They all turned to stare at him as if he were interrupting something important. Burn me! Break them out of a prison cell, save their lives half a dozen times between them before the night is done, and they glower as hard as the bloody Aes Sedai! Well, they did not thank me then, either, did they? You’d have thought I was sticking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted then, too, instead of keeping some bloody Defender from putting a sword through one of them. Aloud, he said mildly, “You do not mind if I ask a question, do you? You have all been talking this Aes Sedai . . . uh . . . business, and no one has bothered to tell me anything.”
“Mat?” Nynaeve said warningly, tugging her braid, but Moiraine said, in a calm only just touched with impatience, “What is it that you wish to know?”
“I want to know how all of this can be.” He meant to keep his tone soft, but despite himself he picked up intensity as he went along. “The Stone of Tear has fallen! The Prophecies said that would never happen till the People of the Dragon came. Does that mean we are the bloody People of the Dragon? You, me, Lan, and a few hundred bloody Aiel?” He had seen the Warder during the night; there had not seemed to be much edge between Lan and the Aiel as to who was the more deadly. As Rhuarc straightened to stare at him, he hastily added, “Uh, sorry, Rhuarc. Slip of the tongue.”
“Perhaps,” Moiraine said slowly. “I came to stop Be’lal from killing Rand. I did not expect to see the Stone of Tear fall. Perhaps we are. Prophecies are fulfilled as they are meant to be, not as we think they should be.”
Be’lal. Mat shivered. He had heard that name last night, and he did not like it any more in daylight. If he had known one of the Forsaken was loose—and inside the Stone—he would never have gone near the place. He glanced at Egwene, and Nynaeve, and Elayne. Well, I’d have come in like a bloody mouse, anyway, not thumping people left and right! Sandar had gone scurrying out of the Stone at daybreak; to take the news to Mother Guenna, he claimed, but Mat thought it was just to escape those stares from the three women, who looked as if they had not yet quite decided what to do about him.
Rhuarc cleared his throat. “When a man wishes to become a clan chief, he must go to Rhuidean, in the lands of the Jenn Aiel, the clan that is not.” He spoke slowly and frowned often at the red-fringed silk carpet under his soft boots, a man trying to explain what he did not want to explain at all. “Women who wish to become Wise Ones also make this journey, but their marking, if they are marked, is kept secret among themselves. The men who are chosen at Rhuidean, those who survive, return marked on the left arm. So.”
He pushed back the sleeves of his coat and shirt together to reveal his left forearm, the skin much paler than that of his hands and face. Etched into the skin as if part of it, wrapped twice around, marched the same gold-and-scarlet form as rippled on the banner above the Stone.
The Aiel let his sleeve fall with a sigh. “It is a name not spoken except among the clan chiefs and the Wise Ones. We are. . . .” He cleared his throat again, unable to say it here.
“The Aiel are the People of the Dragon.” Moiraine spoke quietly, but she sounded as close to startlement as Mat could remember ever hearing her. “That I did not know.”
“Then it really is all done,” Mat said, “just as the Prophecies said. We can all go on our way with no more worries.” The Amyrlin won’t need me to blow that bloody Horn now!
“How can you say that?” Egwene demanded. “Don’t you understand the Forsaken are loose?”
“Not to mention the Black Ajah,” Nynaeve added grimly. “We took only Amico and Joiya here. Eleven escaped—and I would like to know how!—and the Light alone knows how many others there are we do not know.”
“Yes,” Elayne said in a tone just as hard. “I may not be up to facing one of the Forsaken, but I mean to take pieces out of Liandrin’s hide!”
“Of course,” Mat said smoothly. “Of course.” Are they crazy? They want to chase after the Black Ajah and the Forsaken? “I only meant the hardest part is done. The Stone has fallen to the People of the Dragon, Rand has Callandor, and Shai’tan is dead.” Moiraine’s stare was so hard that he thought the Stone shook for a moment.
“Be quiet, you fool!” the Aes Sedai said in a voice like a knife. “Do you want to call his attention to you, naming the Dark One?”
“But he’s dead!” Mat protested. “Rand killed him. I saw the body!” And a fine stink that was, too. I never thought anything could rot that fast.
“You saw ‘the body,’ ” Moiraine said with a twist to her mouth. “A man’s body. Not the Dark One, Mat.”
He looked at Egwene and the other two women; they appeared as confused as he. Rhuarc looked to be thinking of a battle he had thought was won and now learned had not even been fought. “Then who was it?” Mat demanded. “Moiraine, my memory has holes big enough for a wagon and team, but I remember Ba’alzamon being in my dreams. I remember! Burn me, I do not see how I can ever forget! And I recognized what was left of that face.”
“You recognized Ba’alzamon,” Moiraine said. “Or rather, the man who called himself Ba’alzamon. The Dark One yet lives, imprisoned at Shayol Ghul, and the Shadow yet lies across the Pattern.”
“The Light illumine and protect us,” Elayne murmured in a faint voic
e. “I thought. . . . I thought the Forsaken were the worst we had to worry about, now.”
“Are you sure, Moiraine?” Nynaeve said. “Rand was certain—is certain—that he killed the Dark One. You seem to be saying Ba’alzamon was not the Dark One at all. I don’t understand! How can you be so sure? And if he was not the Dark One, who was he?”
“I can be sure for the simplest of reasons, Nynaeve. However fast decay took it, that was a man’s body. Can you believe that if the Dark One were killed he would leave a human body? The man Rand killed was a man. Perhaps he was the first of the Forsaken freed, or perhaps he was never entirely bound. We may never know which.”
“I . . . may know who he was.” Egwene paused with an uncertain frown. “At least, I may have a clue. Verin showed me a page from an old book that mentioned Ba’alzamon and Ishamael together. It was almost High Chant and very nearly incomprehensible, but I remember something about ‘a name hidden behind a name.’ Maybe Ba’alzamon was Ishamael.”
“Perhaps,” Moiraine said. “Perhaps it was Ishamael. But if it was, at least nine of the thirteen still live. Lanfear, and Sammael, and Ravhin, and. . . . Paah! Even knowing that some of those nine at least are free is not the most important thing.” She laid a hand atop the black-and-white disc on the table. “Three of the seals are broken. Only four still hold. Only those four seals stand between the Dark One and the world, and it may be that even with those whole he can touch the world after a fashion. Whatever battle we won here—battle or skirmish—it is far from the last.”
Mat watched their faces firm—Egwene’s and Nynaeve’s and Elayne’s; slowly, reluctantly, but determinedly, too—and shook his head. Bloody women! They’re all ready to go on with this, go on chasing the Black Ajah, trying to fight the Forsaken and the bloody Dark One. Well, they needn’t think I am going to come pull them out of the soup pot again. They just needn’t think it, that’s all!
One of the tall, paired doors pushed open while he was trying to think of something to say, and a tall young woman of regal bearing entered the room, wearing a coronet with a golden hawk in flight above her brows. Her black hair swept to pale shoulders, and her dress of the finest red silk left those shoulders bare, along with a considerable expanse of what Mat noted as an admirable bosom. For a moment she studied Rhuarc interestedly with large, dark eyes; then she turned them on the women at the table, coolly imperious. Mat she appeared to ignore completely.
“I am not used to being given messages to carry,” she announced, flourishing a folded parchment in one slim hand.
“And who are you, child?” Moiraine asked.
The young woman drew herself up even more, which Mat would have thought was impossible. “I am Berelain, First of Mayene.” She tossed the parchment down on the table in front of Moiraine with a haughty gesture and turned back to the door.