“I fear our gaming is done for this morning,” Niall told Morgase, standing. He offered her a slight bow as she rose, and she acknowledged it by inclining her head.
“Until this evening, perhaps?” Her voice still held that almost docile tone. “That is, if you will dine with me?”
Niall accepted, of course. He did not know where she was leading with this new tactic—not where an oaf might suppose, he was sure—but it would be amusing to find out. The woman was full of surprises. Such a pity she was tainted by the witches.
Omerna advanced as far as the great sunflare of gold, set in the floor, that had been worn by feet and knees over centuries. It was a plain room aside from that and the captured banners that lined the walls high beneath the ceiling, age-tattered and worn. Omerna watched her skirt around him without really acknowledging his presence, and when the door closed behind her, he said, “I have not yet found Elayne or Gawyn, my Lord.”
“Is that your important news?” Niall demanded irritably. Balwer reported Morgase’s daughter in Ebou Dar, still mired to her neck with the witches; orders concerning her had already been sent to Jaichim Carridin. Her other son still toiled with the witches as well, it seemed, in Tar Valon, where even Balwer possessed few eyes-and-ears. Niall took a long swallow of cool wine. His bones felt old and brittle and cold of late, yet the Shadowspawned heat made his skin sweat enough, and dried his mouth.
Omerna gave a start. “Ah . . . no, my Lord.” He fumbled in a pocket of his white undercoat and pulled out a tiny bone cylinder with three red stripes running its length. “You wanted this brought as soon as the pigeon arrived in the—” He cut off as Niall snatched the tube.
This was what he had been waiting for, the reason a legion was not already on its way to Andor with Morgase riding at its head, if not leading. If it was not all Varadin’s madness, the ravings of a man unbalanced by watching Tarabon collapse into anarchy, Andor would have to wait. Andor, and maybe more.
“I . . . I have confirmation that the White Tower truly has broken,” Omerna went on. “The . . . the Black Ajah has seized Tar Valon.” No wonder he sounded nervous, speaking heresy. There was no Black Ajah; all of the witches were Darkfriends.
Niall ignored him and broke the wax sealing the tube with his thumbnail. He had used Balwer to start those rumors, and now they came back to him. Omerna believed every rumor his ears caught, and his ears caught them all.
“And there are reports that the witches are conferring with the false Dragon al’Thor, my Lord.”
Of course the witches were conferring with him! He was their creation, their puppet. Niall shut out the fool’s blather and moved back to the gaming table while he drew a slim roll of paper from the tube. He never let anyone know more of these messages than that they existed, and few knew that much. His hands trembled as they unrolled the thin paper. His hands had not trembled since he was a boy facing his first battle, more than seventy years ago. Those hands seemed little more than bone and sinew now, but they still possessed enough strength for what he had to do.
The writing was not that of Varadin, but of Faisar, sent to Tarabon for a different purpose. Niall’s stomach twisted into a knot as he read; it was in clear language, not Varadin’s cipher. Varadin’s reports had been the work of a man on the brink of madness if not over, yet Faisar confirmed the worst of it and more. Much more. Al’Thor was a rabid beast, a destroyer who must be stopped, but now a second mad animal had appeared, one that might be even more dangerous than the Tar Valon witches with their tame false Dragon. But how under the Light could he fight both?
“It . . . it seems that Queen Tenobia has left Saldaea, my Lord. And the . . . the Dragonsworn are burning and killing across Altara and Murandy. I have heard the Horn of Valere has been found, in Kandor.”
Still half-distracted, Niall looked up to find Omerna at his side, licking his lips and wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. No doubt he hoped for a glance at what was in the message. Well, everyone would know soon enough.
“It seems one of your wilder fancies wasn’t so wild after all,” Niall said, and that was when he felt the knife go in under his ribs.
Shock froze him long enough for Omerna to pull the dagger free and plunge it in again. Other Lord Captain Commanders had died this way before him, yet he had never thought it would be Omerna. He tried to grapple with his killer, but there was no force in his arms. He hung on to Omerna with the man supporting him, the pair of them eye to eye.
Omerna’s face was red; he looked ready to weep. “It had to be done. It had to be. You let the witches sit there in Salidar unhindered, and. . . .” As if suddenly realizing that he had his arms around the man he was murdering, he pushed Niall away.
Strength had gone from Niall’s legs now as well as his arms. He fell heavily against the gaming table, turning it over. Black and white stones scattered across the polished wooden floor around him; the silver pitcher bounced and splashed wine. The cold in his bones was leaching out into the rest of him.
He was not certain whether time had slowed for him or everything really did happen so quickly. Boots thudded across the floor, and he lifted his head wearily to see Omerna gaping and wide-eyed, backing away from Eamon Valda. Every bit as much the picture of a Lord Captain as Omerna in his white-and-gold tabard and white undercoat, Valda was not so tall, not so plainly commanding, but the dark man’s face was hard, as ever, and he had a sword in his hands, the heron-mark blade he prized so highly.
“Treason!” Valda bellowed, and drove the sword through Omerna’s chest.
Niall would have laughed if he could; breath came hard, and he could hear it bubbling in the blood in his throat. He had never liked Valda—in fact, he despised the man—but someone had to know. His eyes shifted, found the slip of paper from Tanchico lying not far from his hand; it might be missed there, but not if his corpse clutched it. And that message had to be read. His hand seemed to crawl across the floorboards so slowly, brushing the paper, pushing it as he fumbled to take hold. His vision was growing misty. He tried to force himself to see. He had to. . . . The fog was thicker. Part of him tried to shake that thought; there was no fog. The fog was thicker, and there was an enemy out there, unseen, hidden, as dangerous as al’Thor or more. The message. What? What message? It was time to mount and out sword, time for one last attack. By the Light, win or die, he was coming! He tried to snarl.
Valda wiped his blade on Omerna’s tabard, then suddenly realized the old wolf still breathed, a rasping, bubbling sound. Grimacing, he bent to make an end—and a gaunt, long-fingered hand caught his arm.
“Would you be Lord Captain Commander now, my son?” Asunawa’s emaciated face belonged on a martyr, yet his dark eyes burned with a fervor to unnerve even those who did not know who he was. “You may well be, after I attest that you killed Pedron Niall’s assassin. But not if I must say that you ripped open Niall’s throat as well.”
Baring teeth in what could pass for a smile, Valda straightened. Asunawa had a love of truth, a strange love; he could tie it into knots, or hang it up and flay it while it screamed, but so far as Valda knew, he never actually lied. A look at Niall’s glazed eyes, and the pool of blood spreading beneath him, satisfied Valda. The old man was dying.
“May, Asunawa?”
The High Inquisitor’s gaze burned hotter as Asunawa stepped back, moving the snowy cloak away from Niall’s blood. Even a Lord Captain was not supposed to be that familiar. “I said may, my son. You have been oddly reluctant to agree that the witch Morgase must be given to the Hand of the Light. Unless you give that assurance—”
“Morgase is needed yet.” Breaking in gave Valda considerable pleasure. He did not like Questioners, the Hand of the Light as they called themselves. Who could like men who never met an enemy not disarmed and in chains? They held themselves apart from the Children, separate. Asunawa’s cloak bore only the scarlet shepherd’s crook of the Questioners, not the flaring golden sun of the Children that graced his own tabard. Worse, they seemed to think their work with racks and hot irons was the only true work of the Children. “Morgase gives us Andor, so you cannot have her before we have it. And we cannot take Andor until the Prophet’s mobs are crushed.” The Prophet had to be first, preaching the coming of the Dragon Reborn, his mobs burning villages too slow to proclaim for al’Thor. Niall’s chest barely moved, now. “Unless you want to trade Amadicia for Andor, instead of holding both? I mean to see al’Thor hung and the White Tower ground to dust, Asunawa, and I did not go along with your plan just to see you toss it all on the midden.”
Asunawa was not taken aback; he was no coward. Not here, with hundreds of Questioners in the Fortress and most of the Children wary of putting a foot wrong around them. He ignored the sword in Valda’s hands, and that martyr’s face took on a look of sadness. His sweat seemed to be tears of regret. “In that case, since Lord Captain Canvele believes that the law must be obeyed, I fear—”
“I fear Canvele agrees with me, Asunawa.” Since dawn he did, since he realized that Valda had brought half a legion into the Fortress. Canvele was no fool. “The question is not whether I will be Lord Captain Commander when the sun sets today, but who will guide the Hand of the Light in its digging for truth.”
No coward, Asunawa, and even less a fool than Canvele. He neither flinched nor demanded how Valda thought to bring this about. “I see,” he said after a moment, and then, mildly, “Do you mean to flout the law entirely, my son?”