Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9)

Winter's Heart (The Wheel of Time #9) Page 142

She found Cadsuane in a sitting room that would have offered a good view of the lake if the curtains had not been drawn to keep in the warmth of the blaze in the wide marble fireplace. Cadsuane sat, with her sewing basket on a small inlaid table beside her chair, calmly working with needle and embroidery hoop. She was not alone. Verin folded her cloak over the back of a padded chair and took another to wait.

Elza barely glanced at her. The usually pleasant-faced Green stood on the carpet in front of Cadsuane looking quite fierce, her face red and her eyes glaring. Elza was always very conscious of where she stood with respect to other sisters, perhaps too much so. For her to ignore Verin, much less confront Cadsuane, she must have been in a fine swivet. “How could you let her go?” she demanded of Cadsuane. “How are we to find him without her?” Ah, so that was it.

Cadsuane’s head remained bent over her embroidery hoop, and her needle continued to make tiny stitches. “You can wait until she returns,” she said calmly.

Elza’s hands doubled into fists at her side. “How can you be so detached?” she demanded. “He is the Dragon Reborn! This place could be a death trap for him! You have to —!” Her teeth snapped shut as Cadsuane held up a finger. That was all Cadsuane did, but from her it was enough.

“I’ve put up with your tirade long enough, Elza. You may go. Now!”

Elza hesitated, but she really had no choice. Her face was still red as she bobbed a curtsy with her dark green skirts clutched in her fists, but if she stalked from the sitting room, she still left without further delay.

Cadsuane set the embroidery hoop on her lap and leaned back. “Will you make me some tea, Verin?”

In spite of herself, Verin gave a small start. The other sister had not looked in her direction once. “Of course, Cadsuane.” A heavily worked silver teapot sat on a four-legged stand on one of the side tables, and was still hot, luckily. “Was it wise to let Alanna go?” she asked.

“I could hardly stop her without letting the boy know more than he should, now could I?” Cadsuane replied dryly.

Taking her time, Verin tipped the teapot to pour into a thin blue porcelain cup. Not Sea Folk porcelain, but very fine. “Do you have any idea why he came to Far Madding, of all places? I nearly swallowed my tongue when it came to me that the reason he had stopped leaping about might be because he was here. If it’s something dangerous, perhaps we should try to stop him.”

“Verin, he can do whatever his heart desires, anything at all, as long as he lives to reach Tarmon Gai’don. And as long as I can be at his side long enough to make him learn how to laugh again, and cry.” Closing her eyes, she rubbed her temples with her fingertips and sighed. “He is turning into a stone, Verin, and if he doesn’t relearn that he’s human, winning the Last Battle may not be much better than losing. Young Min told him he needs me; I got that much out of her without rousing her suspicions. But I must wait for him to come to me. You see the way he runs roughshod over Alanna and the others. It will be hard enough teaching him, if he does ask. He fights guidance, he thinks he must do everything, learn everything, on his own, and if I do not make him work for it, he won’t learn at all.” Her hands dropped onto the embroidery hoop on her lap. “I seem to be in a confiding mood tonight. Unusual, for me. If you ever finish pouring that tea, I may confide some more.”

“Oh, yes; of course.” Hastily filling a second cup, Verin slipped the small vial back into her pouch unopened. It was good to be sure of Cadsuane at last. “Do you take honey?” she asked in her most muddled voice. “I never can remember.”

Chapter 26

Expectation

Walking across the brown-grassed village green of Emond’s Field with Egwene, Elayne felt saddened by the changes. Egwene seemed stunned by them. When she first appeared in Tel’aran’rhiod, a long braid had dangled down Egwene’s back and she was in a plain woolen dress, of all things, with stout shoes peeking out beneath her skirts as she walked. Elayne supposed it was the sort of clothing she had worn when she lived in the Two Rivers. Now her dark hair hung about her shoulders, secured by a small cap of fine lace, and her garments were as fine as Elayne’s, a rich blue embroidered with silver on the bodice and high neck as well as along the hem of her skirt and her cuffs. Silver-worked velvet slippers replaced the thick leather shoes. Elayne needed to maintain her focus to keep her own green silk riding dress from altering, perhaps in embarrassing fashion, but for her friend, without any doubt, the changes were deliberate.

She hoped Rand could still love Emond’s Field, but it was no longer the village where he and Egwene had grown up. There were no people, here in the World of Dreams, yet clearly Emond’s Field was a considerable town now, a prosperous town, with nearly one house in three made of well-dressed stone, some of three stories, and more roofed with tiles in every hue of the rainbow than with thatch. Some streets were paved with smooth well-fitted stone, new and unworn as yet, and there was even a thick stone wall going up around the town, with towers and iron-plated gates that would have suited a Borderland town. Outside the walls there were gristmills and sawmills, an iron foundry and large workshops for weavers of both woolens and carpets, and within were shops run by furniture makers, potters, seamstresses, cutlers, and gold- and silversmiths, many as fine as could be seen in Caemlyn, though some of the styles seemed to be from Arad Doman or Tarabon.

The air was cool but not cold, and there was not a sign of snow on the ground, at least for the moment. The sun stood straight overhead here, though Elayne hoped it was still night in the waking world. She wanted some real sleep before she had to face the morning. She was always tired, the last few days; there was just so much to be done, and so few hours. They had come here because it seemed unlikely any spy could find them here, but Egwene had lingered to stare at the changes in the place she was born. And Elayne had her own reasons, beyond Rand, for wanting to look over Emond’s Field. The problem, one of the problems, was that one hour might pass in the waking world while you spent five or ten in the World of Dreams, but it could just as easily be the other way around. It might be morning already in Caemlyn.

Stopping at the edge of the green, Egwene gazed back at the wide stone bridge that arched over the rapidly widening stream running from a spring that gushed out of a stone outcrop strongly enough to knock a man down. A massive marble shaft carved all over with names stood in the middle of the green, and two tall flagpoles on stone bases. “A battle monument,” she murmured. “Who could imagine such a thing in Emond’s Field? Though Moiraine said that once a great battle was fought on this spot, in the Trolloc Wars, wh