Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time 11)

"Well," Verin said, holding up her knitting for inspection, "I believe I have done all that I can here. I think I'll go find Tomas. The rain makes his knee ache, though he denies it even to me." She glanced at the window. "It does seem to be slowing."

"And I think I'll go find Lan," Nynaeve said, gathering her skirts. "The company is better where he is." That with a sharp tug on her braid and a glare divided between Alivia and Logain. "The wind tells me a storm is coming, Rand. And you know I don't mean rain."

"The Last Battle?" Rand asked. "How soon?" When it came to weather, listening to the wind could sometimes tell her when the rains would come to the hour.

"It may be, and I don't know. Just remember. A storm is coming. A terrible storm." Overhead, thunder rolled.

CHAPTER 19 Vows

Uneasy, Loial watched Nynaeve glide off down the lamp-lit corridor in one direction and Verin in the other. Neither was much taller than his waist, but they were Aes Sedai. The fact knotted his tongue sufficiently that by the time he had worked up his nerve to ask one of them to accompany him, both were out of sight around sharp corners. The manor house was a rambling place, added to over many years with no real overall plan that he could discern, and hallways frequently met at odd angles. He really wished he had an Aes Sedai for company when he faced his mother. Even Cadsuane, although she made him very nervous with how she was always pinching at Rand. Sooner or later, Rand was going to explode. He was not the same man Loial first met in Caemlyn, or even the man he had left in Cairhien. The mood around Rand was dark and stony now, a dense patch of lion's claw and treacherous ground underfoot. The whole house felt that way with Rand in it.

A lean, gray-haired serving woman carrying a basket of folded towels gave a start, then shook her head and muttered something under her breath before offering him a brief curtsy and walking on. She made a small side-step as though she was moving around something. Or someone. He stared at the spot and scratched behind his ear. Maybe he could only see Ogier dead. Not that he actually wanted to. It was sad enough just knowing that human dead could no longer rest. Having the same confirmed for Ogier would be enough to break his heart. Most likely they would appear only inside stedding, in any case. He would very much like to see a town vanish, though. Not a real town, but a town that was as dead as those spirits the humans claimed to see. You might be able

to walk its streets before it melted and see what people were like before the War of the Hundred Years, or even the Trolloc Wars. So Verin said, and she seemed to know a very great deal about it. That would certainly be worth a mention in his book. It was going to be a fine book. Scratching his beard with two fingers—the thing itched!—he sighed. It would have been a fine book.

Standing there in the corridor was only putting off the inevitable. Put off clearing the brush and you always find chokevine in it, so the old saying went. Only he felt as though the chokevine was tight around him instead of a tree. Breathing hard, he followed the serving woman all the way to the wide stairs that led up to the Ogier rooms. The staircase had two sturdy bannisters, shoulder-high on the gray-haired woman and stout enough to give a decent handhold. He was often afraid just to brush against stair rails made for humans for fear he might break them. One ran down the middle, with the steps along the wood-paneled wall pitched for human feet: those on the outside for Ogier.

The woman was old as humans counted years, yet she climbed more quickly than he and was scurrying down the corridor by the time he reached the top. Doubtless she was taking the towels to his mother's room, and to Elder Hainan's and Erith's. Surely they would prefer to get dry before talking. He would suggest that. It would gain him time to think. His thoughts seemed as sluggish as his feet, and his feet felt like millstones.

There were six bedrooms built for Ogier along the corridor, which itself was properly scaled for them—his up-stretched hands would have come a pace short of touching the ceiling beams—along with a storeroom, a bathing room with a large copper tub, and the sitting room. This was the oldest part of the house, dating back nearly five hundred years. A lifetime for a very old Ogier, but many lifetimes for humans. They lived such brief lives, except for Aes Sedai; that had to be why they flitted about like hummingbirds. But even Aes Sedai could be nearly as precipitous as the rest. That was a puzzlement. The sitting room door was carved with a Great Tree, not Ogier work, yet finely detailed and instantly recognizable. He stopped, tugging his coat straight, combing his hair with his fingers, wishing he had time to black his boots. There was an ink stain on his cuff. No time to do anything about that, either. Cadsuane was right. His mother was not a woman to be kept waiting. Strange that Cadsuane knew of her. Perhaps knew her, by the way she had spoken. Covril, daughter of Ella daughter of Soong, was a famous Speaker, but he had not realized she was known Outside. Light, he was all but panting with anxiety.

Trying to control his breathing, he went in. Even here the hinges creaked. The servants had been aghast when he asked after some oil to put on them—that was their task; he was a guest—but they still had not gotten around to it themselves.

The high-ceilinged room was quite spacious, with dark polished wallpapers and vine-carved chairs and small vine-carved tables and wrought-iron stand-lamps of a proper size, their mirrored flames dancing above his head. Except for a shelf of books, all old enough that the leather bindings were flaking and all of which he had read before, only a small bowl of sung wood was Ogier made. A nice piece; he wished he knew who had sung it, but it was aged enough that singing to it had failed to raise so much as an echo. Yet everything had been made by someone who at least had been to a stedding. The pieces would have looked at home in any dwelling. Of course, the room looked nothing like a room in a stedding, but Lord Algarin's ancestor had made an effort to have his visitors feel comfortable.

His mother was standing in front of one of the brick fireplaces, a strong-faced woman with her vine-embroidered skirts spread to let the flames dry them. He heaved a sigh of relief at seeing she was not as wet as he had expected, although it put paid to suggesting they take the time to get dry. Their raincloaks must have developed leaks. They did that after a time, as the anseed oil wore off. Maybe her temper would not be as bad as he feared, either. White-haired Elder Haman, his flaring coat dark with damp in several large patches, was examining one of the axes from the wall, shaking his head over it. Its haft was as long as he was tall. Made during the Trolloc Wars or even before, there were a pair of those, the long axe heads inlaid with gold and silver, and a pair of ornate pointed pruning knives with long shafts, as well. Of course, pruning knives, sharp on one side and sawtoothed on the other, always had long handles, but the inlays and long red tassels indicated that these had been made for weapons, too. Not the most felicitous choices for hanging in a room meant for reading or conversation or the quiet contemplation of stillness.

But Loial's eyes swept past his mother and Elder Haman to the other fireplace, where Erith, small and almost fragile appearing, was drying her own skirts. Her mouth was straight, her nose short and well-rounded, her eyes the exact color of a silverbell's ripe seedpod. In short, she was beautiful! And her ears, sticking up through the glossy black hair that hung down her back. . . . Curving and plump, tipped with fine tufts that looked as soft as dandelion down, they were the most gorgeous ears he had ever seen. Not that he would be crude enough to say so. She smiled at him, a very mysterious smile, and his own ears quivered with embarrassment. Surely she could not know what he had been thinking. Could she? Rand said women could sometimes, but that was human women.

"So, here you are," his mother said, planting her fists on her hips. There were no smiles from her. Her brows were drawn down, her jaw set. If this was her better temper, she might as well have been drenched. "I must say, you've led me a merry chase, but I have you in hand now, and I do not mean to let you run— What is that on your lip? And your chin! Well, you can shave those right off again. Don't you grimace at me, Son Loial."

Fingering the growth on his upper lip uneasily, he tried to smooth his face—when your mother named you Son, she was in no mood to trifle with—but it was hard. He wanted his beard and mustaches. Some might think it pretentious, as young as he was, but just the same. . . .

"A merry chase indeed," Elder Haman said dryly, hanging the axe back on its hooks. He had long white mustaches that fell past his chin and a long narrow beard that hung to his chest. True, he was well above three hundred years old, but it still seemed unfair. "A very merry chase. First we walked to Cairhien, having heard you were there, only you had gone. After a stop at Stedding Tsofu, we walked to Caemlyn, where young al'Thor informed us you were in the Two Rivers and took us there. But you were gone again. To Caemlyn, it seemed!" His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. "I began to think we were playing ring-in-the-dell."

"The people in Emond's Field told us how heroic you were," Erith said, her high voice like music. Clutching her skirts with both hands, ears fluttering with excitement, she seemed about to bounce up and down. "They told us all about you fighting Trollocs and Myrddraal, and going out among them by yourself to seal the Manetheren Waygate so no more could come."

"I wasn't by myself," Loial protested, waving his hands. He thought his ears might fly from his head, they were twitching so with embarrassment. "Gaul was with me. We did it together. I'd never have reached the Waygate without Gaul." She wrinkled her delicate nose at him, dismissing Gaul's participation.

His mother sniffed. Her ears were rigid with distaste. "Foolishness. Fighting in battles. Putting yourself in danger. Gambling. All of it. Pure foolishness, and there will be no more of it."

Elder Haman harrumphed, ears twitching irritably, and folded his hands behind his back. He disliked being interrupted. "So we returned to Caemlyn, to find you gone, and then to Cairhien once more, to find you gone yet again."

"And you put yourself in danger again in Cairhien," Loial's mother broke in, shaking a finger at him. "Have you no sense at all?"

"The Aiel said you were very brave at Dumai's Wells,'' Erith murmured, looking at him through her long eyelashes. He swallowed hard. Her gaze made his throat feel tight. He knew he should look away, but how could he be demure when she was looking at him?

"In Cairhien your mother decided she couldn't stay away from the Great Stump any longer, though why I cannot say, since they aren't likely to reach any sort of decision for another year or two, so we set out to return to Stedding Shangtai in the hope we could find you later." Elder Haman said all of that very fast, glaring at the two women as if he thought they might break in on him again. His beard and mustaches seemed to bristle.

Loial's mother gave another sniff, sharper. "I expect to bring a decision very quickly, in a month or two, or I'd never have given over the search for Loial even temporarily. Now that I've found him, we can finish matters and be on our way without any more delay." She took in Elder Haman, who was frowning, his ears slanted back, and amended her tone. He was an Elder, after all. "Forgive me, Elder Haman. I meant to say, if it pleases you, will you perform the ceremony?''

"I believe that it does please me, Covril," he said mildly. Much too mildly. When Loial heard that tone from his teacher, with ears back, he had always known that he had put a foot very badly wrong. Elder Haman had been known to throw a piece of chalk at a pupil when he used that tone. "Since I abandoned my students, not to mention speaking to the Great Stump, to follow you on this wild chase for that very reason, I believe it does please me indeed. Erith, you are very young."

"She's past eighty, old enough to marry," Loial's mother said sharply, folding her arms across her chest. Her ears twitched with impatience. "Her mother and I reached agreement. You yourself witnessed us signing the betrothal and Loial's dowry."

Elder Haman's ears tilted back a little further, and his shoulders hunched as if he was gripping his hands together very hard behind his back. His eyes never left Erith. "I know you want to marry Loial, but are you sure you are ready? Taking a husband is a grave responsibility."

Loial wished someone would ask him that question, but that was not the way. His mother and Erith's had reached their agreement, and only Erith could stop it now. If she wanted to. Did he want her to? He could not stop thinking of his book. He could not stop thinking of Erith.