“Lord Mandragoran!” A stocky man in the green coat of a palace guard skidded to a halt and nearly fell over trying to bow while still moving. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere, my Lord!” he panted. “It’s your man, Bukama! Come quickly, my Lord! He may still be alive!”
Cursing, Lan ran behind the guard, shouting for the man to go faster, but he was too late. Too late for the man who had carried an infant. Too late for dreams.
Guards crowding a narrow passage just off one of the practice yards squeezed back to let Lan through. Bukama lay facedown, blood pooled around his mouth, the plain wooden hilt of a dagger rising from the dark stain on the back of his coat. His staring eyes looked surprised. Kneeling, Lan closed those eyes and murmured a prayer for the last embrace of the mother to welcome Bukama home.
“Who found him?” he asked, but he barely heard the jumbled replies about who and where and what. He hoped Bukama was reborn in a world where the Golden Crane flew on the wind, and the Seven Towers stood unbroken, and the Thousand Lakes shone like a necklace beneath the sun. How could he have let anyone get close enough to do this? Bukama could feel steel being unsheathed near him. Only one thing was sure. Bukama was dead because Lan had tangled him in an Aes Sedai’s schemes.
Rising, he began to run again. Not away from anything, though. Toward someone. And he did not care who saw him.
The muffled crash of the door in the anteroom and outraged shouts from the serving women lifted Moiraine from the cushioned armchair where she had been waiting. For anything but this. Embracing saidar, she started from the sitting room, but before she reached the door, it swung open. Lan shook off the liveried women clinging to his arms, shut the door in their faces, and put his back to it, meeting Moiraine’s startled gaze. Purpling bruises marred his angular face, and he moved as if he had been beaten. From outside came silence. Whatever he intended, they would be sure she could handle it.
Absurdly, she found herself fingering her belt knife. With the Power she could wrap him up like a child, however large he was, and yet…. He did not glare. There certainly was no fire in thoseeyes. She wanted to step back. No fire, but death seared cold. That black coat suited him with its cruel thorns and stark golden blossoms.
“Bukama is dead with a knife in his heart,” he said calmly, “and not an hour gone, someone tried to kill me with the One Power. At first I thought it must be Merean, but the last I saw of her, she was trailing after Iselle, and unless she saw me and wanted to lull me, she had no time. Few see me when I do not want to be seen, and I don’t think she did. That leaves you.”
Moiraine winced, and only in part for the certainty in his tone. She should have known the fool girl would go straight to Merean. “You would be surprised how little escapes a sister,” she told him. Especially if the sister was filled with saidar. “Perhaps I should not have asked Bukama to watch Merean. She is very dangerous.” The woman was Black Ajah; she was certain of that, now. Sisters might make painful examples of people caught snooping, but they did not kill them. But what to do about her? Certainty was not proof, surely not proof that would stand up before the Amyrlin Seat. And if Sierin herself was Black…. Nota worry she could do anything about now. What was the woman doing wasting any time at all with Iselle? “If you care for the girl, I suggest you find her as quickly as possible and keep her away from Merean.”
Lan grunted. “All Aes Sedai are dangerous. Iselle is safe enough for the moment; I saw her on my way here, hurrying somewhere with Brys and Diryk. Why did Bukama die, Aes Sedai? What did I snare him in for you?”
Moiraine flung up a hand for silence, and a tiny part of her was surprised when he obeyed. The rest of her thought furiously. Merean with Iselle. Iselle with Brys and Diryk. Merean had tried to kill Lan. Suddenly she saw a pattern, perfect in every line; it made no sense, but she did not doubt it was real.
“Diryk told me you are the luckiest man in the world,” she said, leaning toward Lan intently, “and for his sake, I hope he was right. Where would Brys go for absolute privacy? Somewhere he would not be seen or heard.” It would have to be a place he felt comfortable, yet isolated.
“There is a walk on the west side of the Palace,” Lan said slowly. Then his voice quickened. “If there is danger to Brys, I must rouse the guards.” He was already turning, hand on the door handle.
“No!” she said. She still held the Power, and she prepared a weave of Air to seize him if necessary. “Prince Brys will not appreciate having his guards burst in if Merean is simply talking to him.”
“And if she is not talking?” he demanded.
“Then there is not enough time for rousing the guards, if they would come. We have no proof of anything against her, Lan. Suspicions against the word of an Aes Sedai.” Hi
s head jerked angrily, and he growled something about Aes Sedai that she deliberately did not hear. She would have had to make him smart for it, and there was no time. “Take me to this walk, Lan. Let Aes Sedai deal with Aes Sedai. And let us hurry.” If Merean did any talking, Moiraine did not expect her to talk for long.
Hurry Lan surely did, long legs flashing as he ran. All she could do was gather her skirts high and run after him, ignoring the stares and murmurs of servants and others in the corridors at her exposure of stockinged legs, thanking the Light that the man did not outpace her. She let the Power fill her as she ran, till sweetness and joy bordered pain in their intensity, and tried to plan what she would do, what she could do, against a woman considerably stronger than she, a woman who had been Aes Sedai more than a hundred years before her own great-grandmother was born. She wished she were not so afraid. She wished Siuan were with her.
The mad dash led through glittering state chambers, along statuary-lined hallways, and suddenly they were into the open, the sounds of the Palace left behind, on a long stone-railed walk twenty paces wide with a vista across the city roofs far below. A cold wind blew like a storm, tugging at her skirts. Merean was there, surrounded by the glow of saidar, and Brys and Diryk, standing by the rail, twisting futilely against bonds and gags of Air. Iselle was frowning at the Prince and his son, and surprisingly, further down the walk stood a glowering Ryne, his arms folded across his chest. So he was a Darkfriend.
“…and I could hardly bring Lord Diryk to you without his father,” Iselle was saying petulantly. “I did make sure no one knows, but why—?”
Weaving a shield of Spirit, Moiraine hurled it at Merean with every shred of the Power in her, hoping against hope to cut the woman off from the Source. The shield struck and splintered. Merean was too strong, drawing too near her capacity.
She knew she had caught the Blue sister—the Black sister—by surprise, but Merean did not even blink. “You did well enough killing the spy, Ryne,” she said calmly as she wove a gag of Air to stop up Iselle’s mouth and bonds that held the girl stiff and wide-eyed. “See if you can make certain of the younger one this time. You did say you are a better swordsman.”
Everything seemed to happen at once. Ryne rushed forward, scowling, the bells in his braids chiming. Lan barely got his own sword out in time to meet him. And before the first clash of steel on steel, Merean struck at Moiraine with the same weave she herself had used, but stronger. In horror Moiraine realized that Merean might have sufficient strength remaining to shield her even while she was embracing as much of saidar as she could. Frantically she struck out with Air and Fire, and Merean grunted as the severed flows snapped back into her. In the brief interval, Moiraine tried to slice the flows holding Diryk and the others, but before her weave touched Merean’s, Merean sliced hers instead, and this time Merean’s attempted shield actually touched her before she could cut it. Moiraine’s stomach tried to tie itself in a knot.
“You appear too often, Moiraine,” Merean said as though they were simply chatting. She looked as if there were no more to it, serene and motherly, not in the slightest perturbed. “I fear I must ask you how, and why.” Moiraine just managed to sever a weave of Fire that would have burned off her clothes and perhaps most of her skin, and Merean smiled, a mother amused at the mischief young women get up to. “Don’t worry, child. I’ll Heal you to answer my questions. And answer, you will. Out here, no one will hear your screams.”
If Moiraine had had any lingering doubts that Merean was Black Ajah, that weave of Fire would have ended them. In the next moments she had more proof, weavings that made sparks dance on her dress and her hair rise, weavings that had her gasping for air that was no longer there, weavings she could not recognize yet surely would have left her broken and bleeding if they settled around her, if she had failed to cut them….
When she could, she tried again and again to cut the bonds holding Diryk and the others, to shield Merean, even to knock her unconscious. She knew she fought for her life—she would die if the other woman won, now or after Merean’s questioning—but she never considered that loophole in the Oaths that held her. She had questions of her own for the woman, and the fate of the world might rest on the answers. Unfortunately, most of what she could do was defend herself, and that always on the brink. Her stomach was in a knot, and trying to make another. Holding three people bound, Merean was still a match for her, and maybe more. If only Lan could distract the woman.
A hasty glance showed how unlikely that was. Lan and Ryne danced the forms, gracefully flowing from one to another, their blades like whirlwinds, but if there was a hair between their abilities, it rested with Ryne. Blood fanned down the side of Lan’s face.
Grimly, Moiraine bore down, not even sparing the bit of concentration necessary to ignore the cold. Shivering, she struck at Merean, defended herself and struck again, defended and struck. If she could manage to wear the woman down, or….
“This is taking too long, don’t you think, child?” Merean said. Diryk floated into the air, struggling against the bonds he could not see as he drifted over the railing. Brys’s head twisted, following his son, and his mouth worked around his unseen gag.
“No!” Moiraine screamed. Desperately, she flung out flows of Air to drag the boy back to safety. Merean slashed them even as she released her own hold on him. Wailing, Diryk fell, and white light exploded in Moiraine’s head.