped into existence, balanced above Rand’s palm. Not the smooth glowing sphere of the Aes Sedai, but a rough blaze like a torch. As Rand moved to leave, Mat added another question. “Are you really going to just let the Whitecloaks do whatever they want back home? You know they’re heading for Emond’s Field. If they are not there already. Yellow eyes, the bloody Dragon Reborn. It’s too much, otherwise.”
“Perrin will do … what he has to do to save Emond’s Field,” Rand replied in a pained voice. “And I must do what I have to, or more than Emond’s Field will fall, and to worse than Whitecloaks.”
Mat stood watching the light of that flame fade away down the hall, until he remembered where he was. Then he snatched up his lamp and hurried out.
Rhuidean! Light, what am I going to do?

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