“A great deal, Toy. For one thing, he must kneel to the Crystal Throne before Tarmon Gai’don. The Prophecies are clear on that, but I haven’t even been able to learn where he is. It becomes still more urgent if he is the one who sounded the Horn of Valere, as I suspect.”
“The Horn of Valere?” he said weakly. The Prophecies said what? “It’s been found, then?”
“It must have been, mustn’t it, if it was sounded?” she drawled dryly. “The reports I’ve seen from the place where it was blown, a place called Falme, are very disturbing. Very disturbing. Securing whoever blew the Horn, man or woman, may be as important as securing the Dragon Reborn himself. Are you going to play a stone or not, Toy?”
He played his stone, but he was so shaken that the colors whirled and faded without forming any image. In fact, he was barely able to eke out a draw from what had seemed a clear winning position.
“You played very poorly toward the end.” Tuon murmured, frowning thoughtfully at the board, now divided evenly between the control of black stones and white. He could all but see her start trying to work out what they had been talking about when his poor play began. Talking with her was like walking a crumbling ledge across the face of a cliff. One misstep, and Mat Cauthon would be as dead as last year’s mutton. Only, he had to walk that ledge. He had no bloody choice. Oh, he enjoyed it. In a way. The longer he spent with her, the more opportunity to memorize that heart-shaped face, to get it down so he could see her just by closing his eyes. But there was always that misstep waiting ahead. He could almost see that, too.
For several days after giving her the little bunch of silk flowers, he brought her no presents, and he thought he was beginning to detect hints of disappointment when he appeared empty-handed. Then, four days out of Jurador, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon into a nearly cloudless sky, he got her and Selucia out of the purple wagon. Well, he just wanted Tuon, but Selucia might as well have been her shadow when it came to trying to separate them. He had commented on that once, making a joke, and both women went on talking as if he had not spoken. It was a good thing he knew Tuon could laugh at a joke, because sometimes she seemed to have no sense of humor at all. Selucia, wrapped in a green wool cloak with the cowl all but hiding her red headscarf, eyed him suspiciously, but then, she nearly always did. Tuon never bothered with a scarf, yet the shortness of her black hair was not so apparent with the hood of her blue cloak up. “Cover your eyes, Precious,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.”
“I like surprises,” she replied, placing her hands over her big eyes. For an instant, she smiled in anticipation, but only for an instant. “Some surprises, Toy.” That had the sound of a warning. Selucia stood hard by her shoulder, and though the bosomy woman appeared completely at her ease, something told him she was as tense as a cat ready to leap. He suspected she did not like surprises.
“Wait right there,” he said, and ducked around the side of the purple wagon. When he returned, he was leading Pips and the razor, both saddled and bridled. The mare stepped lively, frisking at the prospect of an outing. “You can look now. I thought you might like a ride.” They had hours; the show might as well have been deserted for all the evidence of life among the wagons. Only a handful had smoke rising from their metal chimneys. “She’s yours,” he added, and stiffened as the words nearly froze in his throat.
There was no doubt this time. He had said the horse was hers, and suddenly the dice were not beating so loudly in his head. It was not that they had slowed: he was sure of that. There had been more than one set rattling away. One had stopped when he made his agreement with Aludra, and another when he told Tuon the horse was hers. That was odd in itself—how could giving her a horse be fateful for him?— but Light, it had been bad enough when he had to worry about one set of dice giving warning at a time. How many sets were still bouncing off the inside of his skull? How many more fateful moments were waiting to crash down on him?
Tuon went immediately to the razor, all smiles as she examined the animal as thoroughly as he had himself. She did train horses for fun, after all. Horses and damane, the Light help him. Selucia was studying him, he realized, her face an expressionless mask. Because of the horse, or because he had gone stiff as a post?
“She’s a razor,” he said, patting Pips’ blunt nose. The gelding had been getting plenty of exercise, but the razor’s eagerness seemed to have infected him. “Domani bloodborn favor razors, and it’s not likely you’ll ever see another one outside of Arad Doman. What will you name her?”
“It is bad luck to name a horse before riding it,” Tuon replied, taking the reins. She was still beaming. Her big eyes shone. “She’s a very fine animal, Toy. A wonderful gift. Either you have a good eye, or you were very lucky.”
“I have a good eye, Precious,” he said warily. She seemed more delighted than even the razor called for.
“If you say so. Where is Selucia’s mount?”
Oh, well. It had been worth a try. A smart man hedged his bets, though, so a sharp whistle brought Metwyn at a trot leading a saddled dapple. Mat ignored the wide grin that split the man’s pale face. The Cairhienin Redarm had been sure he would not get away with leaving Selucia behind, but there was no need to smirk over it. Mat judged the dapple gelding, ten years old, to be gentle enough for Seiucia—in his memory, ladies’s maids seldom were more than tolerable riders—but the woman gave the animal a going over as complete as Tuon’s. And when she was done, she directed a look at Mat that said she would ride the horse so as not to make a bother, but she found it decidedly lacking. Women could compress a great deal into one look.
Once clear of the field where the show was camped, Tuon walked the razor along the road for a time, then took her to a trot, and then a canter. The surface was hard-packed yellow clay here, studded with edges of old paving stones. No trouble for a well-shod horse, though, and he had made sure of the razor’s shoes. Mat kept Pips even with Tuon as much for the pleasure of watching her smile as anything else. When Tuon was enjoying herself, the stern judge was forgotten and pure delight shone on her face. Not that watching her was easy, since Selucia held the dapple between them. The yellow-haired woman was a formidable chaperone, and by the sidelong glances she gave him, her small smiles, she very much enjoyed t
