The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time #8)

Abila was a goodly sized town, with several tall watch towers and many buildings rising four stories, every last one roofed in slate. Here and there, mounded stone and timbers filled a gap between two structures where an inn or some merchant’s house had been pulled down. The Prophet disapproved of wealth gained by trade as much as he did carousing or what his followers called lewd behavior. He disapproved of a great many things, and made his feelings known with sharp examples.

The streets were jammed with people, but Perrin and his companions were the only ones on horseback. The snow had long since been trampled to halffrozen ankledeep mush. Plenty of oxcarts made their slow way through the throng, but very few wagons, and not a single carriage. Except for those wearing worn castoffs or possibly stolen clothes, everyone wore drab woolens. Most people hurried, but like the folk on the road, with heads down. Those who did not hurry were straggling groups of men carrying weapons. In the streets, the smell was mainly dirt and fear. It made Perrin’s hackles rise. At least, if it came to that, getting out of a town with no wall would not prove harder than getting in.

“My Lord,” Balwer murmured as they came abreast of one of those heaps of rubble. He barely waited for Perrin’s nod before turning his hammernosed mount aside and making his way in another direction, hunched in his saddle with his brown cloak held tight around him. Perrin had no worries about the driedup little man going off alone, even here. For a secretary, he managed to learn a surprising amount on these forays of his. He seemed to know what he was about.

Dismissing Balwer from his thoughts, Perrin set to what he was there about.

It took only one question, put to a lanky young man with an ecstatic light on his face, to learn where the Prophet was staying, and three more to other folk in the streets to find the merchant’s house, four stories of gray stone with white marble moldings and window frames. Masema disapproved of grubbing for money, but he was willing to accept accommodations from those who did. On the other hand, Balwer said he had slept in a leaky farmhouse as often and been as satisfied. Masema drank only water, and wherever he went, he hired a poor widow and ate the food she prepared, fair or foul, without complaint. The man had made too many widows for that charity to count far with Perrin.

The throng that packed the streets elsewhere was absent in front of the tall house, yet the number of armed guards like those at the bridge almost made up for it. They stared at Perrin sullenly, those who did not sneer insolently. The two Aes Sedai kept their faces hidden in their deep hoods and their heads down, white breath rising from the cowls like steam. From the corner of his eye, Perrin saw Elyas thumbing the hilt of his long knife. It was hard not to stroke his axe.

“I’ve come with a message for the Prophet from the Dragon Reborn,” he announced. When none of the men moved, he added, “My name is Perrin Aybara. The Prophet knows me.” Balwer had cautioned him about the dangers of using Masema’s name, or calling Rand anything but the Lord Dragon Reborn. He was not there to start a riot.

The claim of knowing Masema seemed to put a spark into the guards. Several exchanged wideeyed looks, and one went running inside. The rest stared at him as if he were a gleeman. In a few moments, a woman came to the door. Handsome, with white at her temples, in a highnecked dress of blue wool that was fine if unadorned, she might have been the merchant herself. Masema did not throw those who offered him hospitality into the streets, but their servants or farmhands usually ended up with one of the bands “spreading the glories of the Lord Dragon.”

“If you will come with me, Master Aybara,” the woman said calmly, “you and your friends, I will take you to the Prophet of the Lord Dragon, may the Light illumine his name.” Calm she might sound, but terror filled her scent.

Telling Neald and the Warders to watch the horses until they returned, Perrin followed her inside with the others. The interior was dark, with few lamps lit, and not much warmer than outside. Even the Wise Ones seemed subdued. They did not smell afraid, but almost as close to it as the Aes Sedai, and Grady and Elyas smelled of wariness, of raised hackles and ears laid back. Strangely, Aram’s scent was eager. Perrin hoped the man did not try to draw that sword on his back.

The large, carpeted room the woman led them to, with fires blazing on hearths at either end, might have been a general’s study, every table and half the chairs covered with maps and papers, and warm enough that Perrin tossed his cloak back and regretted wearing two shirts under his coat. But it was Masema standing in the middle of the room who drew his eyes immediately, like iron filings to a lodestone, a dark, scowling man with a shaven head and a pale triangular scar on one cheek, in a wrinkled gray coat and scuffed boots. His deepset eyes burned with a black fire, and his scent... The only name Perrin could give that smell, steelhard and bladesharp and quivering with wild intensity, was madness. And Rand thought he could put a leash on this?

“So, it is you,” Masema growled. “I did not think you would dare show your face. I know what you’ve been up to! Hari told me more than a week ago, and I have kept myself informed.” A man shifted in a corner of the room, a narroweyed fellow with a thrusting nose, and Perrin upbraided himself for not noticing him before. Hari’s green silk coat was much finer than what he had worn when he denied collecting ears. The fellow rubbed his hands together and grinned at Perrin viciously, but he kept silent as Masema went on. The Prophet’s voice grew hotter by the word, not with anger, but as though he meant to burn every syllable deep into Perrin’s flesh. “I know about you murdering men who have come to the Lord Dragon. I know about you trying to carve out your own kingdom! Yes, I know about Manetheren! About your ambition! Your greed for glory! You have turned your back on —!”

Suddenly Masema’s eyes bulged, and for the first time, anger flamed in his scent. Hari made a strangled sound and tried to back through the wall. Seonid and Masuri had lowered their hoods and stood with bare faces, calm and cool, and plainly Aes Sedai to anyone who knew the look. Perrin wondered whether they held the Power. He would have wagered that the Wise Ones did. Edarra and Carelle were quietly watching every direction at once, and smooth faces or no, if he had ever seen anyone ready to fight, it was them. For that matter, Grady wore readiness like his black coat; maybe he held the Power, too. Elyas was leaning against the wall beside the open doors, outwardly as composed as the sisters, but he smelled ready to bite. And Aram stood gazing at Masema with his