Mat realized he had not been paying attention. Everyone but himself and Carlomin had five cards, though Reimon had neatly stacked his facedown beside the pot to show that he was out. Mat hesitated, pretending to think, then sighed and tossed another coin toward the pile.
As the silver crown bounced end over end, he suddenly felt luck grow from trickles to a flood. Every ping of silver against wooden tabletop rang clear in his head; he could have called face or sigil and known how the coin would land on any bounce. Just as he knew what his next card would be before Carlomin laid it in front of him.
Sliding his cards together on the table, he fanned them in one hand. The Ruler of Flames stared at him alongside the other four, the Amyrlin Seat balancing a flame on her palm, though she looked nothing like Siuan Sanche. However the Tairens felt about Aes Sedai, they acknowledged the power of Tar Valon, even if Flames was the lowest suit.
What were the odds of being dealt all five? His luck was best with random things, like dice, but perhaps a little more was beginning to rub off on cards. “The Light burn my bones to ash if it is not so,” he muttered. Or that was what he meant to say.
“There,” Estean all but shouted. “You cannot deny it this time. That was the Old Tongue. Something about burning, and bones.” He grinned around the table. “My tutor would be proud. I ought to send him a gift. If I can find out where he went.”
Nobles were supposed to be able to speak the Old Tongue, though in reality few knew more than Estean seemed to. The young lords set to arguing over exactly what Mat had said. They seemed to think it had been a comment on the heat.
Goose bumps pebbled Mat's skin as he tried to recall the words that had just come out of his mouth. A string of gibberish, yet it almost seemed he should understand. Burn Moiraine! If she'd left me alone, I wouldn't have holes in my memory big enough for a wagon and team, and I wouldn't be spouting... whatever it bloody is! He would also be milking his father's cows instead of walking the world with a pocketful of gold, but he managed to ignore that part of it.
“Are you here to gamble,” he said harshly, “or babble like old women over their knitting!”
“To gamble,” Baran said curtly. “Three crowns, gold!” He tossed the coins onto the pot.
“And three more besides.” Estean hiccoughed and added six golden crowns to the pile.
Suppressing a grin, Mat forgot about the Old Tongue. It was easy enough; he did not want to think about it. Besides, if they were starting this strongly, he might win enough on this hand to leave in the morning. And if he's crazy enough to start a war, I'll leave if I have to walk.
Outside in the darkness, a cock crowed. Mat shifted uneasily and told himself not to be foolish. No one was going to die.
His eyes dropped to his cards — and blinked. The Amyrlin's flame had been replaced by a knife. While he was telling himself he was tired and seeing things, she plunged the tiny blade into the back of his hand.
With a hoarse yell, he flung the cards away and hurled himself backward, overturning his chair, kicking the table with both feet as he fell. The air seemed to thicken like honey. Everything moved as if time had slowed, but at the same time everything seemed to happen at once. Other cries echoed his, hollow shouts reverberating inside a cavern. He and the chair drifted back and down; the table floated upward.
The Ruler of Flames hung in the air, growing larger, staring at him with a cruel smile. Now close to lifesize, she started to step out of the card; she was still a painted shape, with no depth, but she reached for him with her blade, red with his blood as if it had already been driven into his heart. Beside her the Ruler of Cups began to grow, the Tairen High Lord drawing his sword.
Mat floated, yet somehow he managed to reach the dagger in his left sleeve and hurl it in the same motion, straight for the Amyrlin's heart. If this thing had a heart. The second knife came into his left hand smoothly and left more smoothly. The two blades drifted through the air like thistledown. He wanted to scream, but that first yell of shock and outrage still filled his mouth. The Ruler of Rods was expanding beside the first two cards, the Queen of Andor gripping the rod like a bludgeon, her redgold hair framing a madwoman's snarl.
He was still falling, still yelling that drawnout yell. The Amyrlin was free of her card, the High Lord striding out with his sword. The flat shapes moved almost as slowly as he. Almost. He had proof the steel in their hands could cut, and no doubt the rod could crack a skull. His skull.
His thrown daggers moved as if sinking in jelly. He was sure the cock had crowed for him. Whatever his father said, the omen had been real. But he would not give up and die. Somehow he had two more daggers out from under his coat, one in either hand. Struggling to twist in midair, to get his feet under him, he threw one knife at the goldenhaired figure with the bludgeon. The other he held on to as he tried to turn himself, to land ready to face....
The world lurched back into normal motion, and he landed awkwardly on his side, hard enough to drive me wind out of him. Desperately he struggled to his feet, drawing another knife from under his coat. You could not carry too many, Thom claimed. Neither was needed.
For a moment he thought cards and figures had vanished. Or maybe he had imagined it all. Maybe he was the one going mad. Then he saw the cards, back to ordinary size, pinned to one of the dark wood panels by his still quivering knives. He took a deep, ragged breath.
The table lay on its side, coins still spinning across the floor where lordlings and servants crouched among scattered cards. They gaped at Mat and his knives, those in his hands and those in the wall, with equally wide eyes. Estean snatched a silver pitcher that had somehow escaped being overturned and began pouring wine down his throat, the excess spilling over his chin and down his chest.
“Just because you do not have the cards to win,” Edorion said hoarsely, “there is no need to —” He cut off with a shudder.
“You saw it, too.” Mat slipped the knives back into their sheaths. A thin trickle of blood ran down the back of his hand from the tiny wound. “Don't pretend you went blind!”
“I saw nothing,” Reimon said woodenly. “Nothing!” He began crawling across the floor, gathering up gold and silver, concentrating on the coins as if they were the most important thing in the world. The others were doing the same, except Estean, who scrambled about checking the fallen pitchers for any that still held wine. One of the servants had his face hidden in his hands; the other, eyes closed, was apparently praying in a low, breathless whine.
With a muttered oath, Mat strode to where his knives pinned the three cards to the panel. They were only playing cards again, just stiff paper with the clear lacquer cracked. But the figure of the Amyrlin still held a dagger instead of a flame. He tasted blood and realized he was sucking the cut in the back of his hand.
Hastily he wrenched his knives free, tearing each card in half before tucking the blade away. After a moment, he hunted through the cards littering the floor until he found the rulers of Coins and Winds, and tore them across, too. He felt a little foolish — it was over and done with; the cards were just cards again — but he could not help it.
None of the young lords crawling about on hands and knees tried to stop him. They scrambled out of his way, not even glancing at him. There would be no more gambling tonight, and maybe not for some nights to come. At least, not with him. Whatever had happened, it had been aimed at him, clearly. Even more clearly, it had to have been done with the One Power. They wanted no part of that.
“Burn you, Rand!” he muttered under his breath. “If you have to go mad, leave me out of it!” His pipe lay in two pieces, the stem bitten through cleanly. Angrily he grabbed his purse from the floor and stalked out of the room.
In his darkened bedchamber Rand tossed uneasily on a bed wide enough for five people. He was dreaming.
Through a shadowy forest Moiraine was prodding him with a sharp stick toward where the Amyrlin Seat waited, sitting on a stump with a rope halter for his neck in her hands. Dim shapes moved halfseen through the trees, stalking, hunting him; here a dagger blade flashed in the failing light, over there he caught a glimpse of ropes ready for binding. Slender and not as tall as his shoulder, Moiraine wore an expression he had never seen on her face. Fear. Sweating, she prodded harder, trying to hurry him to the Amyrlin's halter. Darkfriends and the Forsaken in the shadows, the White Tower's leash ahead and Moiraine behind. Dodging Moiraine's stick, he fled.
“It is too late for that,” she called after him, but he had to get back. Back.
Muttering, he thrashed on the bed, then was still, breathing more easily for a moment.
He was in the Waterwood back home, sunlight slanting through the trees to sparkle on the pond in front of him. There was green moss on the rocks at this end of the pond, and thirty paces away at the other end a small arc of wildflowers. This was where, as a child, he had learned to swim.
“You should have a swim now.”
He spun around with a start. Min stood there, grinning at him in her boy's coat and breeches, and next to her, Elayne, with her redgolden curls, in a green silk gown fit for her mother's palace.
It was Min who had spoken, but Elayne added, “The water looks inviting, Rand. No one will bother us here.”
“I don't know,” he began slowly. Min cut him off by twining her fingers behind his neck and pulling herself up on tiptoe to kiss him.
She repeated Elayne's words in a soft murmur. “No one will bother us here.” She stepped back and doffed her coat, then attacked the laces of her shirt.
Rand stared, the more so when he realized Elayne's gown was lying on the mossy ground. The DaughterHeir was bending, arms crossed, gathering up the hem of her shift.
“What are you doing?” he demanded in a strangled voice.
“Getting ready to go swimming with you,” Min replied.
Elayne flashed him a smile, and hoisted the shift over her head.
He turned his back hastily, though half wanting not to. And found himself staring at Egwene, her big, dark eyes looking back at him sadly. Without a word she turned and vanished into the trees.
“Wait!” he shouted after her. “I can explain.”
He began to run; he had to find her. But as he reached the edge of trees, Min's voice stopped him.
“Don't go, Rand.”
She and Elayne were in the water already, only their heads showing as they swam lazily in the middle of the pond.
“Come back,” Elayne called, lifting a slim arm to beckon. “Do you not deserve what you want for a change?”
He shifted his feet, wanting to move but unable to decide which way. What he wanted. The words sounded strange. What did he want? He raised a hand to his face, to wipe away what felt like sweat. Festering flesh almost obliterated the heron branded on his palm; white bone showed through rededged gaps.
With a jerk, he came awake, lying there shivering in the dark heat. Sweat soaked his smallclothes, and the linen sheets beneath his back. His side burned, where an old wound had never healed properly. He traced the rough scar, a circle nearly an inch across, still tender after all this time. Even Moiraine's Aes Sedai Healing could not mend it completely. But I'm not rotting yet. And I'm not mad, either. Not yet. Not yet. That said it all. He wanted to laugh, and wondered if that meant he
