It took Nynaeve a moment to realize that he was explaining why their weapons had been taken. “But you are his friends,” she protested. “You all followed Rand to Falme together.” She was not about to start calling him the Lord Dragon.
“That's why we're bloody let in at all,” Uno said dryly. “I told you we don't see everything the way... the Prophet does.” The slight pause, and the quick halfglance back at the gate to see if anyone was listening, spoke volumes. It had been Masema, before. And Uno was clearly a man who did not temper his tongue easily.
“Just watch what you say for once,” Ragan told her, “and likely you will get the help you want.” She nodded, as agreeably as anyone could wish — she knew sense when she heard it, even if he had no right to offer it — and he and Uno exchanged doubtful glances. She was going to stuff these two into a sack with Thom and Juilin and switch anything that stuck up.
Fine house as it might be, the kitchen was dusty, and empty except for one bony, grayhaired woman, her drab gray dress and white apron the only clean things in sight as they walked through. Sucking her teeth, the old woman hardly glanced up from stirring a small kettle of soup over a tiny blaze in one of the wide stone fireplaces. Two battered pots hung on hooks where twenty could have, and, a cracked pottery bowl on a bluelacquered tray stood on the broad table.
Beyond the kitchen, moderately fine hangings decorated the walls. Nynaeve had developed something of an eye in the last year, and these scenes of feasts and hunts for deer and bear and boar were only good, not excellent. Chairs and tables and chests lined the halls, dark lacquer streaked with red, inlaid with motherofpearl. Hangings and furniture alike were also dusty, and the redandwhite tiled floor had had only a halfhearted lick with a broom. Cobwebs decorated the corners and cornices of the high plaster ceiling.
There were no other servants — or anyone else — in sight until they came to a weedy fellow sitting on the floor beside an open door, his grimy red silk coat much too large for him and at odds with a filthy shirt and worn woolen breeches. One of his cracked boots had a large hole in the sole; a toe poked through another in the other one. He held up a hand, whispering, “The Light shine on you, and praise the name of the Lord Dragon?” He made it sound a question, querulously twisting a narrow face as unwashed as his shirt, but then he did the same with everything. “The Prophet can't be disturbed now? He's busy? You'll have to wait a bit?” Uno nodded patiently, and Ragan leaned against the wall; they had been through this before.
Nynaeve did not know what she had expected of the Prophet, not even now that she was aware who he was, but certainly not filth. That soup had smelled like cabbage and potatoes, hardly the fare for a man who had an entire city dancing for him. And only two servants, both of whom could well have come from the rudest huts outside the city.
The skinny guard, if such he was — he had no weapon; perhaps he was not trusted either — seemed to have no objection when she moved to where she could see through the doorway. The man and woman inside could not have been more different. Masema had shaved even his topknot, and his coat was plain brown wool, heavily wrinkled but clean, although his kneehigh boots were scuffed. Deepset eyes turned his permanently sour look to a scowl, and a scar made a pale triangle on his dark cheek, a near mirror image of Ragan's, only more faded with age and a hair nearer the eye. The woman, in elegantly goldembroidered blue silk, was short of her middle years and quite lovely despite a nose perhaps too long for beauty. A simple blue net cap gathered dark hair spilling almost to her waist, but she wore a broad necklace of gold and firedrops with a matching bracelet, and gemmed rings decorated nearly every finger. Where Masema seemed poised to rush at something, teeth bared, she bore herself with stately reserve and grace.
“...so many follow wherever you go,” she was saying, “that order flies over the wall when you arrive. People are not safe in themselves or their property —”
“The Lord Dragon has broken all bonds of law, all bonds made by mortal men and women.” Masema's voice was heated, but intense, not angry. “The Prophecies say that the Lord Dragon will break all chains that bind, and it is so. The Lord Dragon's radiance will protect us against the Shadow.”
“It is not the Shadow that threatens here, but cutpurses and slipfingers and headcrackers. Some who follow you — many — believe that they can take what they wish from whoever has it without payment or leave.”
“There is justice in the hereafter, when we are born again. Concern with things of this world is useless. But very well. If you wish earthly justice” — his lip curled contemptuously —“let it be this. Henceforth, a man who steals will have his right hand cut off. A man who interferes with a woman, or insults her honor, or commits murder will be hung. A woman who steals or commits murder will be flogged. If any accuses and finds twelve who will agree, it will be done. Let it be so.”
“As you say, of course,” the woman murmured. Aloof elegance remained on her face, but she sounded shaken. Nynaeve did not know how Ghealdanin law ran, but she did not think it could be so casual as that. The woman took a deep breath. “There is still the matter of food. It becomes difficult to feed so many.”
“Every man, woman and child who has come to the Lord Dragon must have a full belly. It must be so! Where gold can be found, food can be found, and there is too much gold in the world. Too much concern with gold.” Masema's head swung angrily. Not angry with her, but in general. He looked to be searching for those who concerned themselves with gold so he could unleash fury on their heads. “The Lord Dragon has been Reborn. The Shadow hangs over the world, and only the Lord Dragon can save us. Only belief in the Lord Dragon, submission and obedience to the word of the Lord Dragon. All else is useless, even where it is not blasphemy.”
“Blessed be the name of the Lord Dragon in the Light.” It had the sound of a rote reply. “It is no longer simply a matter of gold, my Lord Prophet. Finding and transporting food in sufficient —”
“I am not a lord,” he broke in again, and now he was angry. He leaned toward the woman, spittle on his lips, and though her face did not change, her hands twitched as if they wanted to clutch her dress. “There is no lord but the Lord Dragon, in whom the Light dwells, and I am but one humble voice of the Lord Dragon. Remember that! High or low, blasphemers earn the scourge!”
“Forgive me,” the begemmed woman murmured, spreading her skirts in a curtsy fit for a queen's court. “It is as you say, of course. There is no lord save the Lord Dragon, and I am but a humble follower of the Lord Dragon — blessed be the name of the Lord Dragon — who comes to hear the wisdom and guidance of the Prophet.”
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Masema was suddenly cold. “You wear too much gold. Do not let earthly possession seduce you. Gold is dross. The Lord Dragon is all.”
Immediately she began plucking rings from her fingers, and before the second was off, the weedy fellow scurried to her side, pulling a pouch from his coat pocket and holding it for her to drop them in. The bracelet and necklace followed as well.
Nynaeve looked at Uno and raised an eyebrow.
“Every penny goes to the poor,” he told her in a low voice that barely reached her ear, “or somebody who needs it. If some merchant hadn't bloody given him her house, he'd be in a bloody stable, or one of those huts outside the city.”
“Even his food comes as a gift,” Ragan said just as quietly. “They used to bring him dishes fit for a king, until they learned he just gave away everything but a little bread, and soup or stew. He hardly drinks wine, now.”
Nynaeve shook her head. She supposed it was one way to find money for the poor. Simply rob anyone who was not poor. Of course, that would just make everyone poor in the end, but it might work for a time. She wondered if Uno and Ragan knew the whole of it. People who claimed they were collecting money to help others often had a way of letting a good bit stick in their own pockets, or else they liked the power that spreading it about gave them, liked it far too much. She had better feeling for the man who freely gave one copper from his own purse than for the fellow who wrested a gold crown from someone else's. And less for fools who abandoned their farms and shops to follow this... this Prophet, with no idea where their next meal would come from.
Inside the room, the woman curtsied to Masema even more deeply than before, spreading her skirts wide and bowing her head. “Until I once again have the honor of the Prophet's words and counsel. The name of the Lord Dragon be blessed in the Light.”
Masema waved her away absently, already half forgotten. He had seen them in the hall, and was looking at them with as close to pleasure as his dour face could come. It was not very close. The woman swept out, not even appearing to see Nynaeve or the two men. Nynaeve sniffed as the weedy fellow in the red coat waved anxiously for them to come in. For someone who had just given up her jewelry on demand, that woman managed a fine queenly air.
The skinny man scampered back to his place by the door as the other three men shook hands in the Borderlands fashion, gripping forearms.
“Peace favor your sword,” Uno said, echoed by Ragan.
“Peace favor the Lord Dragon” was the reply, “and his Light illumine us all.” Nynaeve's breath caught. There was no doubt to his meaning; the Lord Dragon was the source of the Light. And he had the nerve to speak of blasphemy from others! “Have you come to the Light at last?”
“We walk in the Light,” Ragan said carefully. “As always.” Uno kept silent, his face blank.
Weary patience made an odd play on Masema's sour features. “There is no way to the Light save through the Lord Dragon. You will see the way and the truth in the end, for you have seen the Lord Dragon, and only those whose souls are swallowed in the Shadow can see and not believe. You are not such. You will believe.”