Lord of Chaos (The Wheel of Time 6)

Afterwards, examining the bleeding gouges by lamplight, she nipped his ear between her teeth, not at all lightly, and laughed. “In Saldaea,” she murmured, “we notch a horse’s ears, but I think that will do to mark you.” And the whole while she fairly reeked of jealousy and rage.

If that had been all, matters would have settled down. Faile’s jealousy might flare up like a forge fire roaring in a high wind, yet it always died just as fast as it caught, once she realized there was no cause. The very next morning, though, he saw her talking to Berelain down the corridor, both smiling to beat anything. His ears caught the last thing Berelain said before she turned away. “I always keep my promises.” An odd remark to send that acrid thorny smell leaping from Faile.

He asked Faile what promises Berelain was talking about, and maybe that was a mistake. She blinked

— she did forget his hearing sometimes — and said, “I really do not remember. She’s the sort of woman who makes all sorts of promises she cannot keep.” His shoulders got a second set of furrows, and it was not even midmorning!

Berelain began stalking him. He did not think of it that way at first. The woman had flirted with him once, in the Stone of Tear, in a mild sort of way, not really meaning anything he was sure, and she knew he was married now. It was only a series of chance encounters in hallways, it seemed, a few innocuous words almost in passing. But after a while he knew either his being ta’veren was twisting chance completely out of shape or Berelain was arranging matters, unlikely as that seemed. He tried telling himself that was ridiculous. He tried telling himself he must think he was handsome as Wil al’Seen. Wil was the only man he had ever seen women chase after; they certainly never had after Perrin Aybara. There were just too many of those “chance” encounters, though.

She always touched him. Not blatantly, just fingers on his hand for a moment, on his arm, his shoulder. Hardly worth noticing. The third day a thought occurred that made the hair on the nape of his neck rise. When you were taming a horse that had never been ridden, you began with light touches, until the animal knew your touch would not hurt, until it stood still for your hand. After that came the saddlecloth, and later the saddle. The bridle was always last.

He began to dread the scent of Berelain’s perfume, wafting around a corner. He began to head in the opposite direction at the first whiff, only he could not give every moment to watching for it. For one thing, there seemed to be a great many swaggering young Cairhienin fools going in and out of the palace, most of them women. Women carrying swords! He walked around any number of men and women who planted themselves deliberately in his path. Twice he had to knock a fellow down when the idiot simply would not let him walk around, but kept dancing back in front of him. He felt bad about that — Cairhienin were nearly all considerably smaller than he — but you could not take chances with a man who had his hand on his sword hilt. Once a young woman tried that, and after he took her sword away, she made a nuisance of herself until he gave it back, which seemed to shock her, then shouted after him that he had no honor, until some Maidens led her off, talking to her fiercely.

For another thing, people knew he was Rand’s friend. Even had he not arrived as he did, some of the Aiel and Tairens remembered him from the Stone, and word spread. Lords and ladies he had never seen in his life introduced themselves in hallways, and Tairen High Lords who had stared down their noses at him in Tear addressed him like an old friend in Cairhien. Most smelled of fear, and an odor he could not put a name to. They all wanted the same thing, he realized.

“I’m afraid the Lord Dragon doesn’t always take me into his confidence, my Lady,” he said politely to a cold-eyed woman named Colavaere, “and when he does, you wouldn’t expect me to break that confidence.” Her smile seemed to come from a great height; she seemed to be wondering how he would skin out for a lap rug. She had a strange smell, hard and smooth and somehow . . . high.

“I don’t really know what Rand intends to do,” he told Meilan. The man very nearly repeated his nose-staring, for all he smiled nearly as much as Colavaere. He had the smell too, just as potently. “Maybe you should ask him.”

“If I did know, I’d hardly talk it all over the city,” he told a white-haired weasel with too many teeth, a fellow called Maringil. By then he was growing tired of attempts to milk him. Maringil also gave off the smell, every bit as heavily as Colavaere or Meilan.

They three carried it far more than anyone else, a dangerous smell, he knew in his bones, like a dry mountain top before an avalanche.

Between keeping an eye out for young idiots and having that smell in his nose, he could not recognize Berelain’s scent until she had crept close enough to pounce. Well, truth to tell, she glided up along the hallways, a swan on a smooth pond, but it certainly felt like being pounced on.

He mentioned Faile more times than he could count; Berelain did not seem to hear. He asked her to stop; Berelain asked him whatever did he mean? He told her to leave him alone; Berelain laughed and patted his cheek and asked what she was to stop doing. Which of course had to be the exact moment that Faile came out of the next crossing corridor, just the instant before he jerked back. It must have seemed to Faile that he moved away because he saw her. Without a moment’s hesitation, Faile turned smoothly on her heel, her pace not a whit slower or faster.

He ran after her, caught up and walked alongside in pained silence. A man could hardly say what he had to say where people could hear. Faile smiled quite pleasantly all the way back to their rooms, but oh, that thorny, thorny, thorny scent in his nose.

“That wasn’t what it looked like,” he said as soon as the door was closed. Not a word out of her; her eyebrows just rose in a silent question. “Well, it was — Berelain patted my cheek — ” Still smiling, but eyebrows lowered darkly, and sharp anger among the thorns. “ — but she just did it. I didn’t encourage her, Faile. She just did it.” He wished Faile would say something; she only stared. He thought she was waiting, but for what? Inspiration took him by the throat, and as so often seemed to happen when he was talking to her, put a noose around it. “Faile, I’m sorry.” Anger became a razor.

“I see,” she said flatly, and glided out of the room.

So, both feet put wrong; straight into his mouth, it seemed, though he could not understand how. He had apologized, and he had not even done anything to apologize for.

That afternoon he overheard Bain and Chiad discussing whether they should help Faile beat him, of all things! No telling whether Faile had suggested it — she was fierce, but was she that fierce? — yet he suspected the pair meant him to hear, which made him angry. Plainly his wife was discussing affairs between him and her with them, matters which should have remained between husband and wife, which made him angrier. What other parts of their life did she chat about over tea? That night, as he watched in amazement, Faile put on a thick wool nightgown despite the heat. When he tried to kiss her cheek, almost timidly, she muttered that she had had a tiring day and rolled over with her back to him. She smelled furious, sharp enough to split a razor edgewise.

He could not sleep with that smell, and the longer he lay there beside her, studying the ceiling in the darkness, the angrier he became. Why was she doing this? Could she not see he loved her and only her? Had he not shown her time and again that what he wanted more than anything in life was to hold her forever? Was he to blame because some fool woman got a bee up her nose and wanted to flirt? What he ought to do was turn her upside down and smack her bottom till she saw sense. Only he had done that once before, when she thought she could hit him with her fist whenever she wanted to make a point. In the long run it had hurt him a lot more than it had her; he did not like even the thought of Faile being hurt. He wanted peace with her. With her and only her.

Which was why he made the decision he made lying there with gray first light of their sixth day in Cairhien showing in the windows. In the Stone, Berelain had flirted with a dozen men that he knew of; whatever had made her choose him as her quarry, she would settle on another if he was out of sight for very long. And once Berelain chose another victim, Faile would come to her senses. It seemed simple.

So as soon as he could throw on some clothes he went off to find Loial and breakfast with him, then accompanied him to the Royal Library. And once he saw that slender Aes Sedai and Loial told him she was there every day — Loial was diffident around Aes Sedai, but he did not mind fifty of them around him — Perrin sniffed out Gaul and asked whether he would like to go hunting. There were not many deer or rabbits in the hills close to the city, of course, and those few suffering as much from the drought as the people, yet Perrin’s nose could have led them to any number they needed if meat had really been what he was after. He never even nocked an arrow, but he insisted on remaining out until Gaul asked whether he intended hunting bats by the light of the half-moon; sometimes Perrin forgot that other people could not see as well as he in the night. The next day he hunted into the darkness as well, and every day thereafter.

The problem of it was, his simple plan seemed to be falling on its nose. The first night when he returned to the Sun Palace, with his unstrung bow on his shoulder, pleasantly tired from all that walking, only a chance stir in the air brought Berelain’s scent in time to stop him from walking into the main entry hall of the palace. Motioning the Aiel guards to silence, Perrin sneaked all the way around to a servants’ door, where he had to pound to make a bleary-eyed fellow let him in. The next night Berelain was waiting in the hallway outside his rooms; he had to hide around a corner half the night before she gave up. Every night she was waiting somewhere, as if she could pretend a chance encounter when no one else was awake but a few servants. It was utter madness; why had she not gone on to someone else? And every night when he at last crept into his bedchamber with his boots in his hands, Faile was asleep in that bloody thick nightgown. Long before his sixth sleepless night in a row he was ready to admit he had blundered, though he still could not see how. It had seemed so bloody simple. All he wanted was one word from Faile, one hint of what he should say or do. All he got was the sound of his own teeth grinding in the darkness.

On the tenth day, Rand received another request from Coiren for an audience, just as politely worded as the first three. For a time he sat rubbing the thick creamy parchment between thumb and forefinger, thinking. There was really no way to tell how far Alanna was yet from his sense of her, but comparing how strong it had been the first day with how strong it was now, he thought she might be halfway to Cairhien. If that was so, Merana was not dawdling. That was good; he wanted her eager. Penitent, at least a little, would help too, but as well wish for the moon; she was Aes Sedai. Ten more days until they reached Cairhien, if they kept that pace, and they should be able to. Time enough to meet twice more with Coiren, so he would have given each group three audiences. Let Merana consider that when she arrived. No advantage to her at all, the White Tower on the other side, and no need for her to know he would as soon stick his hand into a viper pit as go anywhere near the Tower, especially with Elaida as Amyrlin. Ten more days, and he would eat his boots if ten mo

re passed beyond that before Merana agreed to throw Salidar’s support to him, with no nonsense about guiding or showing the way. Then, at last, he could turn his full attention on Sammael.

As Rand sat to write Coiren that she could bring two of her sisters to the Sun Palace tomorrow afternoon, Lews Therin began muttering audibly. Yes. Sammael. Kill him this time. Demandred and Sammael and all of them, this time. Yes, I will.

Rand hardly noticed.

Chapter 51

The Taking

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