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He had his duty to Andor, and she hers to the Tower. And the one way to bridge that chasm, bonding him, might lead to his death.
How is that a bridge? To give his consent to be bonded, he'd have to become forsworn to his duties as Elayne's First Sword of Andor, or whatever it's called. Forswearing one oath for another is not a "bridge." 😑
According to her agent in New Braem, the Borderlanders were accompanied by fifty or a hundred sisters, perhaps two hundred. The number of Aes Sedai might be uncertain, and it must be wildly inflated, of course, but their presence was a fact the Greens had to be aware of, though the reports they sent to Egwene never mentioned them.
“I don’t know she’s a Darkfriend, I just suspect, but I can guarantee that she was in the Sun Palace a week after he vanished.”
Why on earth would Siuan think Cadsuane was Black?
“I do put before the Hall the proposal that we do enter into an agreement with the Black Tower, that we may bring men into our circles at need.”
O_____O
Sheriam stood weeping openly.
GTFO. 😒
“It is the babes.” Suddenly, she grinned. Her emerald eyes seemed almost to shine. “She has a wonderful temper, sometimes. She threw the ring down and jumped up and down on it.”
😂
“This does give us at least the beginning of a way to handle them. In any case, it’s going to happen. If the Sitters can agree on anything besides the fact they have to try for an agreement. So we must live with it. It might even be for the best, in the long run.” Aviendha smiled into her teacup. Not an amused smile; she seemed relieved, for some reason.
B/c you just told her that Aes Sedai would go to the Black Tower regardless of whether or not she chose to share any knowledge she may or may not have. 😑 Ugh.
Mat stood on a village green, playing at bowls. The thatch-roofed houses were vague, in the manner of dreams—sometimes the roofs were slate; sometimes the houses seemed of stone, sometimes wood—but he was sharp and clear, dressed in a fine green coat and that wide-brimmed black hat, just as he had been the day he rode into Salidar. There was not another human being in sight. Rubbing the ball between his hands, he took a short run and casually rolled it across the smooth grass. All nine pins fell, scattered as if they had been kicked. Mat turned and picked up another ball, and the pins were
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Dreaming was not Foretelling—but this was a dire possibility. Every one of those human pins had represented thousands of men. Of that, she was certain. And an Illuminator was part of it.
She was struggling up a narrow, rocky path along the face of a towering cliff. Clouds surrounded her, hiding the ground below and the crest above, yet she knew that both were very far away. She had to place her feet very carefully. The path was a cracked ledge barely wide enough for her to stand on with one shoulder pressed against the cliff, a ledge littered with stones as large as her fist that could turn under a misplaced step and send her hurtling over the edge. It almost seemed this was like the dreams of pushing millstones and pulling carts, yet she knew it was a true dream. Abruptly,
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She had dreamed of the Seanchan before, of a Seanchan woman somehow tied to her, but this was a Seanchan who would save her.
She was climbing another path along a cliff shrouded in clouds, but this was a broad ledge of smoothly paved white stone, and there were no rocks underfoot. The cliff itself was chalky white and as smooth as if polished. Despite the clouds, the pale stone almost gleamed. She climbed quickly and soon realized that the ledge was spiraling around. The cliff was actually a spire. No sooner did that thought occur than she was standing on the top of it, a flat polished disc walled by mist. Not quite flat, though. A small white plinth stood centered in that circle, supporting an oil-lamp made of
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“Anaiya and her Warder are dead,” she said.
😱
Still, she grumbled under her breath as she channeled the reddish mud from her shoes and the hem of her skirts and cloak. It seemed unlikely that anyone would recognize it as coming from Tremalking, the largest of the Sea Folk islands,
Aiden and Zemaille were weak in the Power, yet overcoming both at once would be difficult if it was possible at all. Why were they both down here on the ground floor? The pair was seldom seen, shuttling between the rooms on the upper levels they shared with Nyein, the third Sea Folk sister, and the so-called Thirteenth Depository, where the secret records were kept. All three worked there, willingly immersed to their necks in their labors.
Alviarin found herself with her begging hands stretched up toward a blue-eyed woman of flesh and blood, garbed in bronze-embroidered green. A tantalizingly familiar woman who looked just short of her middle years.
“Do you think Hand of the Shadow is just a name?” The Myrddraal’s voice no longer grated. Hollow, it seemed to boom down caverns from some unimaginable distance. The creature grew as it spoke, swelling in size till its head brushed the ceiling, over two spans up. “You were summoned, and you did not come. My hand reaches far, Mesaana.” Shaking visibly, the Chosen opened her mouth, perhaps to plead, but suddenly black fire flashed around her, and she screamed as her clothing fell away in dust. Bands of black flame bound her arms to her sides, wrapped tight around her legs, and a seething ball of
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“You are marked as mine,” the Great Lord rasped. “Mesaana will not harm you, now. Unless I give her permission. You will find who threatens my creatures here and deliver them to me.”
He turned away from her, and the dark armor fell from his body. She was startled when it hit the carpeted floor tiles with a crash of steel rather than simply vanishing. He was clothed in black, and she could not have said whether it was silk or leather or something else. The darkness of it seemed to drink the light from the room. Mesaana began to thrash in her bonds, keening shrilly past the gag in her mouth.
That feels awfully rapey to me . . . 👿
She had always prized knowledge—power grew from knowledge—but she did not want to know what was happening in the rooms she had left. She wished she did not know that anything was happening. The Great Lord had marked her, but Mesaana would find a way to kill her, for knowing that.
“Elaida thinks they can all be gentled,” Pevara said noncommittally. She had already exposed herself too much. “When they can send six to one small village, and Travel? There is only one answer I can see. We . . .” Tarna took a deep breath, fingering the bright red stole again, but now it seemed more in regret than to play for time. “Red sisters must take them as Warders, Pevara.”
If you tried to solve every problem yourself, you ended by solving none.
Of course, she did not know what two of the fish and one of the moons did,
o.O
“Beldeine, she is becoming concerned that she has no Warder yet,” she said in the accents of Tarabon as Cadsuane stopped beside her, though her blue eyes returned to the courtyard. “She seems to be considering an Asha’man, if she can find one.
There it is again.
Jahar expects to die; every day he expects it. To him, every hour is most assuredly his last.”
😩
A pity she herself had not come to the shawl fifty years later than she had, or she would have bonded one of the men herself and had no need to ask. But fifty years would have meant that Norla died in her little house in the Black Hills before Cadsuane Melaidhrin ever went to the White Tower. That would have altered a great deal of history.
???
Cadsuane only raised a questioning eyebrow, though. She could not recall the last time she had let shock reach her face. It might have been all those years ago, in the Black Hills, when she began earning the ornaments she now wore.
???! 😑
Whatever Merise decided, she had already learned one thing she did not like. The boundaries between Aes Sedai and Warders had always been as clear as the connections; Aes Sedai commanded, and Warders obeyed. But if Merise, of all people, was dithering over a collar pin—Merise, who managed her Warders with a firm hand—then new boundaries would have to be worked out, at least with Warders who could channel.
This irks me. A person is a person, male or female, able or unable to channel, and a <i>person</i> deserves respect and a minimum level of autonomy. >:(
But there was a connection between her and the boy, a connection revealed in glances that carried determination on her side and on his, hope, hard as that was to believe.
😱😒
Even so, he had never anticipated those who arrived with them. Davram Bashere with a hundred of his Saldaean light horse, dismounting in a wind-driven soaking rain and muttering about ruined saddles. Over half a dozen black-coated Asha’man who for some reason had not shielded themselves from the downpour. They rode with Bashere, but it had been like two parties arriving, a little distance between them always, a strong whiff of watchful wariness. And one of the Asha’man was Logain Ablar. Logain! An Asha’man, wearing the Sword and Dragon on his collar!
Since Shadar Logoth, he seemed a touch less mad, sometimes. Or maybe Rand was a touch more.
O_____O
This is the first time a Great Stump has been called in a thousand years, not since you humans fought the War of the Hundred Years, and it was Shangtai’s turn. They must be considering something very important, but no one would tell me why it was called.
I know, I know! 😬
Some said that turnabout was fair play, but she had never believed in fighting fair. Either you fought, or you did not, and it was never a game. Fairness was for people standing safely to one side, talking while others bled.
A blind man could see what they were after, with a little thought. Dobraine and I are the most likely candidates to be guarding the seals for you. You have three, and you say three are broken. Maybe the Shadow knows where the last is.”
That reminds me, I'm still super curious about why LTT always freaks out trying to break the seals when he sees them. It makes me think they're not what we think they are . . .
“You told me something once, Bashere. If your enemy offers you two targets . . .” “Strike at a third,” Bashere finished promptly, and Rand nodded.
“I can’t fight the Shadow and the Seanchan at the same time. I am sending the three of you to arrange a truce with the Seanchan.”
Wut?
“In the meanwhile, you will kill anyone who threatens the Dragon Reborn. Anyone.” After all, it had become perfectly clear to her, while she herself was a captive of the savages. The Dragon Reborn had to reach Tarmon Gai’don, or how could the Great Lord defeat him there?
B/c Verin's compulsion specified they look inward to find a reason to swear an oath of fealty to Rand. Law of unintended consequences, anyone?
The man must have his reasons for taking them along. He had managed to take up all of Faile’s young followers one way and another, and had them eavesdropping and watching among the Ghealdanin and the Mayeners and even the Aiel.
The Spy Master now has his very own spy network, LOL.
“How do we know you’re alive?”
o.O
“The dead are walking in So Habor. Lord Cowlin fled the town for fear of his wife’s spirit. It seems there was doubt as to how she died. Hardly a man or woman in the town has not seen someone dead, and a good many have seen more than one. Some say people have died from the touch of someone dead. I cannot verify that, but people have died of fright, and others because of it. No one goes out at night in So Habor, or walks into a room unannounced. People strike out at shadows and surprises with whatever is to hand, and sometimes they have found a husband, wife or neighbor dead at their feet. This
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But fear of the dead only explained so much. Maybe people were too frightened to think of washing, but it seemed unlikely that fear would take everyone that way. They just did not seem to care anymore. And weevils thriving in winter, in freezing cold? There was worse wrong in So Habor than spirits walking, and every instinct told him to leave at a dead run, without looking back. He purely wished that he could.
Perrin had no appetite, not for the cleanest bread, but he was drinking what passed for tea from a battered tin cup when Latian found him. The Cairhienin did not actually come to him. Instead, the short man in the striped dark coat rode slowly past the small fire where Perrin was standing, then reined in with a frown a little upslope. Dismounting, Latian lifted his gelding’s near forehoof and frowned at it. Of course, he did look up twice to see whether Perrin was coming.
Hahahaha.
What had to be done. Perrin looked at the faces around him. Arganda, scowling with hatred, at him as much as the Shaido, now. Masema, stinking of madness and filled with a scornful hate. You must be willing and able to hurt a stone. Edarra, her face as unreadable as the Aes Sedai’s, arms folded calmly beneath her breasts. Even Shaido know how to embrace pain. It will take days. Sulin, the scar across her cheek still pale on her leathery skin, her gaze level and her scent implacable. They will yield slowly and as little as possible. Berelain, smelling of judgment, a ruler who had sentenced men
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The axe was as light as a feather rising in his hand, and came down like a hammer on the anvil, the heavy blade shearing through the Shaido’s left wrist. The man grunted in pain, then reared up convulsively with a snarl, deliberately spraying the blood that gouted from his wrist across Perrin’s face. “Heal him,”
YAS. 😈
“Two hands and two feet,” he said coldly. Light, he sounded like ice. He felt like ice to his bones. “That means you get four chances to answer the same. And if you all hold out, I still won’t kill you. I’ll find a village to leave you in, some place that will let you beg, somewhere the boys will toss a coin to the fierce Aielmen with no hands or feet. You think on it and decide whether it’s worth keeping my wife from me.”
😈😈😈
Abruptly, he raised the axe behind his head in both hands and hurled it as hard as he could. It spun end over end, and slammed into the thick trunk of an oak with a solid thcunk.
Which made Luca stalk about in a sullen snit and talk wildly of finding enough canvas tarps to shelter every act, or having a tent made large enough to hold the entire show. One tent! The man was nothing if not grandiose in his ambitions. Why not a palace on wheels while he was about it?
*snickers*
Once, the riders were on torm, bronze-scaled creatures like horse-sized cats. Except for having three eyes, anyway. Twenty or so of them snaking along in a sinuous lope faster than a horse could trot.
I WANT A GIANT HORSE-SIZED CAT!!
Maybe Blaeric and Fen had let him come inside thinking he would get his head snapped off. Maybe they just wanted to stay out of this themselves. But then, a Warder was ready to die if his Aes Sedai decided it was necessary. Not Mat Cauthon.
Not Mat Cauthon. 😬
Well, he trusted Thom, when the white-haired gleeman could be routed out from playing Snakes and Foxes with Olver or mooning over a much-creased letter he carried tucked in the breast of his coat.
