A Crown of Swords (41 page)

“Will you lead the way, Siuan,” she said when he was a dozen strides below.

Siuan glared after him as though he had been badgering her the whole time. With a snort, she tugged her straw hat straight, wheeled her mare around—well, dragged her around—and heeled the stout animal to a walk. Egwene motioned Myrelle to follow. Like Bryne, the woman had no choice.

At first Myrelle directed sidelong glances at her, plainly expecting her to bring up the sisters sent to the White Tower, plainly gathering excuses for why they had to be kept secret even from the Hall. The longer Egwene rode in silence, the more uneasily the other shifted in her saddle. Myrelle began wetting her lips, fine cracks spreading in that Aes Sedai calm. A
very
useful tool, silence.

For a time the only sounds were their horses’ hooves and the occasional cry of a bird in the brush, but as Siuan’s direction became clear, angling a little west from the path back to the camp, Myrelle’s shifting increased until she might have been sitting on nettles. Maybe there was something to those bits and pieces Siuan had gathered after all.

When Siuan took another turn westward, between two misshapen hills that bent toward each other, Myrelle drew rein. “There. . . . There is a waterfall in that direction,” she said, pointing east. “Not very large, even before the drought, but quite pretty even now.” Siuan stopped too, looking back with a small smile.

What could Myrelle be hiding? Egwene was curious. Glancing at the Green sister, she gave a start at a single bead of perspiration on the woman’s forehead, glistening in the shadow just at the edge of her wide gray hat. She most certainly wanted to know what could shake an Aes Sedai enough to make her sweat.

“I think Siuan’s way will offer even more interesting sights, don’t you?” Egwene said, turning Daishar, and Myrelle seemed to fold in on herself. “Come along.”

“You know everything, don’t you?” Myrelle muttered unsteadily as they rode between the leaning hills. More than one drop of sweat decorated her face now. She was shaken to her core. “Everything. How could you . . . ?” Suddenly she jerked upright in her saddle, staring at Siuan’s back. “Her! Siuan’s been your creature from the beginning!” She sounded almost indignant. “How could we have been so blind? But I still don’t understand. We were so circumspect.”

“If you want to keep something hidden,” Siuan said contemptuously over her shoulder, “don’t try to buy coin peppers this far south.”

What in the world were coin peppers? And what were they talking about? Myrelle shuddered. It was a measure of how upset she was that Siuan’s tone brought no quick snap to put the other woman in her place. Instead, she licked her lips as though they were suddenly very dry.

“Mother, you have to understand why I did it, why we did it.” The frantic edge to her voice was fit for confronting half the Forsaken, and her in her shift. “Not just because Moiraine asked, not just because she was my friend. I hate letting them die. I hate it! The bargain we make is hard on us, sometimes, but harder on them. You must understand. You must!”

Just when Egwene thought she was about to reveal everything, Siuan halted her round mare again and faced them. Egwene could have slapped her. “It might go easier with you, Myrelle, if you lead the rest of the way,” she said coldly. Disgustedly, in fact. “Cooperation might mean mitigation. A little.”

“Yes.” Myrelle nodded, hands working incessantly on the reins. “Yes, of course.”

She looked on the point of tears as she took the lead. Siuan, falling in behind, appeared relieved for just an instant. Egwene thought she herself was going to burst. What bargain? With whom? Letting who die? And who was “we”? Sheriam and the others? But Myrelle would have heard, and exposing her own ignorance hardly seemed advisable at this point.
An ignorant woman who keeps her mouth shut will be thought wise
, the saying went. And there was another:
Keeping the first secret always means keeping ten more
. There was nothing for it but to follow, holding everything in. Siuan was going to get a talking-to, though. The woman was
not
supposed to be keeping secrets from
her
. Grinding her teeth, Egwene tried to appear patient, unconcerned. Wise.

Almost back to the road the camp was on, a few miles to the west, Myrelle led the way up a low flat-topped hill covered with pine and leatherleaf. Two huge oaks kept anything else from growing in the wide depression on the crown. Beneath thick intertwined branches stood three peaked tents of patched canvas, and a picket line of horses, with a cart nearby, and five tall warhorses each carefully picketed away from the others. Nisao Dachen, in a simply cut bronze-colored riding dress, waited under the awning in front of one of the tents as if to welcome guests, with Sarin Hoigan at her side in the olive green coat so many of the Gaidin wore. A bald-headed stump of a man with a thick black beard, Nisao’s Warder still stood taller than she. A few paces away, two of Myrelle’s three Gaidin warily watched them descend into the hollow, Croi Makin, slender and yellow-haired, and Nuhel Dromand, dark and bulky, with a beard that left his upper lip bare. No one looked surprised in the least. Obviously one of the Warders had been keeping guard and given warning. Nothing in sight warranted all the secrecy, though, or Myrelle’s lip-licking. For that matter, if Nisao waited in welcome, why did her hands keep stroking her divided skirts? She looked as if she would rather face Elaida while shielded.

Two women peering around a corner of one of the tents ducked back hurriedly, but not before Egwene recognized them. Nicola and Areina. Suddenly she felt very uneasy. What had Siuan brought her to?

Siuan showed no nervousness at all as she dismounted. “Bring him out, Myrelle. Now.” She was getting her own back with a vengeance; her tone made a file seem smooth. “It’s too late for hiding.”

Myrelle barely managed a frown at being addressed so, and it appeared an effort. Visibly pulling herself together, she jerked her hat from her head and climbed down without a word, glided to one of the tents and vanished inside. Nisao’s already big eyes followed her, growing wider by the moment. She seemed frozen to the spot.

No one but Siuan was near enough to overhear. “Why did you break in?” Egwene demanded softly as she got down. “I’m sure she was about to confess . . . whatever it is . . . and I still don’t have a clue. Coin peppers?”

“Very popular in Shienar, and Malkier,” Siuan said just as quietly. “I only heard that after I left Aeldene this morning. I had to make her lead the way; I didn’t know it, not exactly. It would hardly have done much good to let her discover that, now would it? I didn’t know about Nisao, either. I thought they hardly ever spoke to one another.” She glanced at the Yellow sister and gave her head an irritated shake. A failure to learn something was a failure Siuan did not tolerate well in herself. “Unless I’ve gone
blind
and
stupid, what these two. . . .” Grimacing as though she had a mouthful of something rotten, she spluttered trying to find a name to fit. Abruptly she caught Egwene’s sleeve. “Here they come. Now you’ll see for yourself.”

Myrelle left the tent first, then a man in just boots and breeches who had to duck low through the doorflaps, a bared sword in his hand and scars crisscrossing his lightly furred chest. He was head and shoulders and more taller than her, taller than any of the other Warders. His long dark hair, held by a braided leather cord around his temples, was more streaked with gray than when Egwene has seen him last, but there was nothing at all soft in Lan Mandragoran. Pieces of the puzzle suddenly clicked into place, yet it still would not come apart for her. He had been Warder to Moiraine, the Aes Sedai who had brought her and Rand and the rest out of the Two Rivers what seemed an Age ago, but Moiraine was dead killing Lanfear, and Lan had gone missing in Cairhien right after. Maybe it was all clear to Siuan; to her, it was mostly mud.

Murmuring something to Lan, Myrelle touched his arm. He flinched slightly, like a nervous horse, but his hard face never turned from Egwene. Finally, though, he nodded and pivoted on his heel, strode farther away beneath the branches of the oaks. Gripping the sword hilt in both hands above his head, blade slanted down, he rose onto the ball of one booted foot and stood motionless.

For a moment, Nisao frowned at him as though she, too, saw a puzzle. Then her gaze met Myrelle’s, and together their eyes swept to Egwene. Instead of coming to her, they went to each other, exchanging hasty whispers. At least, it was an exchange at first. Then Nisao merely stood there, shaking her head in disbelief or denial. “You dropped me into this,” she groaned aloud at last. “I was a blind fool to listen to you.”

“This should be . . . interesting,” Siuan said as they finally turned toward her and Egwene. The twist she gave the word made it sound decidedly unpleasant.

Myrelle and Nisao hurriedly touched hair and dresses as they crossed the short distance, making certain everything was in order. Perhaps they had been caught out—
In what?
Egwene wondered—but apparently they intended to put the best face they could on matters.

“If you will step inside, Mother,” Myrelle said, gesturing to the nearest tent. Only the slightest tremor in her voice betrayed her cool face. The sweat was gone. Wiped away, of course, but it had not returned.

“Thank you, no, daughter.”

“Some wine punch?” Nisao asked with a smile. Hands clasped at her breast, she looked anxious anyway. “Siuan, go tell Nicola to bring the punch.” Siuan did not move, and Nisao blinked in surprise, her mouth thinning. The smile returned in an instant, though, and she raised her voice a little. “Nicola? Child, bring the punch. Made with dried blackberries, I fear,” she confided to Egwene, “but quite restorative.”

“I don’t want punch,” Egwene said curtly. Nicola emerged from behind the tent, yet she showed no sign of running to obey. Instead, she stood staring at the four Aes Sedai, chewing her underlip. Nisao flashed a glare of what could only be called distaste, but said nothing. Another piece of the puzzle snapped into place, and Egwene breathed a trifle easier. “What I want, daughter, what I require, is an explanation.”

Best face or no, it was a thin veneer. Myrelle stretched out a pleading hand. “Mother, Moiraine did not choose me just because we were friends. Two of my Warders belonged first to sisters who died. Avar and Nuhel. No other sister has saved more than one in centuries.”

“I only became involved because of his mind,” Nisao said hastily. “I have some interest in diseases of the mind, and this must rightly be called one. Myrelle practically dragged me into it.”

Smoothing her skirts, Myrelle directed a dark look at the Yellow that was returned with interest. “Mother, when a Warder’s Aes Sedai dies, it is as though he swallows her death and is consumed by it from the inside. He—”

“I know that, Myrelle,” Egwene broke in sharply. Siuan and Leane had told her a good bit, though neither knew she had asked because she wanted to know what to expect with Gawyn. A poor bargain, Myrelle had called it, and perhaps it was. When a sister’s Warder died, grief enveloped her; she could control it somewhat, sometimes, hold it in, but sooner or later it gnawed a way out. However well Siuan managed when others were around, she still wept alone many nights for her Alric, killed the day she was deposed. Yet what were even months of tears, compared with death itself? The stories were full of Warders dying to avenge their Aes Sedai, and indeed it was very often the case. A man who wanted to die, a man looking for what could kill him, took risks not even a Warder could survive. Perhaps the most horrible part of it, to her, was that they knew. Knew what their fate would be if their Aes Sedai died, knew what drove them when she did, knew nothing they did could change it. She could not imagine the courage required to accept the bargain, knowing.

She stepped aside, so she could see Lan clearly. He still stood motionless,
not even seeming to breathe. Apparently forgetting the tea, Nicola had seated herself cross-legged on the ground to watch him. Areina squatted on her heels at Nicola’s side with her braid pulled over her shoulder, staring even more avidly. Much more avidly, actually, since Nicola sometimes darted furtive glances at Egwene and the others. The rest of the Warders made a small cluster, pretending to watch him too while keeping a close eye on their Aes Sedai.

A more than warm breeze stirred, ruffling the dead leaves that carpeted the ground, and with shocking suddenness, Lan was moving, shifting from stance to stance, blade a whirling blur in his hands. Faster and faster, till he seemed to sprint from one to the next, yet all as precise as the movements of a clock. She waited for him to stop, or at least slow, but he did not. Faster. Areina’s mouth slowly dropped open, eyes going wide with awe, and for that matter, so did Nicola’s. They leaned forward, children watching candy set to dry on the kitchen table. Even the other Warders really divided their attention between their Aes Sedai and him now, but in contrast to the two women, they watched a lion that might charge any moment.

“I see you are working him hard,” Egwene said. That was part of the method for saving a Warder. Few sisters were willing to make the attempt, given the rate of failure, and the cost of it to themselves. Keeping him from risks was another. And bonding him again; that was the first step. Without doubt Myrelle had taken care of that little detail. Poor Nynaeve. She might well strangle Myrelle, when she learned. Then again, she might countenance anything that kept Lan alive. Maybe. For Lan’s part, he deserved the worst he received, letting himself be bonded by another woman when he knew Nynaeve was pining for him.

She thought she had kept her voice clear, but something of what she felt must have crept through, because Myrelle began trying to explain again.

“Mother, passing a bond is not that bad. Why, in point of fact, it’s no more than a woman deciding who should have her husband if she dies, to see he is in the right hands.”

Egwene stared at her so hard that she stepped back, almost tripping over her skirts. It was only shock, though. Every time she thought she had heard of the strangest possible custom, another popped up stranger still.