Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11)

Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time #11) Page 72

At the start they had the road to themselves except for a few farm carts, but after a while a Tinker caravan appeared ahead of them, a line of garishly painted and lacquered wagons rolling slowly southward down the other side of the road with massive dogs trotting alongside. Those dogs were the only real protection Tinkers had. The driver of the lead wagon, a thing as red as Luca’s coats, trimmed in yellow and with violent green-and-yellow wheels to boot, half-stood to peer toward Mat, then sat back down and said something to the woman beside him, doubtless reassured by the presence of the two women with Mat. Tinkers were a cautious lot, of necessity. That whole caravan would whip up their horses and flee a single man they thought meant harm.

Mat nodded to the fellow as the wagons began to pass. The lean, gray-haired man’s high-collared coat was as green as his wagon’s wheels, and his wife’s dress was striped in shades of blue, most bright enough to suit any of the show’s performers. The gray-haired man raised his hand in a wave . . .

And Tuon suddenly turned the razor and galloped into the trees, cloak streaming out behind her. In a flash, Selucia had the dapple darting after her. Snatching his hat off so as not to lose it, Mat wheeled Pips and followed. Shouts rose from the wagons, but he paid them no mind. His attention was all on Tuon. He wished he knew what she was up to. Not escape, he was sure. Likely she was just trying to make him tear out his hair. If so, she was in a fair way for succeeding.

Pips quickly reeled in the dapple and left a scowling Selucia behind flailing her mount with the reins, but Tuon and the razor kept their lead as the rolling land climbed toward hills. Startled flights of birds sprang up from beneath both animals’ hooves, coveys of gray dove and of brown-speckled quail, sometimes ruffed brown grouse. All disaster needed was for the mare to be frightened by one of those. The best-trained mount could rear and fall when a bird burst up under hoof. Worse, Tuon rode like a madwoman, never slowing, only swerving from her line where the underbrush lay dense, leaping trees toppled by old storms as if she had a clue what lay on the other side. Well, he had to ride like a madman himself to keep up, though he winced every time he set Pips to jump a tree trunk. Some were near as thick as he was tall. He dug his bootheels into the gelding’s flanks, urging more speed though he knew Pips was running as hard as he ever had. He had chosen too well in that bloody razor. Up and up they raced through the forest.

As abruptly as she had begun her mad dash, Tuon reined in, well over a mile from the road. The trees were old here and widely spaced, black pines forty paces tall and wide-spreading oaks with branches that arched down to touch the ground before rising again and could have been sliced crosswise into tables to seat a dozen in comfort. Thick creepers shrouded half-buried boulders and stone outcrops, but aside from that only a few weeds pushed through the mulch. Oaks that size killed off any lesser undergrowth beneath them.

“Your animal is better than he looks,” the fool woman said, patting her mount’s neck, when he reached her. Oh, she was all innocence, just out for a pleasant ride. “Maybe you do have a good eye.” With the cowl of her cloak fallen down her back, her cap of short hair was visible, glistening like black silk. He suppressed a desire to stroke it.

“Burn how good my eye is,” he growled, clapping his hat on. He knew he should speak smoothly, but he could not have taken the roughness from his voice with a file. “Do you always ride like a moon-blinded idiot? You could have broken that mare’s neck before she even got a name. Worse, you could have broken your own. I promised to get you home safely, and I mean to do just that. If you’re going to risk killing yourself every time you go riding, then I won’t let you ride.” He wished he had those last words back as soon as they left his tongue. A man might laugh off a threat like that as a joke, maybe, if you were lucky, but a woman. . . . Now all he could do was wait for the explosion. He expected Aludra’s nightflowers to pale by comparison.

She raised the hood of her cloak, settling it just so. She studied him, tilting her head first one way then the other. Finally, she nodded to herself. “I name her Akein. That means ’swallow.’ “

Mat blinked. That was it? No eruption? “I know. A good name. It suits her.” What was she about now? The woman almost never did or said what he expected.

“What is this place, Toy?” she said, frowning at the trees. “Or should I say, what was it? Do you know?”

What did she mean, what was this place? It was a bloody forest was what it was. But suddenly what had seemed a large boulder right in front of him, nearly obscured by thick vines, resolved into a huge stone head, slightly tilted to one side. A woman’s head, he thought; those smooth roundels were probably meant for jewels in her hair. The statue it sat on must have been immense. A full span of the thing showed, yet only her eyes and the top of her head were out of the ground. And that long white stone outcrop with an oak tree’s roots growing over it was piece of a spiral column. All around them now he could make out bits of columns and large worked stones that plainly had been part of some grand structure and what had to be a stone sword two spans long, all half buried. Still, ruins of cities and monuments could be found in many places, and few even among Aes Sedai had any idea what they had been. Opening his mouth to say that he did not know, he caught sight through the trees of three tall hills in a row, perhaps another mile on. The middle hill had a cleft top, like a wedge cut cleanly out, while the hill on the left had two. And he knew. There could hardly be three hills exactly like that anywhere else.

Those hills had been called The Dancers when this place had been Londaren Cor, the capital city of Eharon. The road behind them had been paved then and ran through the heart of the city, which had sprawled for miles. People had said that the artistry in stone that the Ogier had practiced in Tar Valon, they had perfected in Londaren Cor. Of course, the people of every Ogier-built city had claimed their own outdid Tar Valon, confirming Tar Valon as the touchstone. He had a number of memories of the city—dancing at a ball in the Palace of the Moon, carousing in soldiers’ taverns where veiled dancers writhed, watching the Procession of Flutes during the Blessing of the Swords—but oddly, he had another memory of those hills, from near enough five hundred years after the Trollocs left no stone standing in Londaren Cor and Eharon died in blood and fire. Why it had been necessary for Nerevan and Esandara to invade Shiota, as the land was then, he did not know. Those old memories were fragments however long a time any one covered, and full of gaps. He had no idea why those hills had been called The Dancers, either, or what the Blessing of the Swords was. But he remembered being an Esandaran lord in a battle fought among these ruins, and he remembered having those hills in view when he took an arrow through his throat. He must have fallen no more than half a mile from the very spot where he sat Pips,