Perrin came, accusing, pleading for help. Mistress al’Vere, weeping for her daughter, and Bayle Domon, cursing him for bringing Fades down on his vessel, and Master Fitch, wringing his hands over the ashes of his inn, and Min, screaming in a Trolloc’s clutches, people he knew, people he had only met. But the worst was Tam. Tam stood over him, frowning and shaking his head, and said not a word.
“You have to tell me,” Rand begged him. “Who am I? Tell me, please. Who am I? Who am I?” he shouted.
“Easy, Rand.”
For a moment he thought it was Tam answering, but then he saw that Tam was gone. Mat bent over him, holding a cup of water to his lips.
“Just rest easy. You’re Rand al’Thor, that’s who you are, with the ugliest face and the thickest head in the Two Rivers. Hey, you’re sweating! The fever’s broken.”
“Rand al’Thor?” Rand whispered. Mat nodded, and there was something so comforting in it that Rand drifted off to sleep without even touching the water.
It was a sleep untroubled by dreams—at least by any he remembered—but light enough that his eyes drifted open whenever Mat checked on him. Once he wondered if Mat was getting any sleep at all, but he fell back asleep himself before the thought got very far.
The squeal of the door hinges roused him fully, but for a moment he only lay there in the hay wishing he was still asleep. Asleep he would not be aware of his body. His muscles ached like wrung-out rags, and had about as much strength. Weakly he tried to raise his head; he made it on the second try.
Mat sat in his accustomed place against the wall, within arm’s reach of Rand. His chin rested on his chest, which rose and fell in the easy rhythm of deep sleep. The scarf had slipped down over his eyes.
Rand looked toward the door.
A woman stood there holding it open with one hand. For a moment she was only a dark shape in a dress, outlined by the faint light of early morning, then she stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind her. In the lantern light he could see her more clearly. She was about the same age as Nynaeve, he thought, but she was no village woman. The pale green silk of her dress shimmered as she moved. Her cloak was a rich, soft gray, and a frothy net of lace caught up her hair. She fingered a heavy gold necklace as she looked thoughtfully at Mat and him.
“Mat,” Rand said, then louder, “Mat!”
Mat snorted and almost fell over as he came awake. Scrubbing sleep from his eyes, he stared at the woman.
“I came to look at my horse,” she said, gesturing vaguely at the stalls. She never took her eyes away from the two of them, though. “Are you ill?”
“He’s all right,” Mat said stiffly. “He just caught a chill in the rain, that’s all.”
“Perhaps I should look at him,” she said. “I have some knowledge. . . .”
Rand wondered if she were Aes Sedai. Even more than her clothes, her self-assured manner, the way she held her head as if on the point of giving a command, did not belong here. And if she is Aes Sedai, of what Ajah?
“I’m fine, now,” he told her. “Really, there’s no need.”
But she came down the length of the stable, holding her skirt up and placing her gray slippers gingerly. With a grimace for the straw, she knelt beside him and felt his forehead.
“No fever,” she said, studying him with a frown. She was pretty, in a sharp-featured fashion, but there was no warmth in her face. It was not cold, either; it just seemed to lack any feeling whatsoever. “You were sick, though. Yes. Yes. And still weak as a day-old kitten. I think. . . .” She reached under her cloak, and suddenly things were happening too fast for Rand to do more than give a strangled shout.
Her hand flashed from under her cloak; something glittered as she lunged across Rand toward Mat. Mat toppled sideways in a flurry of motion, and there was a solid tchunk of metal driven into wood. It all took just an instant, and then everything was still.
Mat lay half on his back, one hand gripping her wrist just above the dagger she had driven into the wall where his chest had been, his other hand holding the blade from Shadar Logoth to her throat.
Moving nothing but her eyes, she tried to look down at the dagger Mat held. Eyes widening, she drew a ragged breath and tried to pull back from it, but he kept the edge against her skin. After that, she was as still as a stone.
Licking his lips, Rand stared at the tableau above him. Even if he had not been so weak, he did not believe he could have moved. Then his eyes fell on her dagger, and his mouth went dry. The wood around the blade was blackening; thin tendrils of smoke rose from the char.
“Mat! Mat, her dagger!”
Mat flicked a glance at the dagger, then back to the woman, but she had not moved. She was licking her lips nervously. Roughly Mat pried her hand off the hilt and gave her a push; she toppled back, sprawling away from them and catching herself with her hands behind her, still watching the blade in his hand. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll use this if you move. Believe me, I will.” She nodded slowly; her eyes never left Mat’s dagger. “Watch her, Rand.”
Rand was not sure what he was supposed to do if she tried anything—shout, maybe; he certainly could not run after her if she tried to flee—but she sat there without twitching while Mat yanked her dagger free of the wall. The black spot stopped growing, though a faint wisp of smoke still trailed up from it.
Mat looked around for somewhere to put the dagger, then thrust it toward Rand. He took it gingerly, as if it were a live adder. It looked ordinary, if ornate, with a pale ivory hilt and a narrow, gleaming blade no longer than the palm of his hand. Just a dagger. Only he had seen what it could do. The hilt was not even warm, but his hand began to sweat. He hoped he did not drop it in the hay.
The woman did not move from her sprawl as she watched Mat slowly turn toward her. She watched him as if wondering what he would do next, but Rand saw the sudden tightening of Mat’s eyes, the tightening of his hand on the dagger. “Mat, no!”
“She tried to kill me, Rand. She’d have killed you, too. She’s a Darkfriend.” Mat spat the word.