Robert Jordan - The Path of Daggers

Eight more days of floundering through the snow when it was not falling, and grinding her teeth in an inn when it was. Eight more days of brooding by the Kin, of staring bleakly at the sisters, days of strutting by the Windfinders around Kin and Aes Sedai alike. On the morning of the ninth day, Elayne began to wish everyone had simply gone for everyone else’s throat.

She was just wondering whether they could cover the last ten miles to Caemlyn without a murder, when Kirstian rapped at her door and darted in without waiting for an answer. The woman’s plain woolen dress was not the shade of white proper for a novice, and she had regained much of her dignity somehow, as if knowing her future had smoothed her present, but now she made a hasty curtsy, almost tripping over her cloak, and her nearly black eyes were anxious. "Nynaeve Sedai, Elayne Sedai, Lord Lan says you are to come at once," she said breathlessly. "He told me to speak to no one, and you aren’t to, either."

Elayne and Nynaeve exchanged looks with Aviendha and Birgitte. Nynaeve growled something under her breath about the man not knowing private from public, but it was clear before she blushed that she did not believe it. Elayne felt Birgitte focus, the drawn arrow hunting a target.

Kirstian did not know what Lan wanted, only where she was to lead them. The small hut outside of Cullen’s Crossing where Adeleas had taken Ispan the night before. Lan stood outside, his eyes as cold as the air, and would not let Kirstian enter. When Elayne went inside, she saw why.

Adeleas lay on her side beside an overturned stool, a cup on the rough wooden floor not far from one outstretched hand. Her eyes stared, and a pool of congealed blood spread out from the deep slash across her throat. Ispan lay on a small cot, staring at the ceiling. Lips drawn back in a rictus bared her teeth, and her bulging eyes seemed full of horror. As well they might have, since a wrist-thick wooden stake stood out from between her breasts. The hammer that had plainly been used to drive it in lay beside the cot, on the edge of a dark stain that ran back under the cot.

Elayne forced herself to stop thinking about emptying her stomach on the spot. "Light," she breathed. "Light! Who could do this? How could anyone do this?" Aviendha shook her head wonderingly, and Lan did not even bother with that. He just watched nine directions at once, as though he expected whoever, or whatever, had committed this murder to come through one of the two tiny windows if not through the walls. Birgitte drew her belt knife, and by her face, she dearly wished she had her bow. That drawn arrow was stronger than ever in Elayne’s head.

At first, Nynaeve simply stood in one spot, studying the hut’s interior. There was little to see, aside from the obvious. A second three-legged stool, a rough table holding a flickering lamp, a green teapot and a second cup, a rude stone fireplace with cold ash on the hearthstone. That was all. The hut was so small it only took Nynaeve a step to reach the table. Dipping her finger into the teapot, she touched it to the tip of her tongue, then spat vigorously and emptied the whole teapot into the table in a wash of tea and tea leaves. Elayne blinked wonderingly.

"What happened?" Vandene asked coolly from the door. Lan moved to bar her way, but she stopped him with a small gesture. Elayne started to put an arm around her, and received another raised hand to keep her back. Vandene’s eyes remained on her sister, calm in a face of Aes Sedai serenity. The dead woman on the cot might as well not have existed. "When I saw all of you heading this way, I thought… We knew we didn’t have many years remaining, but…" Her voice sounded serenity itself, but small wonder if that was a mask. "What have you found, Nynaeve?"

Sympathy looked odd on Nynaeve’s face. Clearing her throat, she pointed to the tea leaves without touching them. To white shavings among the matted black leaves. "This is crimsonthorn root," she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact and failing. "It’s sweet, so you might miss it in tea unless you know what it is, especially if you take a lot of honey."

Vandene nodded, never taking her eyes from her sister. "Adeleas developed a taste for sweet tea in Ebou Dar."

"A little kills pain," Nynaeve said. "This much… This much kills, but slowly. Even a few sips would be enough." Taking a deep breath, she added, "They might have remained conscious for hours. Not able to move, but aware. Either whoever did this didn’t want to risk someone coming too soon with an antidote — not that I know one, for a brew this strong — or else they wanted one or the other to know who was killing them." Elayne gasped at the brutality, but Vandene simply nodded.

"Ispan, I think, since they appear to have taken the most time with her." The white-haired Green almost seemed to be thinking aloud, working out a puzzle. Cutting a throat took less time than driving a stake through someone’s heart. The calm of her made Elayne’s skin crawl. "Adeleas would never have accepted anything to drink from someone she didn’t know, not out here with Ispan. Those two facts name her killer, in a way. A Darkfriend, and one of our party. One of us." Elayne felt two chills, her own, and Birgitte’s.

"One of us," Nynaeve agreed sadly. Aviendha began testing the edge of her belt knife on her thumb, and for once, Elayne felt no objection.

Vandene asked to be left alone with her sister for a few moments, and sat on the floor to cradle Adeleas in her arms before they were out of the door. Jaem, Vandene’s gnarled old Warder, was waiting outside with a shivering Kirstian.

Suddenly a wail burst out inside the hut, the full-throated cry of a woman mourning the loss of everything. Nynaeve, of all people, turned to go back, but Lan laid a hand on her arm, and Jaem planted himself before the door with eyes not much warmer than Lan’s. There was nothing to do but leave them, Vandene to shriek her pain, and Jaem to guard her in it. And share it, Elayne realized, feeling that knot of emotions in her head that was Birgitte. She shivered, and Birgitte put an arm around her shoulders. Aviendha did the same from the other side, and motioned for Nynaeve to join them, which she did, after a moment. The murder Elayne had thought of so lightly had come, one of their companions was a Darkfriend, and the day suddenly felt cold enough to shatter bones, but there was a warmth in the closeness of her friends.

The last ten funereal miles to Caemlyn took two days in the snow, with even the Windfinders decently subdued. Not that they pushed Merilille any less hard. Not that Kin stopped talking, and falling silent whenever a sister or one of the Knitting Circle came near. Vandene, with her sister’s silver-mounted saddle on her horse, appeared as serene as she had at Adeleas’ graveside, but Jaem’s eyes carried a silent promise of death that surely rode in Vandene’s heart, too. Elayne could not have been happier to see the walls and towers of Caemlyn if the very sight had given her the Rose Crown and brought back Adeleas.

Even Caemlyn, one of the great cities of the world, had never seen the likes of their party before, and once inside the fifty-foot walls of gray stone they attracted notice as they crossed the New City along wide, slush-filled streets bustling with people and carts and wagons. Shopkeepers stood in their doorways and gaped. Wagon drivers reined in their teams to stare. Towering Aielmen and tall Maidens eyed them from every corner, it seemed. The people seemed to take no notice of the Aiel, but Elayne did. She loved Aviendha as she did herself, more, but she could not love an army of armed Aiel walking Caemlyn’s streets.

The Inner City, ringed by towered walls of silver-streaked white, was a remembered delight, and Elayne finally began to feel that she was coming home. The streets followed the curves of the hills, and every rise presented a new vista of snow-covered parks and monuments laid out to be seen from above as well as up close, of brightly tiled towers shining with a hundred colors in the afternoon sun. And then the Royal Palace itself was before them, a confection of pale spires and golden domes and intricate stonework traceries. The banner of Andor waved from nearly every prominence, the White Lion on red. And from the others, the Dragon Banner or the Banner of Light.