Loial’s chair creaked alarmingly as he sat bolt upright. His ears shot upright, too, in alarm. “My mother will be there,Rand. She’s a famous Speaker. She would never miss a Great Stump.”
“She can’t have come all the way back from the Two Rivers already,”Randtold him. Loial’s mother was supposedly a famous walker, too, yet there were limits, even for Ogier.
“You don’t know my mother,” Loial muttered, a drum boom?ing darkly. “She’ll still have Erith in tow, too. She will.”
Min leaned toward the Ogier, a dangerous light in her eyes. “The way you talk about Erith, I know you want to marry her, so why do you keep running from her?”
Randstudied her from the fireplace. Marriage. Aviendha assumed that he would marry her, and Elayne and Min as well, in the Aiel fashion. Elayne appeared to think so, too, strange as that seemed. He thought she did. What did Min think? She had never said. He should never have let them bond him. The bond would smother them in grief when he died.
Loial’s ears trembled with caution, now. Those ears were one reason Ogier made poor liars. He made placating gestures as though Min were the larger of them. “Well, I do want to, Min. Of course, I do. Erith is beautiful, and very perceptive. Did I ever tell you how carefully she listened to me explain about . . . ? Of course, I did. I tell everybody I meet. I do want to marry her. But not yet. It isn’t like with you humans, Min. You do everythingRandasks. Erith will expect me to settle down and stay home. Wives never let a husband go anywhere or do anything, if it means leaving thestedding for more than a few days. I have my book to finish, and how can I do that if I don’t see everythingRanddoes? I’m sure he’s done all sorts of things since I left Cairhien, and I know I’ll never get it all down right. Erith just wouldn’t understand. Min? Min, are you angry with me?”
“What makes you think I’m angry?” she said coolly.
Loial sighed heavily, and so clearly in relief thatRandalmost stared. Light, the Ogier actually thought she meant she was not angry!Randknew he was feeling his way in the dark when it came to women, even Min - maybe especially Min - but Loial had bet?ter learn a lot more than he already knew before he married his Erith. Otherwise, she would skin him out like a sick goat. Best to get him out of the room before Min did Erith’s job for her.Randcleared his throat.
“Think on it overnight, Loial,” he said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind by morning.” Part of him hoped Loial would. The Ogier had been too long from home. Another part of him, though. . . . He could use Loial, if what Alivia had told him about the Seanchan was true. Sometimes, he disgusted himself. “In any case, I need to talk to Bashere, now. And Logain.” His mouth tightened around the name. Whatwas Logain doing in Asha’man black?
Loial did not stand. Indeed, his expression grew more troubled, ears slanting back and eyebrows drooping. “Rand, there’s some?thing I need to tell you. About the Aes Sedai who came with us.”
Lightnings flared anew outside the windows as he went on, and the thunder crashed overhead harder than ever. With some storms, a lull only meant the worst was coming.
Itold you to kill them all when you had the chance,Lews Therin laughed.Itold you.
“Are youpositive they’ve been bonded, Samitsu?” Cadsuane asked firmly. And loudly enough to be heard over the thunder booming on the manor house’s rooftop. Thunder and lightning fit her mood. She would have liked to snarl. It required a goodly measure of her training and experience to sit calmly and sip hot ginger tea. She had not let emotion get the upper hand in a very long time, but she wanted to bite something. Or someone.
Samitsu held a porcelain cup of tea, too, but she had yet to swallow a drop, and she had ignored Cadsuane’s offer of a chair. The slender sister turned from peering into the flames of the left-hand fireplace, the bells in her dark hair jingling as she shook her head. She had not bothered to dry her hair properly, and it hung damp and heavy down her back. Her hazel eyes were uneasy. “It’s hardly the sort of question I could ask a sister, now is it, Cadsuane, and they certainly didn’t tell me. As who would? At first, I thought maybe they had done like Merise and Corele. And poor Daigian.” A brief wince of sympathy crossed her face. She knew in full the pain that was gnawing at Daigian over her loss. Any sister beyond her first Warder knew that too well. “But it’s plain Toveine and Gabrelle are both with Logain. I think Gabrelle is bedding him. If there’s bonding been done, it was the men who did it.”
“Turnabout,” Cadsuane muttered into her tea. Some said that turnabout was fair play, but she had never believed in fighting fair. Either you fought, or you did not, and it was never a game. Fair?ness was for people standing safely to one side, talking while others bled. Unfortunately, there was little she could do beyond trying to find a way to balance events. Balance was not at all the same as fair?ness. What a dog’s dinner this was turning into. “I’m glad you gave me at least a little warning before I have to face Toveine and the others, but I want you to return to Cairhien the first thing tomorrow.”
“There was nothing I could do, Cadsuane,” Samitsu said bit?terly. “Half the people I gave an order had begun checking with Sashalle to see if it was right, and the other half told me to my face she’d already said different. Lord Bashere talked her into turning the Warders loose - I have no idea how he found out about them in the first place - and she talked Sorilea into it, and there wasn’t the least thing I could do to stop it. Sorilea was behaving as if I had just abdicated! She doesn’t understand, and she made it plain she thinks I’m a fool. There’s no point at all in me going back, unless you expect me to carry Sashalle’s gloves for her.”
“I expect you to watch her, Samitsu. No more than that. I want to know what one of these Dragonsworn sisters does when neither I nor the Wise Ones are looking over their shoulders and holding a switch. You’ve always been very observant.” Patience was not always her strongest trait, but sometimes it was required with Samitsu. The Yellowwas observant, and intelligent, and strong-willed most of the time, not to mention the best alive at Heal?ing - at least until the appearance of Darner Flinn - but she could suffer the most astonishing collapses in her confidence. The stick never worked with Samitsu, but pats on the back did, and it was ridiculous not to use what worked. As Cadsuane reminded her how intelligent she was, how skilled at Healing - that was always nec?essary, with Samitsu; she could go into a depression over failing to Heal a dead man - how clever, the Arafellin sister began to draw up her composure. And her self-assurance. “You can be assured Sashalle won’t change her stockings with?out I know it,” she said crisply. In truth, Cadsuane expected no less.
“But if you don’t mind me asking,” with her confidence restored, Samitsu’s tone made that the merest courtesy; she was no shrinking flower except when her self-assurance weakened, “why are you here, at the back end of Tear? What’s young al’Thor going to do? Or should I say, what are you going to have him do?”
“He intends something very dangerous,” Cadsuane replied. Lightning flashed outside the windows, sharp silver forks in a sky near as dark as night. She knew exactly what he intended. She just did not know whether to stop it.
“It has to end!”Randthundered, echoed by the crashes in the sky. He had doffed his coat before this interview, and rolled up his shirtsleeves to bare the Dragons twined around his forearms in scarlet and gold, the golden-maned heads resting on the backs of his hands. He wanted the man in front of him reminded with every look that he was facing the Dragon Reborn. But his hands were fists, to keep him from giving in to Lews Therin’s urgings and throttling bloody Logain Ablar. “I don’t need a war with theWhiteTower, and you bloody Asha’man bloody well won’t give me a war with theWhiteTower! Do I make myself understood?”
Logain, hands resting easily atop the long hilt of his sword, did not flinch. He was a big man, if smaller thanRand, with a steady gaze that gave no sign that he had been dressed down or called to account. The silver sword and red-and-gold Dragon glittered brightly in the lamplight on the high collar of his black coat, and that itself looked freshly ironed. “Are you saying release them?” he asked calmly. “Will the Aes Sedai release those of ours they’ve taken?”
“No!”Randsaid curtly. And sourly. “What’s done can’t be undone.” Merise had been so shocked when he suggested she release Narishma, you would have thought he was asking her to abandon a puppy by the side of the road. And he suspected Flinn would fight as hard to hang on to Corele as she to him; he was fairly certain there was more between those two than the bond, now. Well, if an Aes Sedai could bond a man who channeled, what was to say a pretty woman could not fix on a girnpy old man? “You realize the mess you’ve created, though, don’t you? As it is, the only man who can channel that Elaida wants alive is me, and that only till the Last Battle is done. Once she learns of this, she’ll be twice as hot to see you all dead any way she can manage it. I don’t know how the other lot will react, but Egwene was always a sharp bargainer. I may have to tell off Asha’man for Aes Sedai to bond until they have as many of you as you do of them. That’s if they don’t just decide you all have to die as soon as they can arrange it, too. What’s done is done, but there
