Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time 13)

The boom came, sparks spurting out of the corridor and lighting the datk room. Where sparks came close to one of the rising columns of steam, that steam shied back, dancing away from the flames. The air smelled strongly of smoke and sulphur. Light, his socket was throbbing again.

"Now, Mat," Noal said, Mat's ears still tinging from the blast, "give me the pack."

"What are you doing?" Mat said warily as Noal took the pack, then fished out the last nightflower.

"You can see it, Mat," Noal said. "We need more time. You have to get far enough ahead of those vipers that you can double back a few times, let your luck work you out of this."

Noal nodded to one of the corridors "These corridors are narrow. Good choke points. A man could stand there and only have to fight one or two at a time. He'd last maybe a few minutes."

"Noal!" Thom said, wheezing, standing with his hands on his knees, near Mat's ashandarei leaning against the wall. "You can't do this."

"Yes I can," Noal said. He stepped up to the corridor, beyond which the Aelfinn gathered. "Thom, you're in no shape to fight. Mat, you're the one whose luck can find the way out. Neither of you can stay. But I can."

"There will be no coming back for you," Mat said grimly. "As soon as we double back, this flaming place will take us somewhere else."

Noal met his eye, that weathered face determined. "I know. A price, Mat. We knew this place would demand a price. Well, I've seen a lot of things, done a lot of things. I've been used, Mat, one too many times. This is as good a place as any to meet the end."

Mat stood up, lifting Moiraine, then nodded in respect to Noal. "Come on, Thom."

"But "

"Come on." Mat barked, dashing to one of the other doorways. Thom hesitated, then cursed and joined him, carrying Mat's torch in one hand and his ashandarei in the other. Noal stepped into the corridor behind, hefting his shortsword. Shapes moved in the smoke beyond him.

"Mat," Noal called, glancing over his shoulder.

Mat waved Thom on, but hesitated, looking back.

"If you ever meet a Malkieri," Noal said, "you tell him Jain Farstrider died clean."

"I will, Jain," Mat said. "May the light hold you."

Noal turned back to face the Aelfinn and Mat left him. There was another boom as a nightflower went off. Then Mat heard Noal's voice echo down the corridor as he screamed a battlecry. It was not in any tongue Mat had ever heard.

He and Thom entered another chamber. Thom was weeping, but Mat held his tears. Noal would die with honor. Once, Mat would have thought th

at kind of thinking foolish what good was honor if you were dead? But he had too many memories of soldiers, had spent too much time with men who fought and bled for that honor, to discredit such notions now.

He closed his eye and spun, Moiraine's weight almost unbalancing him. He picked a direction and found himself pointing back the way they had come. He charged down the corridor, Thom following.

When they reached the end of the cottidor, it did not open into the toom where they had left Noal. This room was round and was filled with yellow columns, made in the shape of enormous vines twisting around one anothet with an open cylinder of space at the center. Coiled lamp stands held globes of white that gave the room a soft light, and the floor was tiled in the pattern of white and yellow strips, spiraling out from the center. It smelled pungently of dry snakeskin.

Matrim Cauthon, you're no hero, he thought, glancing over his shoulder. That man you left behind, he's the hero. Light illumine you, Noal.

"Now what?" Thom asked. He seemed to have recovered some of his strength, so Mat handed back Moiraine and took his spear. There were only two doorways in this room, the one behind and one directly across the chamber. But Mat spun with his eye closed anyway. The luck pointed them to the doorway opposite the one they had entered.

They took it. The windows in this hallway looked out at the jungle, and they were now down in the thick of it. Mat occasionally spotted those three spires. The place where they had been moments ago, the place where Noal bled.

"This is where you got your answers, isn't it?" Thom asked. Mat nodded.

"You think I could get some of those myself?" Thom asked. "Three questions. Any answers you like. . . ."

"You don't want them," Mat said, tugging down the brim of his hat. "Trust me, you don't. They aren't answers. They're threats. Promises.

We "

Thom stopped beside him. In Thorn's arms, Moiraine was beginning to stir. She let out a soft groan, eyes still closed. But that was not what made Mat freeze.

He could see another circular yellow room up ahead. Sitting in the middle of that room was a redstone doorway. Or what was left of it.