The Fires of Heaven (111 page)

“Cerandin,” Elayne said, “I must speak to you.”

“In a moment, Morelin.” Fixed on the tusked gray animal as she was, her quick, slurred way of speaking made her nearly unintelligible.

“Now, Cerandin. We have little time.”

But the woman did not halt the
s’redit
and turn until the horse handler called out that the wagon was in position. Then she said impatiently, “What do you need, Morelin? I have much to do, yet. And I would like to change; this dress is not for traveling.” The animal stood waiting patiently behind her.

Elayne’s mouth tightened slightly. “We are leaving, Cerandin.”

“Yes, I know. The riots. Such things should not be allowed. If this Prophet thinks to harm us, he will learn what Mer and Sanit can do.” She twisted to scratch Mer’s wrinkled shoulder with her goad, and he touched her shoulder with his long nose. A “trunk,” Cerandin called it. “Some prefer
lopar
or
grolm
for battle, but
s’redit
properly used—”

“Be quiet and listen,” Elayne said firmly. It was an effort to maintain her dignity, with the Seanchan woman being obtuse and Birgitte standing aside with her arms folded. She was certain Birgitte was just waiting to say something else cutting. “I do not mean the show. I mean myself, and Nana, and you. We are taking ship this morning. In a few hours, we will be beyond the Prophet’s reach forever.”

Cerandin shook her head slowly. “Few river craft can carry
s’redit,
Morelin. Even if you’ve found one that can, what would they do? What would I do? I do not think I can earn as much by myself as I can with Master Luca, not even with you high walking and Maerion shooting her bow. And I suppose Thom would juggle. No. No, it is better if we all remain with the show.”

“The
s’redit
will have to be left behind,” Elayne admitted, “but I am sure that Master Luca will take care of them. We will not be performing,
Cerandin. There’s no more need for that. Where I am going, there are those who would like to learn about . . .” She was conscious of the horse handler, a lanky fellow with an incongruously bulbous nose, standing close enough to listen. “About where you came from. Much more than you’ve told us already.” No, not listening. Leering. By turns at Birgitte’s bosom and at
her
legs. She looked at him until his insolent grin turned sickly and he scuttled back to his duties.

Cerandin was shaking her head again. “I am to leave Mer and Sanit and Nerin to be cared for by men who are afraid to come near them? No, Morelin. We will stay with Master Luca. You, too. It is much better. Remember how bedraggled you were the day you came? You do not want to return to that.”

Drawing a deep breath, Elayne stepped closer. No one but Birgitte was close enough to overhear, but she did not want to take foolish chances. “Cerandin, my true name is Elayne of House Trakand, Daughter-Heir of Andor. One day, I will be Queen of Andor.”

Based on the woman’s behavior the first day, and even more on what she had told them of Seanchan, that should have been enough to quell any resistance. Instead, Cerandin looked her straight in the eye. “You claimed to be a lady the day you came, but . . .” Pursing her lips, she eyed Elayne’s breeches. “You are a very good highwalker, Morelin. With practice, you may be good enough to perform before the Empress one day. Everyone has a place, and everyone belongs in their place.”

For a moment, Elayne’s mouth worked soundlessly. Cerandin did not believe her! “I have wasted quite enough time, Cerandin.”

She reached for the woman’s arm, to haul her along bodily if necessary, but Cerandin caught her hand, twisted, and with a wide-eyed yelp Elayne found herself on tiptoe, wondering whether her wrist would break before her arm came out of her shoulder. Birgitte just stood there, arms folded under her breasts, and had the nerve to raise an eyebrow questioningly!

Elayne gritted her teeth. She
would
not ask for help. “Release me, Cerandin,” she demanded, wishing she did not sound quite so breathy. “I said, release me!”

Cerandin did, after a moment, and stepped back warily. “You are a friend, Morelin, and always will be. You could be a lady, one day. You have the manner, and if you attract a lord, he may take you for one of his
asa. Asa
sometimes become wives. Go with the Light, Morelin. I must finish
my work.” She held out the goad for Mer to curl his trunk around, and the big animal let her lead him ponderously away.

“Cerandin,” Elayne said sharply. “Cerandin!” The pale-haired woman did not look back. Elayne glared at Birgitte. “A great lot of help you were,” she growled, and stalked off before the other woman could reply.

Birgitte caught her up and fell in at her side. “From what I hear, and what I’ve seen, you have spent considerable time teaching the woman she has a backbone. Did you expect me to help you take it away from her again?”

“I was not trying to do any such thing,” Elayne muttered. “I was trying to take care of her. She is a long way from home, a stranger wherever she goes, and there are some who would not treat her kindly if they learned where she came from.”

“She seems well able to take care of herself,” Birgitte said dryly. “But then, perhaps you taught her that, too? Perhaps she was helpless before you found her.” Elayne’s stare seemed to slide off her like ice sliding down warm steel.

“You just stood and watched her. You are supposed to be my . . .” She glanced around; it was only a glance, but several of the horse handlers ducked their heads away. “My Warder. You are supposed to help me defend myself when I cannot channel.”

Birgitte looked around, too, but unfortunately there was no one close enough to make her hold her tongue. “I will defend you when you are in danger, but if the danger is only of being turned over someone’s knee because you’ve behaved like a spoiled child, I will have to decide whether it’s better to let you learn a lesson that might save you the same or worse another time. Telling her you were heir to a throne! Really! If you are going to be Aes Sedai, you had better start practicing how to bend the truth, not break it into shards.”

Elayne gaped. It was not until she stumbled over her own feet that she managed to say, “But I am!”

“If you say so,” Birgitte said, rolling her eyes at the spangled breeches.

Elayne could not help herself. Nynaeve wielding her tongue like a needle, Cerandin stubborn as two mules, and now this. She threw back her head and screamed with frustration.

When the sound died, it seemed as if the animals had quieted. Horse handlers stood about, staring at her. Coolly, she ignored them. Nothing could worm its way under her skin now. She was as calm as ice, perfectly in control of herself.

“Was that a cry for help,” Birgitte said, tilting her head, “or are you hungry? I suppose I could find a wet nurse in—”

Elayne strode away with a snarl that would have done any of the leopards proud.

O
nce she was back in the wagon, Nynaeve changed into a decent dress, with a few exasperated mutters for having to undo one set of buttons and do up another by herself. The plain gray wool, fine and well cut yet hardly elaborate, would pass without comment almost anywhere, but it was decidedly warmer. Still, it felt good to be decently garbed again. And somehow
odd,
as if she were wearing too many clothes. It must be the heat.

Quickly she knelt in front of the small brick stove with its tin chimney and opened the iron door on their valuables.

The twisted stone ring was fast nestled into her belt pouch beside Lan’s heavy signet ring and her gold Great Serpent. The small gilded coffer containing the gems Amathera had given her went into the leather scrip with the pouches of herbs taken from Ronde Macura in Mardecin and the small mortar and pestle for preparing them; she fingered through the latter just to remind herself what each contained, from healall to that dreadful forkroot. The letters-of-rights went in as well, and three of the six purses, none quite as fat as it had been after paying the menagerie’s way to Ghealdan. Luca might not be interested in his hundred marks, but he had had no qualms about collecting his expenses. One of the letters authorizing the bearer to do whatever she wished in the name of the Amyrlin Seat joined the rings. No more than vague rumors of some sort of trouble in Tar Valon
had reached Samara; she might find a use for it, even with Siuan Sanche’s signature. The dark wooden box she left where it sat, next to three of the purses, as well as the rough jute bag containing the
a’dam
—that, she certainly had no wish to touch—and the silver arrow Elayne had found the night of the calamitous encounter with Moghedien.

For a moment she frowned at the arrow, contemplating Moghedien. It
was
best to do whatever was necessary to avoid her.
It was. I bested her once!
And had been hung up like a sausage in the kitchen the second time. If not for Birgitte . . .
She made her own choice.
The woman had said so, and it was true.
I could defeat her again. I could. But if I failed
. . . If she failed . . .

She was only trying to avoid the washleather purse stuffed right to the back, and she knew it, yet there was not a hair’s difference for ugliness between the purse and the thought of losing to Moghedien again. Drawing a deep breath, she gingerly reached in and took it up by the drawstrings, and knew she had been wrong. Evil seemed to bathe her hand, stronger than ever, as if the Dark One really was trying to break through the
cuendillar
seal inside. Better to dwell all day on defeat by Moghedien; there was a
world
of difference between thought and reality. It had to be imagination—there had been no such feeling in Tanchico—but she wished she could let Elayne carry that, too. Or leave it there.

Stop being foolish,
she told herself firmly.
It holds the Dark One’s prison shut. You are just letting your fancies run wild.
But she still dropped it like a week-dead rat onto the red dress Luca had had made, then wrapped and tied the thing securely with more than a little haste. The silken parcel went into the middle of a bundle of clothes she was taking with her, inside her good gray traveling cloak. A few inches’ distance was enough to take away the sensation of dark bleakness, but she still wanted to wash her hand. If only she did not know it was there. She
was
being foolish. Elayne would laugh at her, and Birgitte, as well. And rightly.

Actually, the clothes she wanted to keep made two packages, and she regretted every stitch she had to leave behind. Even the low-cut blue silk. Not that she ever wanted to wear anything like it again—she did not intend to
touch
the red dress, certainly, until she handed the intact packet to an Aes Sedai in Salidar—but she could not help totting up the cost of clothes, horses and wagons abandoned since leaving Tanchico. And the coach, and the barrels of dye. Even Elayne would have winced if she had ever thought of it. That young woman believed there would always be coin when she reached into her purse.

She was still making the second bundle when Elayne returned and
silently changed into a blue silk dress. Silently, except for mutters when she had to double her arms behind her to fasten the buttons. Nynaeve would have helped, had she been asked, but since she was not, she examined the other woman for bruises while she changed. She thought she had heard a scream only minutes before Elayne arrived, and if she and Birgitte had actually come to blows . . . She was not certain she was glad to find none. A riverboat would be just as confining as this wagon in its own way, and less than pleasant if the two women were at one another’s throats. But then again, it might have helped had they worked off some of their beastly tempers.

Elayne said not a word while she gathered her own belongings, not even when Nynaeve asked, quite amiably, where she had gone haring off to as if she had sat on a cockleburr. That got only a raised chin and a chilly stare, as though the girl thought she was already on her mother’s throne.

Sometimes Elayne was even more silent, in a way that said far more than words could. Finding three purses remaining, she paused before taking them, and the temperature in the wagon lowered considerably, though the purses were only her share. Nynaeve was tired of the carping over how she doled out coins; let the woman watch them dribble away and realize there might be no more for some time. When Elayne realized the ring was gone, though, and the dark box still sitting there . . .