Lord of Chaos (41 page)

Niall listened just enough to know where to nod. Omerna had been an adequate commander in the field, so long as someone told him what to do, but in his present position, his credulous stupidity was trying. He had reported Morgase dead, her corpse seen and identified beyond doubt, up to the very day Niall brought him face-to-face with her. He had ridiculed “rumors” that the Stone of Tear had fallen, and still denied that the mightiest fortress in the world could have been taken by any outside force; there had been treason, he insisted, a High Lord who had betrayed the Stone to al’Thor and Tar Valon. He maintained that the disaster at Falme and the troubles in Tarabon and Arad Doman were the work of Artur Hawkwing’s armies come back across the Aryth Ocean. He was convinced that Siuan Sanche had not been deposed at all, that al’Thor was insane and dying, that Tar Valon had murdered King Galldrian to deliberately set off the civil war in Cairhien, and that these three “facts” were somehow tied into those ridiculous rumors, always from somewhere conveniently far away, of people bursting into flame or nightmares leaping out of thin air and slaughtering whole villages. He was not sure how exactly, but he was working on a grand theory he promised to deliver any day, a theory that supposedly would unravel all the witches’ schemes and deliver Tar Valon into Niall’s hands.

That was the way with Omerna; he either invented convoluted reasons for what happened, or else seized on gossip in the streets and swallowed it whole. He spent a good deal of his time listening to gossip, in manor houses
and
in the streets. Not only had he been seen drinking in the taverns with Hunters for the Horn, it was an ill-kept secret that he had laid out huge sums for no fewer than three supposed Horns of Valere. Each time he had carried the thing off to the country and puffed on it for days, till even he had to admit that no dead heroes out of legend were going to come riding back from the grave. Even so, the failures were unlikely to stop him from future purchases in dark alleys or the back rooms of taverns. The simple form of it was this: where a spymaster should doubt his own face in the mirror, Omerna believed anything.

Eventually the man ran down, and Niall said, “I will give your reports
due consideration, Omerna. You have done well.” How the fellow preened, smoothing his tabard. “Leave me, now. On your way out, send Balwer in. I have some letters to dictate.”

“Of course, my Lord Captain Commander. Ah.” In the middle of his bow, Omerna frowned and fumbled in the pocket of his white undercoat, pulling out a tiny bone cylinder that he handed to Niall. “This arrived at the pigeoncote this morning.” Three thin red stripes ran the length of the cylinder, meaning it was to be brought to Niall with the wax seals intact. And the man had almost forgotten it.

Omerna waited, no doubt hoping for a hint of what the cylinder contained, but Niall waved him toward the door. “Do not forget Balwer. If Mattin Stepaneos might join me, I must write and see if I can add a little weight to his making the right decision.” Omerna had no choice but to make his bow anew and go.

Even when the door closed behind the man, Niall only fingered the cylinder. These rare special messages seldom brought good news. Rising slowly—of late he sometimes felt age in his bones—he filled a plain silver goblet with punch, but then left it sitting on the table and flipped open a folder of scroll-worked leather lined with linen. It contained a single sheet of heavy paper, crumpled and partly torn, a street artist’s drawing in colored chalks of two men fighting in clouds, one with a face made of fire, the other with dark reddish hair. Al’Thor.

All his plans to hinder the false Dragon had gone awry, all his hopes to slow the man’s tide of conquest, to divert him. Had he waited too long, let al’Thor grow too powerful? If so, there was only one way to deal with him quickly, the knife in the dark, the arrow from a rooftop. How long did he dare wait? Did he dare risk not waiting? Too much haste could spell disaster as surely as too long a delay.

“My Lord sent for me?”

Niall eyed the man who had entered so silently. On the face of it, it hardly seemed possible that Balwer could move without a dry rustle announcing his presence. Everything about him was narrow and pinched; his brown coat hung from knobby shoulders, and his legs looked as if they might snap under his desiccated weight. He moved like a bird hopping from limb to limb. “Do you believe the Horn of Valere will call dead heroes back to save us, Balwer?”

“Perhaps, my Lord,” Balwer said, folding his hands fussily. “Perhaps not. I would not count on it, myself.”

Niall nodded. “And do you think Mattin Stepaneos will join me?”

“Again, perhaps. He will not want to finish dead or a puppet. His first and only concern is to hold on to the Laurel Crown, and the army gathering in Tear must make him sweat for that.” Balwer smiled thinly, a bare compression of lips. “He has spoken openly about accepting my Lord’s proposal, but on the other hand I’ve just learned he has been communicating with the White Tower. Apparently he has agreed to something, though I don’t yet know what.”

The world knew that Abdel Omerna was the Children’s spymaster. Such a position should have been secret, of course, but stableboys and beggars pointed him out in the street, warily, lest the most dangerous man in Amadicia see them. The truth was that Omerna was a decoy, a fool who did not know himself that he was only a mask hiding the true master of spies in the Fortress of the Light. Sebban Balwer, Niall’s prim dried-up little secretary with his disapproving mouth. A man no one would ever suspect, or credit if he was named to them.

Where Omerna believed everything, Balwer believed nothing, perhaps not even in Darkfriends, or the Dark One. If Balwer did believe in anything, it was looking over men’s shoulders, listening to their whispers, rooting out their secrets. Of course, he would have served any master as well as he did Niall, but that was all to the good. What Balwer learned was never tainted by what he knew had to be true, or wanted to be true. Disbelieving everything, he always managed to root out truth.

“No more than I expected out of Illian, Balwer, but even he can be brought round.” He would have to be. It could not be too late. “Is there any fresh word from the Borderlands?”

“Not yet, my Lord. But Davram Bashere is in Caemlyn. With thirty thousand light horse, my informants claim, but I think no more than half that. He would not weaken Saldaea too far, however quiet the Blight, even if Tenobia commanded him to.”

Niall grunted, the corner of his left eye trembling. He fingered the sketch lying in its folder; supposedly it was a fair likeness of al’Thor. Bashere in Caemlyn; a good reason for Tenobia to be hiding in the country from his envoy.

There was no good news from the Borderlands, whatever Omerna thought. The “minor rebellions” Omerna reported were minor, but not rebellions of the sort the man thought. Along the Blightborder men were arguing over whether al’Thor was another false Dragon or the Dragon Reborn. Borderlanders being as they were, sometimes those arguments flared into small-scale battles. The fighting had begun in Shienar about the time
the Stone of Tear was falling, confirmation of the witches’ involvement if any was needed. How it would all be settled was yet in doubt, according to Balwer.

That al’Thor remained confined to Caemlyn was one of the few things Omerna had right. Yet why, with Bashere and Aiel and the witches? Not even Balwer had been able to answer that. Whatever the reason, the Light be praised for it! The Prophet’s mobs had settled in to loot the north of Amadicia, true, but they were consolidating their hold, killing or putting to flight any who refused to declare for the Prophet of the Dragon. Ailron’s soldiers had only stopped retreating because the accursed Prophet had stopped advancing. Alliandre and the others Omerna was certain would join him were in fact dithering, putting off his ambassadors with flimsy excuses and delays. He suspected they no more knew how they would leap than he did.

On the surface everything seemed to be going al’Thor’s way at the moment, except for whatever held him in Caemlyn, but Niall had always been at his most dangerous when he was outnumbered and with his back to the wall.

If the rumors could be believed, Carridin was doing well in Altara and Murandy, though not as quickly as Niall would have liked. Time was as much an enemy as al’Thor or the Tower. Yet even if Carridin was only doing well in the rumors, that should be enough. Perhaps it was time to extend the “Dragonsworn” into Andor. Perhaps Illian, as well, though if the army gathering in Tear was not enough to show Mattin Stepaneos the path, a few farms and villages raided would hardly make a difference. The size of that army horrified Niall; if it was half what Balwer reported, a quarter, it still horrified him. Nothing like it had been seen since Artur Hawkwing’s day. Rather than frighten men into joining Niall, an army like that might intimidate them into falling in behind the Dragon banner. Could he have found a year, just half a year, he would have accounted it worth al’Thor’s whole army of fools and villains and Aiel savages.

All was not lost, of course. All was never lost as long as you were alive. Tarabon and Arad Doman were as useless to al’Thor and the witches as to him, two pits full of scorpions; only a fool would put a hand in there until more of the scorpions killed one another off. If Saldaea was lost, which he would not concede, Shienar and Arafel and Kandor still hung in the balance, and balances could be tipped. If Mattin Stepaneos wanted to ride two horses at once—he had always liked to try that—he could yet be forced to choose the right one. Altara and Murandy would be prodded to the proper
side, and Andor would drop into his hand whether or not he decided a touch of Carridin’s whip was required. In Tear, Balwer’s agents had convinced Tedosian and Estanda to join Darlin, turning a show of defiance into real rebellion, and the man was confident the same could be done in Cairhien, and in Andor. Another month, two at the outside, and Eamon Valda would arrive from Tar Valon; Niall could have done without Valda, but then the great majority of the Children’s strength would be in one spot, ready to use where it could do the most good.

Yes, he had a good deal on his side yet. Nothing had solidified, but everything coalesced. Time was all that was needed.

Realizing he still held the bone cylinder, he cracked the wax seal with a thumbnail and carefully drew out the thin paper rolled up inside.

Balwer said nothing, but his mouth compressed again, not in a smile this time. Omerna he put up with, knowing the man a fool, much preferring to remain hidden himself, but he did not like Niall receiving reports that bypassed him, from men he did not know.

A tiny, spidery scrawl covered the slip in a cipher that few besides Niall knew, none of them in Amador. For him, reading it was as easy as reading his own hand. The sign at the bottom made him blink, and so did the contents. Varadin was, or had been, one of the best of his personal agents, a rug seller who did good service during the Troubles while peddling his wares through Altara, Murandy and Illian. What he earned there had set him up as a wealthy merchant in Tanchico, regularly supplying fine carpets and wines to the palaces of King and Panarch, as well as to most of the nobles of their courts, and always leaving with his eyes and ears full. Niall had thought him long since dead in the upheaval there; this was the first word from him in a year. From what Varadin wrote, it would have been better if he truly had been a year dead. In the jerky hand of a man on the brink of madness, it was a wild disjointed ramble about men riding strange beasts and flying creatures, Aes Sedai on leashes and the
Hailene
. That meant Forerunners in the Old Tongue, but there was not even an attempt to explain why Varadin was terrified of them or who they were supposed to be. Plainly the man had taken a brain fever from watching his country disintegrate around him.

Annoyed, Niall crumpled the paper and threw it aside. “First I must sit through Omerna’s idiocy and now this. What else do you have for me, Balwer?” Bashere. Matters could become nasty with Bashere to general al’Thor’s armies. The man had earned his reputation. A dagger in the shadows for him?

Balwer’s eyes never left Niall’s face by so much as a flicker, but Niall knew the tiny ball of paper on the floor would end up in the man’s hands unless he burned it. “Four things that might be of interest, my Lord. The least first. The rumors about meetings between the Ogier
stedding
are true. For Ogier, they seem to be showing some haste.” He did not say what the meetings were about, of course; getting a human into an Ogier Stump was as impossible as getting an Ogier to spy. Easier to have the sun rise at night. “Also, there are an unusual number of Sea Folk ships in the southern ports, not taking cargo, not sailing.”

“What are they waiting for?”

For a moment Balwer’s mouth tightened as though drawstrings had been pulled shut. “I do not know yet, my Lord.” Balwer never liked admitting there were any human secrets he could not ferret out. Trying to learn more than the surface of what went on among the Atha’an Miere was like trying to learn how the Guild of Illuminators made fireworks, an exercise in futility. At least the Ogier might eventually make known the decisions of their meetings.

“Continue.”

“The news of middling interest is . . . peculiar, my Lord. Al’Thor has reliably been reported in Caemlyn, in Tear and in Cairhien, sometimes on the same day.”

“Reliably? Reliable madness. The witches probably have two or three men who look like al’Thor, enough to fool anyone who doesn’t know him. That would explain a good deal.”

“Perhaps, my Lord. My informants
are
reliable.”

Niall slapped the leather folder closed, hiding al’Thor’s face. “And the news of greatest interest?”

“I have it from two sources in Altara—reliable sources, my Lord—that the witches in Salidar claim the Red Ajah encouraged Logain to become a false Dragon. All but created him, in fact. They have Logain in Salidar—or a man they say is Logain—and are showing him to nobles they bring there. I have no proof, but I suspect they are telling the same tale to any ruler they can reach.”