The Great Hunt

29 (Insect-Like, Horned Helmet) Seanchan

Geofram Bornhald ignored the smell of burning houses and the bodies that lay sprawled on the dirt of the street. Byar and a white-cloaked guard of a hundred rode into the village at his heels, half the men he had with him. His legion was too scattered for his liking, with Questioners having too many of the commands, but his orders had been explicit: Obey the Questioners.

There had been but slight resistance here; only half a dozen dwellings gave off columns of smoke. The inn was still standing, he saw, white-plastered stone like almost every structure on Almoth Plain.

Reining up before the inn, his eyes went past the prisoners his soldiers held near the village well to the long gibbet marring the village green. It was hastily made, only a long pole on uprights, but it held thirty bodies, their clothes ruffled by the breeze. There were small bodies hanging among their elders. Even Byar stared at that in disbelief.

“Muadh!” he roared. A grizzled man trotted away from those holding the prisoners. Muadh had fallen into the hands of Darkfriends, once; his scarred face took even the strongest aback. “Is this your work, Muadh, or the Seanchan?”

“Neither, my Lord Captain.” Muadh’s voice was a hoarse, whispered growl, another leaving of the Darkfriends. He said no more.

Bornhald frowned. “Surely that lot did not do it,” he said, gesturing to the prisoners. The Children did not look so neat as when he had brought them across Tarabon, but they seemed ready to parade compared with the rabble that crouched under their watchful eyes. Men in rags and bits of armor, with sullen faces. Remnants of the army Tarabon had sent against the invaders on Toman Head.

Muadh hesitated, then said carefully, “The villagers say they wore Taraboner cloaks, my Lord Captain. There was a big man among them, with gray eyes and a long mustache, that sounds twin to Child Earwin, and a young lad, trying to hide a pretty face behind a yellow beard, who fought with his left hand. Sounds almost like Child Wuan, my Lord Captain.”

“Questioners!” Bornhald spat. Earwin and Wuan were among those he had had to hand over to the Questioners’ command. He had seen Questioner tactics before, but this was the first time he had ever been faced with children’s bodies.

“If my Lord Captain says so.” Muadh made it sound like fervent agreement.

“Cut them down,” Bornhald said wearily. “Cut them down, and make sure the villagers know there will be no more killing.” Unless some fool decides to be brave because his woman is watching, and I have to make an example. He dismounted, eyeing the prisoners again, as Muadh hurried off calling for ladders and knives. He had more to think about than Questioners’ overzealousness; he wished he could stop thinking about Questioners altogether.

“They do not put up much fight, my Lord Captain,” Byar said, “either these Taraboners or what is left of the Domani. They snap like cornered rats, but run as soon as anything snaps back.”

“Let us see how we do against the invaders, Byar, before we look down on these men, yes?” The prisoners’ faces bore a defeated look that had been there before his men came. “Have Muadh pick one out for me.” Muadh’s face was enough to soften most men’s resolve by itself. “An officer, preferably. One who looks intelligent enough to tell what he has seen without embroidery, but young enough not to have yet grown a full backbone. Tell Muadh to be not too gentle about it, yes? Make the fellow believe that I mean to see worse happen to him than he ever dreamed of, unless he convinces me otherwise.” He tossed his reins to one of the Children and strode into the inn.

The innkeeper was there, for a wonder, an obsequious, sweating man, his dirty shirt straining over his belly until the embroidered red scrollwork seemed ready to pop off. Bornhald waved the man away; he was vaguely aware of a woman and some children huddling in a doorway, until the fat innkeeper shepherded them out.

Bornhald pulled off his gauntlets and sat at one of the tables. He knew too little about the invaders, the strangers. That was what almost everyone called them, those who did not just babble about Artur Hawkwing. He knew they called themselves the Seanchan, and Hailene. He had enough of the Old Tongue to know the latter meant Those Who Come Before, or the Forerunners. They also called themselves Rhyagelle, Those Who Come Home, and spoke of Corenne, the Return. It was almost enough to make him believe the tales of Artur Hawkwing’s armies come back. No one knew where the Seanchan had come from, other than that they had landed in ships. Bornhald’s requests for information from the Sea Folk had been met with silence. Amador did not hold the Atha’an Miere in good favor, and the attitude was returned with interest. All he knew of the Seanchan he had heard from men like those outside. Broken, beaten rabble who spoke, wide-eyed and sweating, of men who came into battle riding monsters as often as horses, who fought with monsters by their sides, and brought Aes Sedai to rend the earth under their enemies’ feet.

A sound of boots in the doorway made him put on a wolfish grin, but Byar was not accompanied by Muadh. The Child of the Light who stood beside him, back braced and helmet in the crook of his arm, was Jeral, who Bornhald expected to be a hundred miles away. Over his armor, the young man wore a cloak of Domani cut, trimmed with blue, not the white cloak of the Children.

“Muadh is talking to a young fellow now, my Lord Captain,” Byar said. “Child Jeral has just ridden in with a message.”

Bornhald waved for Jeral to begin.

The young man did not unbend. “The compliments of Jaichim Carridin,” he started, looking straight ahead, “who guides the Hand of the Light in—”

“I have no need of the Questioner’s compliments,” Bornhald growled, and saw the young man’s startled look. Jeral was young, yet. For that matter, Byar looked uncomfortable, as well. “You will give me his message, yes? Not word for word, unless I ask it. Simply tell me what he wants.”

The Child, set to recite, swallowed before he began. “My Lord Captain, he — he says you are moving too many men too close to Toman Head. He says the Darkfriends on Almoth Plain must be rooted out, and you are — forgive me, Lord Captain — you are to turn back at once and ride toward the heart of the plain.” He stood stiffly, waiting.

Bornhald studied him. The dust of the plain stained Jeral’s face as well as his cloak and his boots. “Go and get yourself something to eat,” Bornhald told him. “There should be wash water in one of these houses, if you wish it. Return to me in an hour. I will have messages for you to carry.” He waved the young man out.

“The Questioners may be right, my Lord Captain,” Byar said when Jeral was gone. “There are many villages scattered on the plain, and the Darkfriends—”

Bornhald’s hand slapping the table cut him off. “What Darkfriends? I have seen nothing in any village he has ordered taken except farmers and craftsmen worried that we will burn their livelihoods, and a few old women who tend the sick.” Byar’s face was a study in lack of expression; he was always readier than Bornhald to see Darkfriends. “And children, Byar? Do children here become Darkfriends?”

“The sins of the mother are visited to the fifth generation,” Byar quoted, “and the sins of the father to the tenth.” But he looked uneasy. Even Byar had never killed a child.

“Has it never occurred to you, Byar, to wonder why Carridin has taken away our banners, and the cloaks of the men the Questioners lead? Even the Questioners themselves have put off the white. This suggests something, yes?”

“He must have his reasons, Lord Captain,” Byar said slowly. “The Questioners always have reasons, even when they do not tell the rest of us.”

Bornhald reminded himself that Byar was a good soldier. “Children to the north wear Taraboner cloaks, Byar, and those to the south Domani. I do not like what this suggests to me. There are Darkfriends here, but they are in Falme, not on the plain. When Jeral rides, he will not ride alone. Messages will go to every group of the Children I know how to find. I mean to take the legion onto Toman Head, Byar, and see what the true Darkfriends, these Seanchan, are up to.”

Byar looked troubled, but before he could speak, Muadh appeared with one of the prisoners. The sweating young man in a battered, ornate breastplate shot frightened looks at Muadh’s hideous face.

Bornhald drew his dagger and began trimming his nails. He had never understood why that made some men nervous, but he used it just the same. Even his grandfatherly smile made the prisoner’s dirty face pale. “Now, young man, you will tell me everything you know about these strangers, yes? If you need to think on what to say, I will send you back out with Child Muadh to consider it.”

The prisoner darted a wide-eyed look at Muadh. Then words began to pour out of him.

The long swells of the Aryth Ocean made Spray roll, but Domon’s spread feet balanced him as he held the long tube of the looking glass to his eye and studied the large vessel that pursued them. Pursued, and was slowly overtaking. The wind where Spray ran was not the best or the strongest, but where the other ship smashed the swells into mountains of foam with its bluff bow, it could not have blown better. The coastline of Toman Head loomed to the east, dark cliffs and narrow strips of sand. He had not cared to take Spray too far out, and now he feared he might pay for it.

“Strangers, Captain?” Yarin had the sound of sweat in his voice. “Is it a strangers’ ship?”

Domon lowered the looking glass, but his eye still seemed filled by that tall, square-looking ship with its odd ribbed sails. “Seanchan,” he said, and heard Yarin groan. He drummed his thick fingers on the rail, then told the helmsman, “Take her closer in. That ship will no dare enter the shallow waters Spray can sail.”

Yarin shouted commands, and crewmen ran to haul in booms as the helmsman put the tiller over, pointing the bow more toward the shoreline. Spray moved more slowly, heading so far into the wind, but Domon was sure he could reach shoal waters before the other vessel came up on him. Did her holds be full, she could still take shallower water than ever that great hull can.

His ship rode a little higher in the water than she had on sailing from Tanchico. A third of the cargo of fireworks he had taken on there was gone, sold in the fishing villages on Toman Head, but with the silver that flowed for the fireworks had come disturbing reports. The people spoke of visits from the tall, boxy ships of the invaders. When Seanchan ships anchored off the coast, the villagers who drew up to defend their homes were rent by lightning from the sky while small boats were still ferrying the invaders ashore, and the earth erupted in fire under their feet. Domon had thought he was hearing nonsense until he was shown the blackened ground, and he had seen it in too many villages to doubt any longer. Monsters fought beside the Seanchan soldiers, not that there was ever much resistance left, the villagers said, and some even claimed that the Seanchan themselves were monsters, with heads like huge insects.

In Tanchico, no one had even known what they called themselves, and the Taraboners spoke confidently of their soldiers driving the invaders into the sea. But in every coastal town, it was different. The Seanchan told astonished people they must swear again oaths they had forsaken, though never deigning to explain when they had forsaken them, or what the oaths meant. The young women were taken away one by one to be examined, and some were carried aboard the ships and never seen again. A few older women had also vanished, some of the Guides and Healers. New mayors were chosen by the Seanchan, and new Councils, and any who protested the disappearances of the women or having no voice in the choosing might be hung, or burst suddenly into flame, or be brushed aside like yapping dogs. There was no way of telling which it would be until it was too late.

And when the people had been thoroughly cowed, when they had been made to kneel and swear, bewildered, to obey the Forerunners, await the Return, and serve Those Who Come Home with their lives, the Seanchan sailed away and usually never returned. Falme, it was said, was the only town they held fast.

In some of the villages they had left, men and women crept back toward their former lives, to the extent of talking about electing their Councils again, but most eyed the sea nervously and made pale-cheeked protests that they meant to hold to the oaths they had been made to swear even if they did not understand them.

Domon had no intention of meeting any Seanchan, if he could avoid it.

He was raising the glass to see what he could make out on the nearing Seanchan decks, when, with a roar, the surface of the sea broke into fountaining water and flame not a hundred paces from his larboard side. Before he had even begun to gape, another column of flame split the sea on the other side, and as he was spinning to stare at that, another burst up ahead. The eruptions died as quickly as they were born, spray from them blown across the deck. Where they had been, the sea bubbled and steamed as if boiling.

“We … we’ll reach shallow water before they can close with us,” Yarin said slowly. He seemed to be trying not to look at the water roiling under clouds of mist.

Domon shook his head. “Whatever they did, they can shatter us, even do I take her into the breakers.” He shivered, thinking of the flame inside the fountains of water, and his holds full of fireworks. “Fortune prick me, we might no live to drown.” He tugged at his beard and rubbed his bare upper lip, reluctant to give the order — the vessel and what it contained were all he had in the world — but finally he made himself speak. “Bring her into the wind, Yarin, and down sail. Quickly, man, quickly! Before they do think we still try to escape.”

As crewmen ran to lower the triangular sails, Domon turned to watch the Seanchan ship approach. Spray lost headway and pitched in the swells. The other vessel stood taller above the water than Domon’s ship, with wooden towers at bow and stern. Men were in the rigging, raising those strange sails, and armored figures stood atop the towers. A longboat was put over the side, and sped toward Spray under ten oars. It carried armored shapes, and — Domon frowned in surprise — two women crouched in the stern. The longboat thumped against Spray’s hull.

The first to climb up was one of the armored men, and Domon saw immediately why some of the villagers claimed the Seanchan themselves were monsters. The helmet looked very much like some monstrous insect’s head, with thin red plumes like feelers; the wearer seemed to be peering out through mandibles. It was painted and gilded to increase the effect, and the rest of the man’s armor was also worked with paint and gold. Overlapping plates in black and red outlined with gold covered his chest and ran down the outsides of his arms and the fronts of his thighs. Even the steel backs of his gauntlets were red and gold. Where he did not wear metal, his clothes were dark leather. The two-handed sword on his back, with its curved blade, was scabbarded and hilted in black-and-red leather.

Then the armored figure removed his helmet, and Domon stared. He was a woman. Her dark hair was cut short, and her face was hard, but there was no mistaking it. He had never heard of such a thing, except among the Aiel, and Aiel were well known to be crazed. Just as disconcerting was the fact that her face did not look as different as he had expected of a Seanchan. Her eyes were blue, it was true, and her skin exceedingly fair, but he had seen both before. If this woman wore a dress, no one would look at her twice. He eyed her and revised his opinion, that cold stare and those hard cheeks would make her remarked anywhere.

The other soldiers followed the woman onto the deck. Domon was relieved to see, when some of them removed their strange helmets, that they, at least, were men; men with black eyes, or brown, who could have gone unnoticed in Tanchico or Illian. He had begun to have visions of armies of blue-eyed women with swords. Aes Sedai with swords, he thought, remembering the sea erupting.

The Seanchan woman surveyed the ship arrogantly, then picked Domon out as captain — it had to be him or Yarin, by their clothes; the way Yarin had his eyes closed and was muttering prayers under his breath pointed to Domon — and fixed him with a stare like a spike.

“Are there any women among your crew or passengers?” She spoke with a soft slurring that made her hard to understand, but there was a snap in her voice that said she was used to getting answers. “Speak up, man, if you are the captain. If not, wake that other fool and tell him to speak.”

“I do be captain, my Lady,” Domon said cautiously. He had no idea how to address her, and he did not want to put a foot wrong. “I have no passengers, and there be no women in my crew.” He thought of the girls and women who had been carried off, and, not for the first time, wondered what these folk wanted with them.

The two women dressed as women were coming up from the longboat, one drawing the other — Domon blinked — by a leash of silvery metal as she climbed aboard. The leash went from a bracelet worn by the first woman to a collar around the neck of the second. He could not tell whether it was woven or jointed — it seemed somehow to be both — but it was clearly of a piece with both bracelet and collar. The first woman gathered the leash in coils as the other came onto the deck. The collared woman wore plain dark gray and stood with her hands folded and her eyes on the planks under her feet. The other had red panels bearing forked, silver lightning bolts on the breast of her blue dress and on the sides of her skirts, which ended short of the ankles of her boots. Domon eyed the women uneasily.

“Speak slowly, man,” the blue-eyed woman demanded in her slurred speech. She came across the deck to confront him, staring up at him and in some way seeming taller and larger than he. “You are even harder to understand than the rest in this Light-forsaken land. And I make no claim to be of the Blood. Not yet. After Corenne … I am Captain Egeanin.”

Domon repeated himself, trying to speak slowly, and added, “I do be a peaceful trader, Captain. I mean no harm to you, and I have no part in your war.” He could not help eyeing the two women connected by the leash again.

“A peaceful trader?” Egeanin mused. “In that case, you will be free to go once you have sworn fealty again.” She noticed his glances and turned to smile at the women with the pride of ownership. “You admire my damane? She cost me dear, but she was worth every coin. Few but nobles own a damane, and most are property of the throne. She is strong, trader. She could have broken your ship to splinters, had I wished it so.”

Domon stared at the women and the silver leash. He had connected the one wearing the lightning with the fiery fountains in the sea, and assumed she was an Aes Sedai. Egeanin had just set his head whirling. No one could do that to …

“She is Aes Sedai?” he said disbelievingly.

He never saw the casual backhand blow coming. He staggered as her steel-backed gauntlet split his lip.

“That name is never spoken,” Egeanin said with a dangerous softness. “There are only the damane, the Leashed Ones, and now they serve in truth as well as name.” Her eyes made ice seem warm.

Domon swallowed blood and kept his hand clenched at his sides. If he had had a sword to hand, he would not have led his crew to slaughter against a dozen armored soldiers, but it was an effort to make his voice humble. “I meant no disrespect, Captain. I know nothing of you or your ways. If I do offend, it is ignorance, no intention.”

She looked at him, then said, “You are all ignorant, Captain, but you will pay the debt of your forefathers. This land was ours, and it will be ours again. With the Return, it will be ours again.” Domon did not know what to say — Surely she can no mean that nattering about Artur Hawkwing be true? — so he kept his mouth shut. “You will sail your vessel to Falme” — he tried to protest, but her glare silenced him—“where you and your ship will be examined. If you are no more than a peaceful trader, as you claim, you will be allowed to go your way when you have sworn the oaths.”

“Oaths, Captain? What oaths?”

“To obey, to await, and to serve. Your ancestors should have remembered.”

She gathered her people — except for a single man in plain armor, which marked him of low rank as much as the depth of his bow to Captain Egeanin — and their longboat pulled away toward the larger ship. The remaining Seanchan gave no orders, only sat cross-legged on the deck and began sharpening his sword while the crew put sail on and got under way. He seemed to have no fear at being alone, and Domon would have personally thrown overboard any crewman who raised a hand to him, for as Spray made her way along the coast, the Seanchan ship followed, out in deeper water. There was a mile between the two vessels, but Domon knew there was no hope of escape, and he meant to deliver the man back to Captain Egeanin as safely as if he had been cradled in his mother’s arms.

It was a long passage to Falme, and Domon finally persuaded the Seanchan to talk, a little. A dark-eyed man in his middle years, with an old scar above his eyes and another nicking his chin, his name was Caban, and he had nothing but contempt for anyone this side of the Aryth Ocean. That gave Domon a moment’s pause. Maybe they truly do be … No, that do be madness. Caban’s speech had the same slur as Egeanin’s, but where hers was silk sliding across iron, his was leather rasping on rock, and mostly he wanted to talk about battles, drinking, and women he had known. Half the time, Domon was not certain if he were speaking of here and now, or of wherever he had come from. The man was certainly not forthcoming about anything Domon wanted to know.

Once Domon asked about the damane. Caban reached up from where he sat in front of the helmsman and put the point of his sword to Domon’s throat. “Watch what your tongue touches, or you will lose it. That’s the business of the Blood, not your kind. Or mine.” He grinned while he said it, and as soon as he was done, he went back to sliding a stone along his heavy, curved blade.

Domon touched the point of blood welling above his collar and resolved not to ask that again, at least.

The closer the two vessels came to Falme, the more of the tall, square-looking Seanchan ships they passed, some under sail, but more anchored. Every one was bluff-bowed and towered, as big as anything Domon had ever seen, even among the Sea Folk. A few local craft, he saw, with their sharp bows and slanted sails, darted across the green swells. The sight gave him confidence that Egeanin had spoken the truth about letting him go free.

When Spray came up on the headland where Falme stood, Domon gaped at the numbers of the Seanchan ships anchored off the harbor. He tried counting them and gave up at a hundred, less than halfway done. He had seen as many ships in one place before — in Illian, and Tear, and even Tanchico — but those vessels had included many smaller craft. Muttering glumly to himself, he took Spray into the harbor, shepherded by her great Seanchan watchdog.

Falme stood on a spit of land at the very tip of Toman Head, with nothing further west of it except the Aryth Ocean. High cliffs ran to the harbor mouth on both sides, and atop one of those, where every ship running into the harbor had to pass under them, stood the towers of the Watchers Over the Waves. A cage hung over the side of one of the towers, with a man sitting in it despondently, legs dangling through the bars.

“Who is that?” Domon asked.

Caban had finally given over sharpening his sword, after Domon had begun to wonder if he meant to shave with it. The Seanchan glanced up to where Domon pointed. “Oh. That is the First Watcher. Not the one who sat in the chair when we first came, of course. Every time he dies, they choose another, and we put him in the cage.”

“But why?” Domon demanded.

Caban’s grin showed too many teeth. “They watched for the wrong thing, and forgot when they should have been remembering.”

Domon tore his eyes away from the Seanchan. Spray slid down the last real sea swell and into the quieter waters of the harbor. I do be a trader, and it is none of my business.

Falme rose from stone docks up the slopes of the hollow that made the harbor. Domon could not decide whether the dark stone houses made up a goodly sized town or a small city. Certainly he saw no building in it to rival the smallest palace in Illian.

He guided Spray to a place at one of the docks, and wondered, while the crew tied the ship fast, if the Seanchan might buy some of the fireworks in his hold. None of my business.

To his surprise, Egeanin had herself rowed to the dock with her damane. There was another woman wearing the bracelet this time, with the red panels and forked lightning on her dress, but the damane was the same sad-faced woman who never looked up unless the other spoke to her. Egeanin had Domon and his crew herded off the ship to sit on the dock under the eyes of a pair of her soldiers — she seemed to think no more were needed, and Domon was not about to argue with her — while others searched Spray under her direction. The damane was part of the search.

Down the dock, a thing appeared. Domon could think of no other way to describe it. A hulking creature with a leathery, gray-green hide and a beak of a mouth in a wedge-shaped head. And three eyes. It lumbered along beside a man whose armor bore three painted eyes, just like those of the creature. The local people, dockmen and sailors in roughly embroidered shirts and long vests to their knees, shied away as the pair passed, but no Seanchan gave them a second glance. The man with the beast seemed to be directing it with hand signals.

Man and creature turned in among the buildings, leaving Domon staring and his crew muttering to themselves. The two Seanchan guards sneered at them silently. No my business, Domon reminded himself. His business was his ship.

The air had a familiar smell of salt water and pitch. He shifted uneasily on the stone, hot from the sun, and wondered what the Seanchan were searching for. What the damane was searching for. Wondered what that thing had been. Gulls cried, wheeling above the harbor. He thought of the sounds a caged man might make. It is no my business.

Eventually Egeanin led the others back onto the dock. The Seanchan captain had something wrapped in a piece of yellow silk, Domon noted warily. Something small enough to carry in one hand, but which she held carefully in both.

He got to his feet — slowly, for the soldiers’ sake, though their eyes held the same contempt Caban’s did. “You see, Captain? I do be only a peaceful trader. Perhaps your people would care to buy some fireworks?”

“Perhaps, trader.” There was an air of suppressed excitement about her that made him uneasy, and her next words increased the feeling. “You will come with me.”

She told two soldiers to come along, and one of them gave Domon a push to get him started. It was not a rough shove; Domon had seen farmers push a cow in the same way to make it move. Setting his teeth, he followed Egeanin.

The cobblestone street climbed the slope, leaving the smell of the harbor behind. The slate-roofed houses grew larger and taller as the street climbed. Surprisingly for a town held by invaders, the streets held more local people than Seanchan soldiers, and now and again a curtained palanquin was borne past by bare-chested men. The Falmen seemed to be going about their business as if the Seanchan were not there. Or almost not there. When palanquin or soldier passed, both poor folk, with only a curling line or two worked on their dirty clothes, and the richer, with shirts, vests, and dresses covered from shoulder to waist in intricately embroidered patterns, bowed and remained bent until the Seanchan were gone. They did the same for Domon and his guard. Neither Egeanin nor her soldiers so much as glanced at them.

Domon realized with a sudden shock that some of the local people they passed wore daggers at their belts, and in a few cases swords. He was so surprised that he spoke without thinking. “Some of them be on your side?”

Egeanin frowned over her shoulder at him, obviously puzzled. Without slowing, she looked at the people and nodded to herself. “You mean the swords. They are our people, now, trader; they have sworn the oaths.” She stopped abruptly, pointing at a tall, heavy-shouldered man with a heavily embroidered vest and a sword swinging on a plain leather baldric. “You.”

The man halted in mid-step, one foot in the air and a frightened look suddenly on his face. It was a hard face, but he looked as if he wanted to run. Instead, he turned to her and bowed, hands on knees, eyes fixed on her boots. “How may this one serve the captain?” he asked in a tight voice.

“You are a merchant?” Egeanin said. “You have sworn the oaths?”

“Yes, Captain. Yes.” He did not take his eyes from her feet.

“What do you tell the people when you take your wagons inland?”

“That they must obey the Forerunners, Captain, await the Return, and serve Those Who Come Home.”

“And do you never think to use that sword against us?”

The man’s hands went white-knuckled gripping his knees, and there was suddenly sweat in his voice. “I have sworn the oaths, Captain. I obey, await, and serve.”

“You see?” Egeanin said, turning to Domon. “There is no reason to forbid them weapons. There must be trade, and merchants must protect themselves from bandits. We allow the people to come and go as they will, so long as they obey, await, and serve. Their forefathers broke their oaths, but these have learned better.” She started back up the hill, and the soldiers pushed Domon after her.

He looked back at the merchant. The man stayed bent as he was till Egeanin was ten paces up the street, then he straightened and hurried the other way, leaping down the sloping street.

Egeanin and his guards did not look around, either, when a mounted Seanchan troop passed them, climbing the street. The soldiers rode creatures that looked almost like cats the size of horses, but with lizards’ scales rippling bronze beneath their saddles. Clawed feet grasped the cobblestones. A three-eyed head turned to regard Domon as the troop climbed by; aside from everything else, it seemed too — knowing — for Domon’s peace of mind. He stumbled and almost fell. All along the street, the Falmen were pressing themselves back against the fronts of the buildings, some closing their eyes. The Seanchan paid them no heed.

Domon understood why the Seanchan could allow the people as much freedom as they did. He wondered if he would have had nerve enough to resist. Damane. Monsters. He wondered if there was anything to stop the Seanchan from marching all the way to the Spine of the World. No my business, he reminded himself roughly, and considered whether there was any way to avoid the Seanchan in his future trading.

They reached the top of the incline, where the town gave way to hills. There was no town wall. Ahead were the inns that served merchants who traded inland, and wagon yards and stables. Here, the houses would have made respectable manors for the minor lords in Illian. The largest of them had an honor guard of Seanchan soldiers out front, and a blue-edged banner bearing a golden, spread-winged hawk rippling above it. Egeanin surrendered her sword and dagger before taking Domon inside. Her two soldiers remained in the street. Domon began to sweat. He smelled a lord in this; it was never good to do business with a lord on the lord’s own ground.

In the front hall Egeanin left Domon at the door and spoke to a servant. A local man, judging by the full sleeves of his shirt and the spirals embroidered across his chest; Domon believed he caught the words “High Lord.” The servant hurried away, returning finally to lead them to what was surely the largest room in the house. Every stick of furniture had been cleared out of it, even the rugs, and the stone floor was polished to a bright gleam. Folding screens painted with strange birds hid walls and windows.

Egeanin stopped just inside the room. When Domon tried to ask where they were and why, she silenced him with a savage glare and a wordless growl. She did not move, but she seemed on the point of bouncing on her toes. She held whatever it was she had taken from his ship as if it were precious. He tried to imagine what it could be.

Suddenly a gong sounded softly, and the Seanchan woman dropped to her knees, setting the silk-wrapped something carefully beside her. At a look from her, Domon got down as well. Lords had strange ways, and he suspected Seanchan lords might have stranger ones than he knew.

Two men appeared in the doorway at the far end of the room. One had the left side of his scalp shaved, his remaining pale golden hair braided and hanging down over his ear to his shoulder. His deep yellow robe was just long enough to let the toes of yellow slippers peek out when he walked. The other wore a blue silk robe, brocaded with birds and long enough to trail nearly a span on the floor behind him. His head was shaved bald, and his fingernails were at least an inch long, those on the first two fingers of each hand lacquered blue. Domon’s mouth dropped open.

“You are in the presence of the High Lord Turak,” the yellow-haired man intoned, “who leads Those Who Come Before, and succors the Return.”

Egeanin prostrated herself with her hands at her sides. Domon imitated her with alacrity. Even the High Lords of Tear would no demand this, he thought. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Egeanin kissing the floor. With a grimace, he decided there was a limit to imitation. They can no see whether I do or no anyway.

Egeanin suddenly stood. He started to rise as well, and made it as far as one knee before a growl in her throat and a scandalized look on the face of the man with the braid put him back down, face to the floor and muttering under his breath. I would no do this for the King of Illian and the Council of Nine together.

“Your name is Egeanin?” It had to be the voice of the man in the blue robe. His slurring speech had a rhythm almost like singing.

“I was so named on my sword-day, High Lord,” she replied humbly.

“This is a fine specimen, Egeanin. Quite rare. Do you wish a payment?”

“That the High Lord is pleased is payment enough. I live to serve, High Lord.”

“I will mention your name to the Empress, Egeanin. After the Return, new names will be called to the Blood. Show yourself fit, and you may shed the name Egeanin for a higher.”

“The High Lord honors me.”

“Yes. You may leave me.”

Domon could see nothing but her boots backing out of the room, pausing at intervals for bows. The door closed behind her. There was a long silence. He was watching sweat from his forehead drip onto the floor when Turak spoke again.

“You may rise, trader.”

Domon got to his feet, and saw what Turak held in his long-nailed fingers. The cuendillar disk shaped into the ancient seal of the Aes Sedai. Remembering Egeanin’s reaction when he mentioned Aes Sedai, Domon began to sweat in earnest. There was no animosity in the High Lord’s dark eyes, only a slight curiosity, but Domon did not trust lords.

“Do you know what this is, trader?”

“No, High Lord.” Domon’s reply was as steady as a rock; no trader lasted long who could not lie with a straight face and an easy voice.

“And yet you kept it in a secret place.”

“I do collect old things, High Lord, from times past. There do be those who would steal such, did they lay easy to hand.”

Turak regarded the black-and-white disk for a moment. “This is cuendillar, trader — do you know that name? — and older than you perhaps know. Come with me.”

Domon followed the man cautiously, feeling a little more sure of himself. With any lord of the lands he knew, if guards were going to be summoned, they already would have been. But the little he had seen of Seanchan told him they did not do things as other men did. He schooled his face to stillness.

He was led into another room. He thought the furniture here had to have been brought by Turak. It seemed to be made of curves, with no straight lines at all, and the wood was polished to bring out strange graining. There was one chair, on a silk carpet woven in birds and flowers, and one large cabinet made in a circle. Folding screens made new walls.

The man with the braid opened the doors of the cabinet to reveal shelves holding an odd assortment of figurines, cups, bowls, vases, fifty different things, no two alike in size or shape. Domon’s breath caught as Turak carefully set the disk beside its exact twin.

“Cuendillar,” Turak said. “That is what I collect, trader. Only the Empress herself has a finer collection.”

Domon’s eyes almost popped out of his head. If everything on those shelves was truly cuendillar, it was enough to buy a kingdom, or at the least to found a great House. Even a king might beggar himself to buy so much of it, if he even knew where to find so much. He put on a smile.

“High Lord, please accept this piece as a gift.” He did not want to let it go, but that was better than angering this Seanchan. Maybe the Darkfriends will chase him now. “I do be but a simple trader. I want only to trade. Let me sail, and I do promise that—”

Turak’s expression never changed, but the man with the braid cut Domon off with a snapped, “Unshaven dog! You speak of giving the High Lord what Captain Egeanin has already given. You bargain, as if the High Lord were a — a merchant! You will be flayed alive over nine days, dog, and—” The barest motion of Turak’s finger silenced him.

“I cannot allow you to leave me, trader,” the High Lord said. “In this shadowed land of oath-breakers, I find none who can converse with a man of sensibilities. But you are a collector. Perhaps your conversation will be interesting.” He took the chair, lolling back in its curves to study Domon.

Domon put on what he hoped was an ingratiating smile. “High Lord, I do be a simple trader, a simple man. I do no have the way of talking with great Lords.”

The man with the braid glared at him, but Turak seemed not to hear. From behind one of the screens, a slim, pretty young woman appeared on quick feet to kneel beside the High Lord, offering a lacquered tray bearing a single cup, thin and handleless, of some steaming black liquid. Her dark, round face was vaguely reminiscent of the Sea Folk. Turak took the cup carefully in his long-nailed fingers, never looking at the young woman, and inhaled the fumes. Domon took one look at the girl and pulled his eyes away with a strangled gasp; her white silk robe was embroidered with flowers, but so sheer he could see right through it, and there was nothing beneath but her own slimness.

“The aroma of kaf,” Turak said, “is almost as enjoyable as the flavor. Now, trader. I have learned that cuendillar is even more rare here than in Seanchan. Tell me how a simple trader came to possess a piece.” He sipped his kaf and waited.

Domon took a deep breath and set about trying to lie his way out of Falme.