The Fires of Heaven (29 page)

Juilin was sitting with his back against one of the wagon wheels, his thumb-thick staff of pale ridged wood leaning next to him. His head was down, that silly hat tipped precariously over his eyes, but she was not willing to bet on even a man sleeping at this time of the morning. There were things he and Thom did not know, things it was best they did not know.

The thick carpet of dead sourgum leaves crackled as she seated herself near Elayne. “Do you think Tanchico really has fallen?” Rubbing a soapy cloth slowly across her face, the other woman did not reply. She tried again. “I think that Whitecloak’s ‘Aes Sedai’ were us.”

“Perhaps.” Elayne’s voice was cool, a pronouncement from the throne. Her eyes were blue ice. She did not look at Nynaeve. “And perhaps reports of what we did got tangled with other rumors. Tarabon could have a new king, and a new panarch, very easily.”

Nynaeve kept her temper in check and her hands away from her braid. They clutched her knees instead.
You are trying to put her at ease with you. Watch your tongue.
“Amathera was difficult, but I do not wish her any harm. Do you?”

“A pretty woman,” Juilin said, “especially in one of those Taraboner serving girl’s dresses, with a pretty smile. I thought she—” He saw Elayne and her looking at him and quickly pulled his hat back down, pretending to sleep again. She and Elayne shared a glance, and she knew the other’s thought was the same as hers.
Men.

“Whatever has happened to Amathera, Nynaeve, she is behind us,
now.” Elayne sounded more normal. Her washcloth slowed. “I wish her well, but mainly I hope the Black Ajah is not behind us. Not following, I mean.”

Juilin stirred uneasily without raising his head; he was still uncomfortable with the knowledge that Black Aes Sedai were real and not simply a tale in the streets.

He should be happy he doesn’t have our knowledge.
Nynaeve had to admit that the thought was not entirely logical, but if he had known about the Forsaken being loose, even Rand’s foolish instruction to
look after
her and Elayne would not have kept him from running. Still, he was useful at times. He and Thom both. It had been Moiraine who had fastened Thom to them, and the man knew a great deal about the world for an ordinary gleeman.

“If they were following, they’d have caught up by now.” That was surely true, considering the usual lumbering speed of the wagon. “With any luck, they still do not know who we are.”

Elayne nodded, grim but her old self again, and began rinsing her face. She could be almost as determined as a Two Rivers woman. “Liandrin and most of her cronies surely escaped from Tanchico. Maybe all of them. And we still don’t know who is giving orders for the Black Ajah in the Tower. As Rand would say, we still have it to do, Nynaeve.”

Despite herself, Nynaeve winced. True, they had a list of eleven names, but once they were back in the Tower, almost any Aes Sedai they spoke to might be Black Ajah. Or any women they encountered on the road. For that matter, anyone they met
might
be a Darkfriend, but that was hardly the same thing, not by a wide degree.

“More than the Black Ajah,” Elayne continued, “I worry about Mo—” Nynaeve put a quick hand on her arm and nodded slightly toward Juilin. Elayne coughed and went on as though that was what had stopped her. “About Mother. She has no reason to like you, Nynaeve. Quite the opposite.”

“She is far away from here.” Nynaeve was glad her voice was steady. They were not talking about Elayne’s mother, but the Forsaken she had defeated. Part of her hoped fervently that Moghedien was far away. Very far.

“But if she was not?”

“She is,” Nynaeve said firmly, but she still hitched her shoulders uncomfortably. A part of her remembered humiliations suffered at Moghedien’s hands and desired nothing more than to face the woman again, to defeat her again, for good this time. Only, what if Moghedien took her by surprise, came at her when she was not angry enough to channel? The same was true of any of the Forsaken, of course, or of any Black sister for that matter, but after her rout in Tanchico, Moghedien had reason to hate her personally.
Not pleasant at all to think that one of the Forsaken knew your name and likely wanted your head.
That is just rank cowardice,
she told herself sharply.
You are not a coward, and you will not be!
That did not stop the itch between her shoulder blades every time Moghedien came to mind, as if the woman was staring at her back.

“I suppose looking over my shoulder for bandits has made me nervous,” Elayne said casually, patting her face with the towel. “Why, sometimes when I dream of late, I have the feeling that someone is watching me.”

Nynaeve gave a start at what seemed an echo of her own thoughts, but then she realized there had been a slight emphasis on “dream.” Not any dreams, but
Tel’aran’rhiod.
Another thing the men did not know about. She had had the same sensation, but then there was often a feel of unseen eyes in the World of Dreams. It could be uncomfortable, but they had discussed the sensation before.

She made her voice light. “Well, your mother is not in our dreams, Elayne, or she would probably snatch us both up by an ear.” Moghedien would probably torture them until they begged for death. Or arrange a circle of thirteen Black sisters and thirteen Myrddraal; they could turn you to the Shadow against your will that way, bind you to the Dark One. Maybe Moghedien could even do it by herself. . . .
Don’t be ridiculous, woman! If she could have, she would have. You beat her, remember?

“I do hope not,” the other woman replied soberly.

“Do you mean to give me a chance to wash?” Nynaeve asked irritably. Putting the girl at ease was all very well, but she could do with less talk of Moghedien. The Forsaken had to be somewhere distant; she would not have let them come this far peacefully if she knew where they were.
Light send that that’s true!

Elayne emptied and refilled the bucket herself. She was a very nice girl usually, when she remembered that she was not in the Royal Palace in Caemlyn. And when she was not acting the fool. That, Nynaeve would take care of when Thom came back.

Once Nynaeve had enjoyed a slow, cooling wash of face and hands, she set about making the camp ready, and put Juilin to breaking dead branches from the trees for a fire. By the time Thom returned with two wicker hampers slung across the gelding’s back, her and Elayne’s blankets were laid out under the wagon and the two men’s under the hanging branches of one of the twenty-foot willows, a good supply of firewood had been stacked, the teakettle stood cooling beside the ashes of a fire in a circle cleared of leaves, and the thick pottery cups had been washed. Juilin was grumbling to himself
as he caught water in the tiny stream to refill the water barrels. From the snatches Nynaeve heard, she was glad he kept most of it to an inaudible mutter. From her perch on one of the wagon shafts, Elayne hardly tried to hide her interested attempt to make out what he was saying. Both she and Nynaeve had put on clean dresses on the other side of the wagon, switching colors as it happened.

After fastening hobbles between the gelding’s forelegs, Thom lifted the heavy hampers down easily and began unpacking them. “Mardecin’s not as prosperous as it looks from a distance.” He set a net bag of small apples on the ground, and another of some dark green leafy vegetable. “With no trade into Tarabon, the town is withering.” The rest seemed to be all sacks of dried beans and turnips, plus pepper-cured beef and salt-cured hams. And a gray pottery bottle sealed with wax that Nynaeve was sure held brandy; both men had complained of not having a bit of something with their pipes of an evening. “You can hardly take six steps without seeing a Whitecloak or two. The garrison is about fifty men or so, with barracks over the hill from the town on the far side of the bridge. It was considerably larger, but it seems Pedron Niall is pulling Whitecloaks from everywhere into Amador.” Knuckling his long mustaches, he looked thoughtful for a moment. “I cannot see what he is up to.” Thom was not a man who liked that; usually a few hours in a place was enough for him to begin ferreting out the currents between noble and merchant Houses, the alliances and schemes and counterplots that made up the so-called Game of Houses. “The rumors are all about Niall trying to stop a war between Illian and Altara, or maybe Illian and Murandy. No reason there for him to be gathering in soldiers. I’ll tell you one thing, though. Whatever that lieutenant said, it is a King’s Tax that buys the food being sent into Tarabon, and the people are not happy with it. Not to feed Taraboners.”

“King Ailron and the Lord Captain Commander are not our concern,” Nynaeve said, studying what he had brought.
Three
salted hams! “We will pass through Amadicia as quickly and unobtrusively as we can. Perhaps Elayne and I will have more luck finding vegetables than you did. Would you care for a walk, Elayne?”

Elayne got up immediately, smoothing her gray skirts and lifting her hat from the wagon. “That would be very nice, after that wagon seat. It might be different if Thom and Juilin let me take a turn riding Skulker more often.” For once she did not give the old gleeman a coquettish look, which was something.

Thom and Juilin exchanged glances, and the Tairen thief-catcher
pulled a coin from his coat pocket, but Nynaeve gave him no chance to flip it. “We will be quite all right by ourselves. We could hardly expect trouble of any sort with so many Whitecloaks to keep order.” Planting her hat on her head, she tied the scarf under her chin and gave them a firm look. “Besides, all those things Thom bought need to be put away.” Both men nodded; slowly, reluctantly, but they did it. Sometimes they took their roles as supposed protectors entirely too seriously.

She and Elayne had reached the empty road and were walking down the verge, on the thin grass so as not to kick up dust, before she had it settled in her mind how to bring up what she wanted to say. Before she could speak, though, Elayne said, “You obviously want to talk to me alone, Nynaeve. Is it about Moghedien?”

Nynaeve blinked, and looked at the other woman sideways. It was well to remember that Elayne was no fool. She had only been acting like one. Nynaeve resolved to keep a tight hold on her temper; this was going to be difficult enough without letting it dissolve into a shouting match. “Not that, Elayne.” The girl thought they should add Moghedien to their hunt; she could not seem to realize the difference between one of the Forsaken and, say, Liandrin, or Chesmal. “I thought we should discuss how you’ve been behaving toward Thom.”

“I do not know what you mean,” Elayne said, staring straight ahead toward the town, but sudden spots of color in her cheeks gave her the lie.

“Not only is he old enough to be your father twice over, but—”

“He is
not
my father!” Elayne snapped. “My father was Taringail Damodred, a Prince of Cairhien and First Prince of the Sword of Andor!” Straightening her hat needlessly, she went on in a milder tone, though not by much. “I am sorry, Nynaeve. I did not mean to shout.”

Temper,
Nynaeve reminded herself. “I thought you were in love with Rand,” she said, making her voice gentle. It was not easy. “The messages you have me give to Egwene for him certainly say so. I expect you tell her the same.”

The color in the other woman’s face heightened. “I do love him, but . . . He is very far away, Nynaeve. In the Waste, surrounded by a thousand Maidens of the Spear who jump to do his bidding. I cannot see him, or speak to him, or touch him.” She was whispering by the end.

“You can’t think he’ll turn to a Maiden,” Nynaeve said incredulously. “He is a man, but he isn’t as fickle as that, and besides, one of them would put a spear in him if he looked at her crossways, even if he is this Dawn whatever. Anyway, Egwene says Aviendha is keeping an eye on him for you.”

“I know, but . . . I should have made
sure
that he knew I love him.” Elayne’s voice was determined. And worried. “I should have told him so.”

Nynaeve had hardly looked at a man before Lan, at least not seriously, but she had seen and learned much as Wisdom; from her observations, there was no quicker way to send a man running for his life, unless he said it first.

“I think Min had a viewing,” Elayne went on. “About me, and about Rand. She always used to joke about having to share him, but I think it wasn’t a joke and she could not bring herself to say what it really was.”

“That is ridiculous.” It certainly was. Though in Tear, Aviendha had told her of a vile Aiel custom. . . .
You share Lan with Moiraine,
a small voice whispered.
That isn’t the same thing at all!
she told it briskly. “Are you certain Min had one of her visions?”

“Yes. I wasn’t at first, but the more I think on it, the more sure I become. She joked about it too often to mean anything else.”

Well, whatever Min had seen, Rand was no Aiel. Oh, his blood might be Aiel as the Wise Ones claimed, but he had grown up in the Two Rivers, and she would not stand by and let him take up wicked Aiel ways. She doubted very much that Elayne would, either. “Is that why you’ve been—” She would not say
throwing yourself at
“—teasing Thom?”

Elayne gave her a sidelong glance, the crimson back in her cheeks. “There are a thousand leagues between us, Nynaeve. Do you think Rand is refraining from looking at other women? ‘A man is a man, on a throne or in a pigsty.’ ” She had a stock of homely sayings from her childhood nurse, a clearheaded woman named Lini whom Nynaeve wished she would meet one day.

“Well, I don’t see why you have to flirt just because you think Rand might.” She refrained from bringing up Thom’s age again.
Lan is old enough to be
your
father,
that small voice murmured.
I
love
Lan. If I can only reason out how to get him free of Moiraine. . . . That is not the matter at hand!
“Thom is a man with secrets, Elayne. Remember that Moiraine sent him with us. Whatever he is, he is no simple country gleeman.”

“He was a great man,” Elayne said softly. “He could have been greater, except for love.”