The Dragon Reborn (91 page)

Slumped on the stool in the gleeman’s room, Mat grimaced as Thom coughed again.
How are we going to keep looking if he’s so bloody sick he can’t walk?
He was ashamed as soon as he thought it. Thom had been as assiduous in searching as he had, pushing himself day and night, when he had to know he was coming down sick. Mat had been so absorbed in his hunt that he had paid too little attention to Thom’s coughing. The change from constant rain to steamy heat had not helped it.

“Come on, Thom,” he said. “Lopar says there’s a Wise Woman not far. That is what they call a Wisdom here—a Wise Woman. Wouldn’t Nynaeve like that!”

“I do not need . . . any foul-tasting . . . concoctions . . . poured down my throat, boy.” Thom stuffed a fist through his mustaches in a vain attempt to stop his hacking. “You go ahead looking. Just give me . . . a few hours . . . on my bed . . . and I’ll join you.” The wracking wheezes doubled him over till his head was almost on his knees.

“So I am supposed to do all the work while you take your ease?” Mat said lightly. “How can I find anything without you? You learn most of what we hear.” That was not exactly true; men talked as freely over dice as they did while buying a gleeman a cup of wine. More freely than they did with a gleeman hacking so hard they feared contagion. But he was beginning to think that Thom’s cough was not going to go away by itself.
If the
old goat dies on me, who will I play stones with?
he told himself roughly. “Anyway, your bloody coughing keeps me awake even in the next room.”

Ignoring the white-haired man’s protests, he pulled Thom to his feet. He was shocked at how much of the gleeman’s weight he had to support. Despite the damp heat, Thom insisted on his patch-covered cloak. Mat had his own coat unbuttoned completely and all three ties of his shirt undone, but he let the old goat have his way. No one in the common room even looked up as he half carried Thom out into the muggy afternoon.

The innkeeper had given simple directions, but when they reached the gate, and faced the mud of the Maule, Mat almost turned back to ask after another Wise Woman. There had to be more than one in a city this size. Thom’s wheezing decided him. With a grimace Mat stepped off into the mud, half carrying the gleeman.

He had thought from the directions that they must have passed the Wise Woman’s house on their way up from the dock that first night, and when he saw the long, narrow house with bunches of herbs hanging in the windows, right next to a potter’s shop, he remembered it. Lopar had said something about going to the back door, but he had had enough of mud.

And the stink of fish
, he thought, frowning at the barefoot men squelching by with their baskets on their backs. There were tracks of horses in the street, too, just beginning to be obliterated by feet and ox-carts. Horses pulling a wagon, or maybe a carriage. He had seen nothing but oxen drawing carts or wagons either one in Tear—the nobles and the merchants were proud of their fine stock, and never let one be put to anything like work—but he had not seen any carriages since leaving the walled city, either.

Dismissing horses and wheel tracks from his mind, he took Thom to the front door and knocked. After a time he knocked again. Then again.

He was on the point of giving up and returning to The White Crescent despite Thom coughing on his shoulder when he heard shuffling footsteps inside.

The door opened barely more than a crack, and a stout, gray-haired woman peered out. “What do you want?” she asked in a tired voice.

Mat put on his best grin.
Light, but I am getting sick myself at all these people who sound like there’s no bloody hope
. “Mother Guenna? My name is Mat Cauthon. Cavan Lopar told me you might do something for my friend’s cough. I can pay well.”

She studied them a moment, seemed to listen to Thom’s wheezes, then
sighed. “I suppose I can still do that, at least. You might as well come in.” She swung the door open and was already plodding toward the back of the house before Mat moved.

Her accent sounded so much like the Amyrlin’s that he shivered, but he followed, all but carrying Thom.

“I don’t . . . need this,” the gleeman wheezed. “Bloody mixtures . . . always taste like . . . dung!”

“Shut up, Thom.”

Leading them all the way to the kitchen, the stout woman rummaged in one of the cupboards, taking out small stone pots and packets of herbs while muttering to herself.

Mat sat Thom down in one of the high-backed chairs, and glanced through the nearest window. There were three good horses tied out back; he was surprised the Wise Woman had more than one, or any for that matter. He had not seen anyone in Tear riding except nobles and the wealthy, and these animals looked as if they had cost more than a little silver.
Horses again. I don’t care about bloody horses now!

Mother Guenna brewed some sort of strong tea with a rank smell and forced it down Thom’s throat, holding his nose when he tried to complain. Mat decided she had less fat on her than he had thought, from the way she held the gleeman’s head steady in the crook of one arm while she poured the black liquid into him no matter how hard he tried to stop her.

When she took the cup away, Thom coughed and scrubbed at his mouth with equal vigor. “Gaaah! Woman . . . I don’t know . . . whether you . . . mean to drown me . . . or kill me . . . with the taste! You ought . . . to be a bloody . . . blacksmith!”

“You will take the same twice a day till that hacking is gone,” she said firmly. “And I have a salve that you’ll rub on your chest every night.” Some of the weariness left her voice as she confronted the gleeman, fists on her broad hips. “That salve stinks as bad as this tea tastes, but you will rub it on—thoroughly!—or I’ll drag you upstairs like a scrawny carp in a net and tie you to a bed with that cloak of yours! I never had a gleeman come to me before, and I’ll not let the first one that does cough himself to death.”

Thom glowered and blew out his mustaches with a cough, but he seemed to take her threat seriously. At least, he did not say anything, but he looked as if he meant to throw her tea and her salve right back at her.

The more this Mother Guenna talked, the more she sounded like the Amyrlin to Mat. From the sour look on Thom’s face, and the steady stare on hers, he decided he had better smooth matters over a little before the gleeman
refused to take her medicines. And she decided to make him. “I knew a woman once who talked like you,” he said. “All fish and nets and things. Sounded like you, too. The same accent, I mean. I suppose she’s Tairen.”

“Perhaps.” The gray-haired woman suddenly sounded tired again, and she kept staring at the floor. “I knew some girls with the sound of your speech on their tongues, too. Two of them had it, anyway.” She sighed heavily.

Mat felt his scalp prickle.
My luck can’t be this good
. But he would not bet a copper on two other women with Two Rivers accents just happening to be in Tear. “Three girls? Young women? Named Egwene, and Nynaeve, and Elayne? That one has hair like the sun, and blue eyes.”

She frowned at him. “Those were not the names they gave,” she said slowly, “yet I suspected they did not give me their true names. But they had their reasons, I thought. One of them was a pretty girl with bright blue eyes and red-gold hair to her shoulders.” She described Nynaeve with her braid to her waist and Egwene with her big, dark eyes and ready smile, too. Three pretty women as different from one another as they could be. “I see they are the ones you know,” she finished. “I am sorry, boy.”

“Why are you sorry? I have been trying to find them for days!”
Light, I walked right past this place the first night! Right past them! I wanted random. What could be more random than where a ship docks on a rainy night, and where you happen to look in a bloody lightning flash? Burn me! Burn me!
“Tell me where they are, Mother Guenna.”

The gray-haired woman stared wearily at the stove where her spouted kettle was steaming. Her mouth worked, but she said nothing.

“Where are they?” Mat demanded. “It is important! They are in danger if I don’t find them.”

“You do not understand,” she said softly. “You are an outlander. The High Lords. . . .”

“I do not care about any—” Mat blinked, and looked at Thom. The gleeman seemed to be frowning, but he was coughing so hard, Mat could not be sure. “What do the High Lords have to do with my friends?”

“You just do not—”

“Don’t tell me I do not understand! I will pay for the information!”

Mother Guenna glared at him. “I do not take money for . . . !” She grimaced fiercely. “You ask me to tell you things I have been told not to speak of. Do you know what will happen to me if I do and you breathe my name? I will lose my tongue, to begin. Then I will lose other parts before the High Lords have what is left of me hung up to scream its last hours as
a reminder to others to obey. And it will do those young women no good, not my telling or my dying!”

“I promise I will never mention your name to anyone. I swear it.”
And I’ll keep that oath, old woman, if you only tell me where they bloody are!
“Please? They are in danger.”

She studied him for a long time; before she was done he had the feeling she knew every detail of him. “On that oath, I will tell you. I . . . liked them. But you can do nothing. You are too late, Matrim Cauthon. Too late by nearly three hours. They have been taken to the Stone. The High Lord Samon sent for them.” She shook her head in worried puzzlement. “He sent . . . women who . . . could channel. I hold nothing against Aes Sedai myself, but that is against the law. The law the High Lords made. If they break every other law, they would not break that one. Why would a High Lord send Aes Sedai on his errands? Why would he want those girls at all?”

Mat almost burst out laughing. “Aes Sedai? Mother Guenna, you had my heart in my throat, and maybe my liver, too. If Aes Sedai came for them, there is nothing to worry about. All three of them are going to be Aes Sedai themselves. Not that I like it much, but that’s what they—” His grin faded at the heavy way she shook her head.

“Boy, those girls fought like lionfish in a net. Whether they mean to be Aes Sedai or not, those who took them treated them like bilge pumpings. Friends do not give bruises like that.”

He felt his face twisting.
Aes Sedai hurt them? What in the Light? The bloody Stone. It makes the Palace in Caemlyn look like walking into a barnyard! Burn me! I stood right out there in the rain and stared at this house! Burn me for a bloody Light-blinded fool!

“If you break your hand,” Mother Guenna said, “I will splint and poultice it, but if you damage my wall, I will strip your hide like a redfish!”

He blinked, then looked at his fist, at scraped knuckles. He did not even remember punching the wall.

The broad woman took his hand in a strong grip, but the fingers she used to probe were surprisingly gentle. “Nothing broken,” she grunted after a while. Her eyes were just as gentle as she studied his face. “It seems you care for them. One of them, at least, I suppose it is. I am sorry, Mat Cauthon.”

“Don’t be,” he told her. “At least I know where they are, now. All I have to do is get them out.” He fished out his last two Andoran gold crowns and
pressed them into her hand. “For Thom’s medicines, and for letting me know about the girls.” On impulse, he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and a grin. “And that’s for me.”

Startled, she touched her cheek, not seeming to know whether to look at the coins or at him. “Get them out, you say. Just like that. Out of the Stone.” Abruptly she stabbed him in the ribs with a finger as hard as a tree stub. “You remind me of my husband, Mat Cauthon. He was a headstrong fool who would sail into the teeth of a gale and laugh, too. I could almost think you’ll manage it.” Suddenly she saw his muddy boots, apparently for the first time. “It took me six months to teach him not to track mud into my house. If you do get those girls out, whichever of them you have your eye on will have a hard time training you to make you fit to be let inside.”

“You are the only woman who could do that,” he said with a grin that broadened at her glare.
Get them out. That’s all I have to do. Bring them right out of the Stone of bloody Tear
. Thom coughed again.
He isn’t going into the Stone like that. Only, how do I stop him?
“Mother Guenna, can I leave my friend here? I think he is too sick to go back to the inn.”

“What?” Thom barked. He tried to push himself out of the chair, coughing so he could hardly speak. “I am no . . . such thing, boy! You think . . . walking into the Stone . . . will be like . . . walking into your mother’s kitchen? You think you . . . would make it . . . as far as the gates . . . without me?” He hung on the back of the chair, his wheezing and hacking keeping him from rising more than halfway to his feet.

Mother Guenna put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down as easily as a child. The gleeman gave her a startled look. “I will take care of him, Mat Cauthon,” she said.

“No!” Thom shouted. “You cannot . . . do this to me! You can’t . . . leave me . . . with this old. . . .” Only her hand on his shoulder kept him from doubling over.