Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

There were five corridors leading out of the room, one at each inner point of the star shape. He remembered passing through one of those passageways, but had there not been only one way out before?

"Wonder how high up the pillars go," Thom said, raising his torch higher and squinting.

Mat held his ashandarei in a firmer grip, palms sweaty. They had entered the foxes' den. He felt at his medallion. The Eelfinn had not used the Power on him before, but they had to have some understanding of it, did they not? Of course, Ogier could not channel. Perhaps that meant Eelfinn could not either.

Rustling sounds came from the edges of the room. Shadows shifted and moved. The Eelfinn were in there, in that darkness. "Thom," Mat said. "We should play some more music."

Thom watched that darkness. He did not object; he raised his flute and began playing. The sound seemed lonely in the vast room.

"Mat," Noal said, kneeling near the center of the room. "Look at this."

"I know," Mat said. "It looks like glass but feels like stone."

"No, not that," Noal said. "There's something here."

Mat edged over to Noal. Thom joined them, watching and playing as Noal used his lantern to illuminate a melted lump of slag on the floor, perhaps the size of a small chest. It was black, but a deeper, less reflective black than the floor and the columns.

"What d

o you make of it?" Noal asked. "Maybe one of the trapdoors?"

"No," Mat said. "It's not that."

The other two looked at him.

"It's the doorframe," Mat said, feeling sick. "The red stone doorframe. When I came through it before, it was in the center of a room like this. When it melted on the other side . . ."

"It melted here too," Noal said.

The three stared at it. Thorn's music sounded haunting.

"Well," Mat said. "We knew it wasn't a way-out in the fitst place. We'll have to bargain our way free." And I'll make bloody sure not to get hanged this time.

"Will the dice lead us?" Noal asked, rising.

Mat felt them in his coat pocket. "I don't see why not." But he did not take them out. He turned to regard the depths of the room. Thorn's music seemed to have stilled some of the shadows. But others still moved. There was a restless energy to the air.

"Mat?" Thom asked.

"You knew I'd come back," Mat said loudly. His voice did not echo. Light! How large was the thing? "You knew I'd come marching back to your bloody realm, didn't you? You knew you'd have me eventually."

Hesitant, Thom lowered his flute.

"Show yourselves!" Mat said. "I can hear you scrambling, hear you breathing."

"Mat," Thom said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "They couldn't have known that you'd come back. Moiraine didn't know that you'd come for certain."

Mat watched the darkness. "You ever see men lead cattle to slaughter, Thom?"

The gleeman hesitated, then shook his head.

"Well, every man has his own ways," Mat said. "But cattle, see, they'll know something is wrong. They'll smell the blood. They'll get frenzied, refuse to enter the slaughterhouse. And you know how you fix that?"

"Do we have to talk about this now, Mat?"

"You fix it," Mat said, "by taking them through the slaughterhouse a few times when it is clean, when the scents aren't so strong. You let them go through and escape, see, and they'll think the place is safe." He looked at Thom. "They knew I'd be back. They knew I'd survive that hanging. They know things, Thom. Burn me, but they do."

"We'll get out, Mat," Thom promised. "We can. Moiraine saw it."