The Dragon Reborn (The Wheel of Time 3)

“Burn me if I will. I pull wool and scratch gravel for nobody. Not to Morgase herself. This time, I’ll not go near the Guards at all.” I would just as soon not know what word that fat fellow has spread. They stared at him as if he were mad.

“How under the Light,” Gill said, “do you mean to enter the Royal Palace without passing the Guards?” His eyes widened as if he were remembering something. “Light, you don’t mean to. . . . Lad, you’d need the Dark One’s own luck to escape with your life!”

“What are you going on about now, Basel? Mat, what fool thing do you intend to try?”

“I am lucky, Master Gill,” Mat said. “You just have a good meal waiting when I come back.” As he stood, he picked up the dice cup and spun the dice out beside the stones board for luck. The calico cat leaped down, hissing at him with her back arched. The five spotted dice came to rest, each showing a single pip. The Dark One’s Eyes.

“That’s the best toss or the worst,” Gill said. “It depends on the game you are playing, doesn’t it. Lad, I think you mean to play a dangerous game. Why don’t you take that cup out into the common room and lose a few coppers? You look to me like a fellow who might like a little gamble. I will see the letter gets to the Palace safely.”

“Coline wants you to clean the drains,” Mat told him, and turned to Thom while the innkeeper was still blinking and muttering to himself. “It doesn’t seem to make any odds whether I get an arrow in me trying to deliver that letter or a knife in my back waiting. It’s six up, and a half dozen down. Just you have that meal waiting, Thom.” He tossed a gold mark on the table in front of Gill. “Have my things put in a room, innkeeper. If it takes more coin, you will have it. Be careful of the big roll; it frightens Thom something awful.”

As he stalked out, he heard Gill say to Thom, “I always thought that lad was a rascal. How does he come by gold?”

I always win, that’s how, he thought grimly. I just have to win once more, and I’m done with Elayne, and that’s the last of the White Tower for me. Just once more.

CHAPTER

46

A Message Out of the Shadow

Even as he returned to the Inner City on foot, Mat was far from certain that what he intended would actually work. It would, if what he had been told was true, but it was the truth of that he was not sure of. He avoided the oval plaza in front of the Palace, but wandered around the sides of the huge structure and its grounds, along streets that curved with the contours of the hills. The golden domes of the Palace glittered, mockingly out of reach. He had made his way almost all the way around, nearly back to the plaza, when he saw it. A steep slope thick with low flowers, rising from the street to a white wall of rough stone. Several leafy tree limbs stuck over the top of the wall, and he could see the tops of others beyond, in a garden of the Royal Palace.

A wall made to look like a cliff, he thought, and a garden on the other side. Maybe Rand was telling the truth.

A casual look both ways showed him he had the curving street to himself for the moment. He would have to hurry; the curves did not allow him to see very far; someone could come along any moment. He scrambled up the slope on all fours, careless of how his boots ripped holes in the banks of red and white blossoms. The rough stone of the wall gave plenty of finger-holds, and ridges and knobs provided toeholds even for a man in boots.

Careless of them to make it so easy, he thought as he climbed. For a moment the climbing took him back home with Rand and Perrin, to a journey they had made beyond the Sand Hills, into the edge of the Mountains of Mist. When they returned to Emond’s Field, they had all caught the fury from everyone who could lay hands on them—him worst of all; everyone assumed it had been his idea—but for three days they had climbed the cliffs, and slept under the sky, and eaten eggs filched from redcrests’ nests, and plump, gray-winged grouse fetched with an arrow, or a stone from a sling, and rabbits caught with snares, all the while laughing about how they were not afraid of the mountains’ bad luck and how they might find a treasure. He had brought home an odd rock from that expedition, with the skull of a good-sized fish somehow pressed into it, and a long, white tail feather dropped by a snow eagle, and a piece of white stone as big as his hand that looked almost as if it had been carved into a man’s ear. He thought it looked like an ear, even if Rand and Perrin did not, and Tam al’Thor had said it might be.

His fingers slipped out of a shallow groove, his balance shifted and he lost the toehold under his left foot. With a gasp, he barely caught hold of the top of the wall, and pulled himself up the rest of the way. For a moment he lay there, breathing hard. It would not have been that long a fall, but enough to break his head. Fool, letting my mind wander like that. Nearly killed myself on those cliffs that way. That was all a long time ago. His mother had likely thrown all those things out already, anyway. With one last look each way to make sure no one had seen him—the curving length of street below was still empty—he dropped inside the Palace grounds.

It was a large garden, with flagstoned walks through expanses of grass among the trees, and grapevines thick on arbors over the walks. And everywhere, flowers. White blossoms covering the pear trees, and white and pink dotting the apple trees. Roses in every color, and bright golden sunburst, and purple Emond’s Glory, and many he could not identify. Some he was not sure could be real. One had odd blossoms in scarlet and gold that looked almost like birds, and another seemed no different from a sunflower except that its yellow flowers were two feet and more across and stood on stalks as tall as an Ogier.

Boots crunched on flagstone, and he crouched low behind a bush against the wall as two guardsmen marched past, their long, white collars hanging over their breastplates. They never glanced his way, and he grinned to himself. Luck. With just a little luck, they’ll never see me till I hand the bloody thing to Morgase.

He slipped through the garden like a shadow, as if stalking rabbits, freezing by a bush or hard against a tree trunk when he heard boots. Two more pairs of soldiers strode by along the paths, the second close enough for him to have taken two steps and goosed them. As they vanished among the flowers and trees, he plucked a deep red starblaze and stuck the wavy-petaled flower in his hair with a grin. This was as much fun as stealing applecakes at Sunday, and easier. Women always kept a sharp watch on their baking; the fool soldiers never took their eyes off the flagstones.

It was not long before he found himself ag

ainst the white wall of the Palace itself, and began sliding along it behind a row of flowering white roses on slatted frames, searching for a door. There were plenty of wide, arched windows just over his head, but he thought it might be a bit harder to explain being found climbing in through a window than walking down a hall. Two more soldiers appeared, and he froze; they would pass within three paces of him. He could hear voices from the window over his head, two men, just loud enough for him to make out the words.

“—on their way to Tear, Great Master.” The man sounded frightened and obsequious.

“Let them ruin his plans, if they can.” This voice was deeper and stronger, a man used to command. “It will serve him right if three untrained girls can foil him. He was always a fool, and he is still a fool. Is there any word of the boy? He is the one who can destroy us all.”

“No, Great Master. He has vanished. But, Great Master, one of the girls is Morgase’s nit.”

Mat half turned, then caught himself. The soldiers were coming closer; they did not appear to have seen his start through the thickly woven rose stems. Move, you fools! Get by so I can see who this man bloody is! He had lost some of the conversation.

“—has been far too impatient since regaining his freedom,” the deep voice was saying. “He never realized the best plans take time to mature. He wants the world in a day, and Callandor besides. The Great Lord take him! He may seize the girl and try to make some use of her. And that might strain my own plans.”

“As you say, Great Master. Shall I order her brought out of Tear?”

“No. The fool would take it as a move against him, if he knew. And who can say what he chooses to watch aside from the sword? See that she dies quietly, Comar. Let her death attract no notice at all.” His laughter was a rich rumble. “Those ignorant slatterns in their Tower will have a difficult time producing her after this disappearance. This may all be just as well. Let it be done quickly. Quickly, before he has time to take her himself.”

The two soldiers were almost abreast of him; Mat tried to will their feet to move faster.

“Great Master,” the other man said uncertainly, “that may be difficult. We know she is on her way to Tear, but the vessel she traveled on was found at Aringill, and all three of them had left it earlier. We do not know whether she has taken another ship, or is riding south. And it may not be easy to find her once she reaches Tear, Great Master. Perhaps if you—”