Strings

Strings

Thom Merrilin sprinkled sand across what he handwritten to blot the ink, then carefully poured the sand back into its jar and flipped the lid shut. Riffling through the papers scattered in rough piles across the table - six tallow candles made fire a real danger, but he needed the light - he selected a crumpled sheet marred by an inkblot. Carefully he compared it with what he had written, then stroked a long white mustache with a thumb in satisfaction and permitted himself a leathery-faced smile. The High Lord Carleon himself would have thought it was his own hand.

Be wary. Your husband suspects.

Only those words, and no signature. Now if he could arrange for the High Lord Tedosian to find it where his wife, the Lady Alteima, might carelessly have left it....

A knock sounded at the door, and he jumped. No one came to see him at this time of the night.

"A moment," he called, hastily stuffing pens and inkpots and selected papers into a battered writing chest. "A moment while I put on a shirt."

Locking the chest, he shoved it under the table where it might escape casual notice and ran an eye over his small, windowless room to see if he had left anything out that should not be seen. Hoops and balls for juggling litt 222m1223c ered his narrow, unmade bed, and lay among his shaving things on a single shelf with fire wands and small items for sleight of hand. His gleeman's cloak, covered with loose patches in a hundred colors, hung from a peg on the wall along with his spare clothes and the hard leather cases holding his harp and flute. A woman's diaphanous red silk scarf was tied around the strap of the harp case, but it could have belonged to anyone.

He was not sure he remembered who had tied it there; he tried to pay no more attention to one woman than any other, and all of it lighthearted and laughing. Make them laugh, even make them sigh, but avoid entanglements, that was his motto; he had no time for those. That was what he told himself.

"I'm coming." He limped to the door irritably. Once he had drawn oohs and aahs from people who could hardly believe, even while they watched, that a rawboned, white-haired old man could do backsprings and handstands and flips, limber and quick as a boy. The limp had put an end to that, and he hated it. The leg ached worse when he was tired. He jerked open the door, and blinked in surprise. "Well. Come in, Mat. I thought you would be hard at work lightening lordlings' purses."

"They didn't want to gamble any more tonight," Mat said sourly, dropping onto the three-legged stool that served as a second chair. His coat was undone and his hair disheveled. His brown eyes darted around, never resting on one spot long, but their usual twinkle, suggesting that the lad saw something funny where no one else did, was missing tonight.

Thom frowned at him, considering. Mat never stepped across this threshold without a quip about the shabby room. He accepted Thom's explanation that his sleeping beside the servants' quarters would help people forget that he had arrived in the shadow of Aes Sedai, but Mat seldom let a chance for a joke pass. If he realized that the room also assured that no one could think of Thom having any connection to the Dragon Reborn, Mat, being Mat, probably thought that a reasonable wish. It had taken Thom all of two sentences, delivered in haste during a rare moment when no one was looking, to make Rand see the real point. Everyone listened to a gleeman, everyone watched him, but no one really saw him or remembered who he talked to, as long as he was only a gleeman, with his hedgerow entertainments fit for country folk and servants, and perhaps to amuse the ladies. That was how Tairens saw it. It was not as if he were a bard, after all.

What was bothering the boy to bring him down here at this hour? Probably one or another of the young women, and some old enough to know better, who had let themselves be caught by Mat's mischievous grin. Still, he would pretend it was one of Mat's usual visits until the lad said otherwise.

"I'll get the stones board. It is late, but we have time for one game." He could not resist adding, "Would you care for a wager on it?" He would not have tossed dice with Mat for a copper, but stones was another matter; he thought there was too much order and pattern in stones for Mat's strange luck.

"What? Oh. No. It's too late for games. Thom, did...? Did anything... happen down here?"

Leaning the stones board against a table leg, Thom dug his tabac pouch and long-stemmed pipe out of the litter remaining on the table. "Such as what?" he asked, thumbing the bowl full. He had time to stick a twist of paper in the flame of one of the candles, puff the pipe alight and blow out the spill before Mat answered.

"Such as Rand going insane, that's what. No, you'd not have had to ask if it had."

A prickling made Thom shift his shoulders, but he blew a blue-gray streamer of smoke as calmly as he could and took his chair, stretching his gimpy leg out in front of him. "What happened?"

Mat drew a deep breath, then let everything out in a rush. "The playing cards tried to kill me. The Amyrlin, and the High Lord, and.... I didn't dream it, Thom. That's why those puffed-up jackdaws don't want to gamble anymore. They're afraid it will happen again. Thom, I'm thinking of leaving Tear."

The prickling felt as if he had blackwasp nettles stuffed down his back. Why had he not left Tear himself long since? Much the wisest thing. Hundreds of villages lay out there, waiting for a gleeman to entertain and amaze them. And each with an inn or two full of wine to drown memories. But if he did, Rand would have no one except Moiraine to keep the High Lords from maneuvering him into corners, and maybe cutting his throat. She could do it, of course. Using different methods than his. He thought she could. She was Cairhienin, which meant she had probably taken in the Game of Houses with her mother's milk. And she would tie another string to Rand for the White Tower while she was about it. Mesh him in an Aes Sedai net so strong he would never escape. But if the boy was going mad already....

Fool, Thom called himself. A pure fool to stay mixed in this because of something fifteen years in the past. Staying would not change that; what was done was done. He had to see Rand face-to-face, no matter what he had told him about keeping clear. Perhaps no one would think it too odd if a gleeman asked to perform a song for the Lord Dragon, a song especially composed. He knew a deservedly obscure Kandori tune, praising some unnamed lord for his greatness and courage in grandiose terms that never quite managed to name deeds or places. It had probably been bought by some lord who had no deeds worth naming. Well, it would serve him now. Unless Moiraine decided it was strange. That would be as bad as the High Lords taking notice. I am a fool! I should be out of here tonight!

He was roiling inside, his stomach churning acid, but he had spent long years learning to keep his face straight before ever he put on a gleeman's cloak. He puffed three smoke rings, one inside the other, and said, "You have been thinking of leaving Tear since the day you walked into the Stone."

Perched on the edge of the stool, Mat shot him an angry look. "And I mean to. I do. Why not come with me, Thom? There are towns where they think the Dragon Reborn hasn't drawn a breath yet, where nobody's given a thought to the bloody Prophecies of the bloody Dragon in years, if ever. Places where they think the Dark One is a grandmother's tale, and Trollocs are travelers' wild stories, and Myrddraal ride shadows to scare children. You could play your harp and tell your stories, and I could find a game of dice. We could live like lords, traveling as we want, staying where we want, with no one trying to kill us."

That hit too close for comfort. Well, he was a fool and there it was; he just had to make the best of it. "If you really mean to go, why haven't you?"

"Moiraine watches me," Mat said bitterly. "And when she isn't, she has somebody else doing it."

"I know. Aes Sedai don't like to let someone go once they lay hands on them." It was more than that, he was sure, more than what was openly known, certainly, but Mat denied any such thing, and no one else who knew was talking either, if anyone besides Moiraine did know. It hardly mattered. He liked Mat - he even owed him, in a fashion - but Mat and his troubles were a street-corner fare compared to Rand. "But I cannot believe she really has someone watching you all the time."

"As good as. She's always asking people where I am, what I'm doing. It gets back to me. Do you know anybody who won't tell an Aes Sedai what she wants to know? I don't. As good as being watched."

"You could avoid eyes if you put your mind to it. I've never seen anyone as good at sneaking about as you. I mean that as a compliment."

"Something always comes up," Mat muttered. "There's so much gold to be had here. And there's a big-eyed girl in the kitchens who likes a little kiss and tickle, and one of the maids has hair like silk, to her waist, and the roundest...." He trailed off as if he had suddenly realized how foolish he sounded.

"Have you considered that maybe it's because -"

"If you mention ta'veren, Thom, I'm leaving."

Thom changed what he had been going to say. "- that maybe it's because Rand is your friend and you don't want to desert him?"

"Desert him!" The boy jumped up, kicking over the stool. "Thom, he is the bloody Dragon Reborn! At least, that's what he and Moiraine say. Maybe he is. He can channel, and he has that bloody sword that looks like glass. Prophecies! I don't know. But I know I would have to be as crazy as these Tairens to stay." He paused. "You don't think.... You don't think Moiraine is keeping me here, do you? With the Power?"

"I do not believe she can," Thom said slowly. He knew a good bit about Aes Sedai, enough to have some idea how much he did not know, and he thought he was right on this.

Mat raked his fingers through his hair. "Thom, I think about leaving all the time, but.... I get these strange feelings. Almost as if something was going to happen. Something.... Momentous; that's the word. It's like knowing there'll be fireworks for Sunday, only I don't know what it is I'm expecting. Whenever I think too much about leaving, it happens. And suddenly I've found some reason to stay another day. Always just one more bloody day. Doesn't that sound like Aes Sedai work to you?"

Thom swallowed the word ta'veren and took his pipe from between his teeth to peer into the smoldering tabac. He did not know much about ta'veren, but then no one did except the Aes Sedai, or maybe some of the Ogier. "I was never much good at helping people with their problems." And worse with my own, he thought. "With an Aes Sedai close to hand, I'd advise most people to ask her for help." Advice I'd not take myself.

"Ask Moiraine!"

"I suppose that is out of the question in this case. But Nynaeve was your Wisdom back in Emond's Field. Village Wisdoms are used to answering people's questions, helping with their problems."

Mat gave a raucous snort of laughter. "And put up with one of her lectures about drinking and gambling and...? Thom, she acts like I'm ten years old.

Sometimes I think she believes I'll marry a nice girl and settle down on my father's farm."

"Some men would not find it an objectionable life," Thom said quietly.

"Well, I would. I want more than cows and sheep and tabac for the rest of my life. I want - " Mat shook his head. "All these holes in memory. Sometimes I think if I could just fill them in, I'd know.... Burn me, I don't know what I'd know, but I know I want to know it. That's a twisty riddle, isn't it?"

"I'm not certain even an Aes Sedai can help with that. A gleeman surely can't."

"I said no Aes Sedai!"

Thom sighed. "Calm yourself, boy. I was not suggesting it."

"I am leaving. As soon as I can fetch my things and find a horse. Not a minute longer."

"In the middle of the night? The morning will do." He refrained from adding, If you really do leave. "Sit down. Relax. We'll play a game of stones. I have a jar of wine here, somewhere."

Mat hesitated, glancing at the door. Finally he jerked his coat straight. "The morning will do." He sounded uncertain, but he picked up the overturned stool and set it beside the table. "But no wine for me," he added as he sat down. "Strange enough things happen when my head is clear. I want to know the difference."

Thom was thoughtful as he put the board and the bags of stones on the table. Just that easily the lad was diverted. Pulled along by an even stronger ta'veren named Rand al'Thor, was how Thom saw it. It occurred to him to wonder if he was caught in the same way. His life had certainly not been headed toward the Stone of Tear and this room when he first met Rand, but since then it had been twitched about like a kite string. If he decided to leave, say if Rand really had gone mad, would he find reasons to keep putting it off?

"What is this, Thom?" Mat's boot had encountered the writing case under the table. "Is it all right if I move it out of my way?"

"Of course. Go right ahead." He winced inside as Mat shoved the case aside roughly with his foot. He hoped he had corked all the ink bottles tightly. "Choose," he said, holding out his fists.

Mat tapped the left, and Thom opened it to reveal a smooth black stone, flat and round. The boy chortled at having the first go and placed the stone on the crosshatched board. No one seeing the eagerness in his eyes would have suspected that only moments before he had been twice as eager to go. A greatness he refused to recognize clinging to his back, and an Aes Sedai intent on keeping him for one of her pets. The lad was well and truly caught.

If he was caught, too, Thom decided, it would be worth it to help one man, at least, keep free of Aes Sedai. Worth it, to make a payment on that fifteen-year-old debt.

Suddenly and strangely content, he set a white stone. "Did I ever tell you," he said around his pipestem, "about the wager I once made with a Domani woman? She had eyes that could drink a man's soul, and an odd-looking red bird she had bought off a Sea Folk ship. She claimed it could tell the future. This bird had a fat yellow beak nearly as long as its body, and it...."