A Crown of Swords (98 page)

Neither was Min. “You mean to go into their camp?” she whispered as Rand led her to the horses. “Are you mad?” she added before thinking.

“Not yet,” he said softly, touching her nose with the tip of one finger. “Thanks to you, I know that.” And he boosted her onto the mare, then climbed into the bay’s saddle and heeled the animal up beside Darlin.

Heading north and a little toward the west, across the slope, they left Rovair and Ines standing beneath the trees frowning at one another sourly. As they fell in behind with the Cairhienin, the other Tairens shouted laughing wishes that the pair would enjoy the walk.

Min would have ridden alongside Rand, but Caraline put a hand on her arm, drawing her in back of the two men. “I want to see what he does,” Caraline said quietly. Which one, Min wondered. “You are his lover?” Caraline asked.

“Yes,” Min told her defiantly, once she could catch a breath. Her cheeks felt like fire. But the woman only nodded, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was, in Cairhien. Sometimes she realized that all the sophistication she had picked up talking to worldly people was about as thick as her blouse.

Rand and Darlin rode knee to knee just ahead, the younger man half a head taller than the older, each wrapped in pride like a cloak. But talking, just the same. Listening was not easy. They spoke quietly, and the dead leaves rustling under the horses’ hooves, fallen branches cracking, often was enough to muffle their words. The cry of a hawk overhead or the chattering of a squirrel in a tree drowned them. Still, it was possible to overhear snatches.

“If I may say so, Tomas,” Darlin said at one point, as they headed down after the first rise, “and under the Light I offer no disrespect, you are fortunate in having a beautiful wife. The Light willing, I will have one as beautiful myself.”

“Why do they not speak of something important?” Caraline muttered.

Min turned her head to hide a small smile. The Lady Caraline did not look half as displeased as she sounded. She herself had never cared whether anyone thought her pretty or not. Well, until she met Rand, anyway. Maybe Darlin’s nose was not all that long.

“I would have let him take Callandor from the Stone,” Darlin said some time later, as they climbed a sparsely treed slope, “but I could not stand aside when he brought Aiel invaders into Tear.”

“I’ve read the Prophecies of the Dragon,” Rand said, leaning forward on the bay’s neck and urging the animal on. A fine glossy appearance the horse had, but no more bottom than his owner, Min suspected. “The Stone had to fall before he could take Callandor,” Rand continued. “Other Tairen lords follow him, so I hear.”

Darlin snorted. “They cringe and lick his boots! I could have followed, if that was what he wanted, if. . . .” With a sigh, he shook his head. “Too many ifs, Tomas. There is a saying in Tear. ‘Any quarrel can be forgiven, but kings never forget.’ Tear has not been under a king since Artur Hawkwing, but I think the Dragon Reborn is very like a king. No, he has attainted me with treason, as he calls it, and I must go on as I began. The Light willing, I may see Tear sovereign on its own land once more before I die.”

It had to be
ta’veren
work, Min knew. The man would never have spoken this way to someone casually met, Caraline Damodred’s supposed cousin or not. But what did Rand think? She could hardly wait to tell him about the crown.

Topping that hill, they suddenly came on a knot of spearmen, some with a dented breastplate or helmet, most without either, who bowed as soon they saw the party. To left and right through the trees, Min could see other groups of sentries. Below, the camp lay spread out in what seemed a permanent haze of dust, down a nearly treeless slope and across the hillvalley and up the next hill. Each of the few tents was large, with some noble’s banner hanging limply on a staff above the peak. Almost as many horses stood tied to picket lines as there were people, and thousands of men and a handful of women wandered among the cookfires and wagons. None raised a cheer as their leaders rode in.

Min studied them over the handkerchief she pressed to her nose against the dust, not caring whether Caraline saw what she was doing. Dispirited faces watched them pass, and grim faces, people who knew they were in a trap. Here and there a House’s
con
stood stiffly above some man’s head, yet most seemed to be wearing whatever they could find, bits and pieces of armor that often neither matched nor fitted very well. A good many, though, men too tall for Cairhien, wore red coats under their battered breastplates. Min eyed a nearly obscured white lion worked on a filthy red sleeve. Darlin could only have brought a few people with him on a longboat, perhaps no more than his hunting party. Caraline looked to neither side as they rode through the camp, but whenever they came near those men in red coats, her mouth tightened.

Darlin dismounted before a tremendous tent, the largest Min had ever seen, larger than any she had ever imagined, a great red-striped oval, shining in the sunlight like silk, with no fewer than four high conical peaks, each with the Rising Sun of Cairhien stirring above in a lazy breeze, gold on blue. The strumming of harps drifted out amid the murmur of voices, like the sounds of geese. As servants took away the horses, Darlin offered his arm to Caraline. After a very long pause, she laid her fingers lightly on his wrist with no expression whatsoever, letting him escort her inside.

“My Lady wife?” Rand murmured with a smile, extending his arm.

Min sniffed and put her hand atop his. She would rather have hit him. He had no right to make a joke of that. He had no right to bring her here,
ta’veren
or no
ta’veren.
He could be killed here, burn him! But did he care if she spent the rest of her life weeping? She touched one of the striped doorflaps as they went in, and shook her head in wonder. It
was
silk. A
silk
tent!

No sooner were they inside than she felt Rand stiffen. Darlin’s shrunken retinue, and Caraline’s, jostled around them with insincere murmurs of apology. Between the four main tentpoles, long trestle tables groaning with food and drink stood about the colorful carpets that had been laid for a floor, and there were people everywhere, Cairhienin nobles in their finery, a few soldiers with the fronts of the heads shaved and powdered, plainly men of high rank by the fine cut of their coats. A handful of bards strolled playing through the crowd, picked out as much by a loftier air than any noble as by the carved and gilded harps they carried. Yet Min’s eyes flew as if pulled to the sure source of Rand’s worry, three Aes Sedai talking together in shawls fringed green and yellow and gray. Images and colors flashed around them, but not a thing she could make sense of. A swirl in the crowd revealed another, a comfortably round-faced woman. More images, more
flaring colors, but all Min needed was the red-fringed shawl looped over her plump arms.

Rand tucked her hand under his arm and patted it. “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “Everything is going well.” She would have asked him what they were doing there, but she was afraid he would tell her.

Darlin and Caraline had vanished into the crowd along with their followers, yet as a bowing serving man with stripes of red, green and white on his dark cuffs offered a tray of silver goblets to Rand and Min, she reappeared, shaking off the importunings of a hatchet-faced fellow in one of those red coats. He glared at her back as she took a goblet of punch and waved the servant away, and Min’s breath caught at the aura that suddenly flashed around him, bruised hues so dark they seemed nearly black.

“Don’t trust that man, Lady Caraline.” She could not stop herself. “He will murder anyone he thinks is in his way; he’ll kill for a whim, kill anybody.” She clamped her teeth shut before saying more.

Caraline glanced over her shoulder as the hatchet-faced man turned away abruptly. “I could believe it easily of Daved Hanlon,” she said wryly. “His White Lions fight for gold, not Cairhien, and loot worse than the Aiel. Andor became too hot for them, it seems.” That with an arch glance at Rand. “Toram has promised him a great deal of gold, I think, and estates I know.” She tilted her eyes up to Min. “Do you know the man, Jaisi?”

Min could only shake her head. How to explain what she did know about Hanlon now, that his hands would be red with more rapes and murders before he died? If she had known when or who. . . . But all she knew was that he would. Anyway, telling about a viewing never changed it; what she saw happened, no matter who she warned. Sometimes, before she had learned better, it had happened because she warned.

“I’ve heard of the White Lions,” Rand said coldly. “Look among them for Darkfriends, and you won’t be disappointed.” They had been some of Gaebril’s soldiers; Min knew that much, and little more, except that Lord Gaebril had really been Rahvin. It stood to reason that soldiers serving one of the Forsaken would include Darkfriends.

“What of him?” Rand nodded toward a man across the tent whose long dark coat had as many stripes as Caraline’s dress. Very tall for a Cairhienin, perhaps less than a full head shorter than Rand, he was slender except for broad shoulders, and strikingly good-looking, with a strong chin and just a touch of gray at his dark temples. For some reason, Min’s eyes were drawn to his companion, a skinny little fellow with a large nose and wide ears, in a red silk coat that did not fit him very well. He kept fingering
a curved dagger at his belt, a fancy piece with a golden sheath and a large red stone capping the hilt that seemed to catch the light darkly. She saw no auras around him. He seemed vaguely familiar. They were both looking at her and Rand.

“That,” Caraline breathed in a tight voice, “is Lord Toram Riatin himself. And his constant companion these past days, Master Jeraal Mordeth. Odious little man. His eyes make me want to take a bath. They both make me feel unclean.” She blinked, surprised at what she had said, but recovered quickly. Min had the feeling little put Caraline Damodred off her stride for long. In that, she was very like Moiraine. “I would be careful were I you, Cousin Tomas,” she went on. “You may have wrought some miracle or
ta’veren
-work on me—and perhaps even on Darlin—though I cannot say what it might come to—I make no promises—but Toram hates you with a passion. It was not so bad before Mordeth joined him, yet since. . . . Toram would have us attack the city immediately, in the night. With you dead, he says, the Aiel would go, but I think it is you dead he seeks now even more than he does the throne.”

“Mordeth,” Rand said. His eyes were locked to Toram Riatin and the skinny fellow. “His name is Padan Fain, and there are one hundred thousand golden crowns on his head.”

Caraline nearly dropped her goblet. “Queens have been ransomed for less. What did he do?”

“He ravaged my home because it was my home.” Rand’s face was frozen, his voice ice. “He brought Trollocs to kill my friends because they were my friends. He is a Darkfriend, and a dead man.” Those last words came through clenched teeth. Punch splashed to the carpet as the silver goblet bent in his gloved fist.

Min felt sick for him, for his pain—she had heard what Fain had done in the Two Rivers—but she put a hand on Rand’s chest in near panic. If he gave way now, channeled with who knew how many Aes Sedai around. . . . “For the Light’s sake, take hold of yourself,” she began, and a woman’s voice spoke pleasantly behind her.

“Will you present me to your tall young friend, Caraline?”

Min looked over her shoulder, right into an ageless face, cool-eyed beneath iron-gray hair pulled up into a bun from which dangled small golden ornaments. Swallowing a squeak, Min coughed. She had thought Caraline had taken her in in one glance, but these cool eyes seemed to know things about her she herself had forgotten. The Aes Sedai’s smile, as she adjusted her green-fringed shawl, was not nearly so pleasant as her voice.

“Of course, Cadsuane Sedai.” Caraline sounded shaken, but she smoothed her tone well before she finished introducing her visiting “cousin” and his “wife.” “But I fear Cairhien is no place for them at present,” she said, all self-possession once more, smiling regret that she could not keep Rand and Min longer. “They have agreed to take my advice and return to Andor.”

“Have they?” Cadsuane said dryly. Min’s heart sank. Even if Rand had not spoken of her, it was clear from the way she looked at him that she knew him. Tiny golden birds and moons and stars swayed as she shook her head. “Most boys learn not to stick their fingers into the pretty fire the first time they are burned, Tomas. Others need to be spanked, to learn. Better a tender bottom than a seared hand.”

“You know I’m no child,” Rand told her sharply.

“Do I?” She eyed him from head to toe, and made it seem no very great distance. “Well, it seems I shall soon see whether or not you need spanking.” Those cool eyes drifted to Min, to Caraline, and with a final hitch to her shawl, Cadsuane herself drifted away into the crowd.

Min swallowed the lump in her throat, and was pleased to see Caraline do the same, self-possession or no. Rand—the blind fool!—stared after the Aes Sedai as though intending to go after her. This time it was Caraline who laid a hand on Rand’s chest.

“I take it you know Cadsuane,” she said breathily. “Be careful of her; even the other sisters stand in awe of her.” Her throaty tones took on a note of gravity. “I have no idea what will come of today, but whatever it is, I think it is time you were gone, ‘Cousin Tomas.’ Past time. I will have horses—”

“This is your cousin, Caraline?” said a deep, rich man’s voice, and Min jumped in spite of herself.

Toram Riatin was even better-looking close up than at a distance, with the sort of strong male beauty and air of worldly knowledge that would have attracted Min before she met Rand. Well, she still found them attractive, just not as much as she did Rand. His firm-lipped smile was quite appealing.

Toram’s gaze fell to Caraline’s hand, still on Rand’s chest. “The Lady Caraline is to be my wife,” he said lazily. “Did you know that?”

Caraline’s cheeks reddened angrily. “Do not say that, Toram! I have told you I will not, and I will not!”