weapon, or making a weapon for men to use in killing. Very near.
Still holding
'Caniedrin?' Lan said, sounding shocked.
'You know this fellow?' Ryne asked.
'Why?' Bukama growled, and there came the thud of a boot meeting ribs.
A weak voice answered in gasps. 'Gold. Why else? You still have? the Dark One's luck? turning just then? or that shaft? would have found? your heart. He should have? told me? she's Aes Sedai? instead of just saying? to kill her first.'
As soon as she heard those words, Moiraine dug her heels into Arrow's flanks to gallop the short distance, and flung herself from the saddle already preparing the weave for Healing. 'Get those arrows out of him,' she called as she ran toward them, holding up her cloak and skirts to keep from tripping. 'If the arrows remain, Healing will not keep him alive.'
'Why Heal him?' Lan asked, sitting himself down on a storm-fallen tree. Its great spread of dirt-covered roots rose in a fan high above his head. 'Are you so eager to see a hanging?'
'He's dead already,' Ryne said. 'Can you Heal that?' He sounded interested in seeing whether she could.
Moiraine's shoulders slumped. Caniedrin's eyes, open and staring up the branches overhead, were already glazed and empty. Strangely, despite the blood around his mouth he looked a beardless youth in his rumpled coat. Man enough to do murder, though. Man enough to die with a pair of arrows transfixing his chest. Dead, he could never tell her if it was this Gorthanes who had hired him, or where the man might be found, A nearly full quiver was fastened to his belt, and two arrows stuck upright in the ground nearby. Apparently, he had been confident he could kill four people with four shots. Even knowing Lan and Bukama, he had thought so. Knowing them, he had disobeyed his instructions and tried to kill Lan first. The most dangerous of them, as he must have thought.
As she studied the man, it came to her that he might tell her a little, even dead. With her belt knife, she sliced away the pouch hanging behind his quiver and emptied the contents beside him amid the small weeds pushing through the mulch. A wooden comb, a half-eaten piece of cheese covered with lint, a small folding knife, a ball of string that she unwound to make sure nothing was hidden inside, a filthy crumpled handkerchief that she un-wadded with the tip of her knife blade. It had been too much to hope for a letter written by Master Gorthanes giving instructions on how to find him. Cutting the cords of the leather purse tied to Caniedrin's belt, she upended that over the litter. A handful of silver and copper spilled out. And ten gold crowns. So. The price of her death in Kandor was the same as the price of a silk dress in Tar Valon. Fat coins, with the Rising Sun of Cairhien on one side and her uncle's profile on the other. A fitting footnote in the history of House Damodred.
'Have you taken to robbing the dead?' Lan asked in that irritatingly cool voice. Just asking, not accusing, but still?!
She straightened angrily just as Ryne snapped off the feathered end of the arrow jutting from Lan's back. Bukama was knotting a narrow strip of rawhide behind the arrowhead. Once he had it tight, he gripped the cord in his fist and gave one quick yank, pulling the arrow the rest of the way through. Lan blinked. The man had an
Ryne hurried back to the road while Bukama helped Lan off with his coat and shirt, revealing a puckered hole in his front. Likely the one behind was no better. The blood that had been soaking into coat and shirt began to pour freely down his chest and ribs. Neither man asked for Healing, and she was of half a mind not to offer it. More scars decorated Lan than she expected on a man so young, and a number of partly healed wounds crossed by neat dark stitches. Seemingly, he angered men as easily as he did women. Ryne returned carrying bandaging cloths and mouthing bread for a poultice. None of them were going to ask for Healing until the man bled to death!
'Will you accept Healing?' she asked coldly, reaching toward Lan's head. He shied back from her touch. He shied back!
'Day after tomorrow in Chachin, you may need your right arm,' Bukama muttered, scrubbing a hand under his nose and not meeting anyone's eyes. A very peculiar thing to say, but she knew there was no point in asking what it meant.
After a moment, Lan nodded and leaned forward. That was all. He did not ask or even accept her offer. He just leaned forward.
She clapped her hands on his head in something near to a pair of slaps and channeled. The convulsion when the Healing weave hit him, arms flinging wide, ripped him out of her grasp. Very satisfying. Even if he did only breathe hard rather than gasp. His old scars remained, the half-healed wounds were now thin pink lines-the stitches that had been on the outside, now loose, slid down his arms and chest; he might have difficulty picking out the rest-but smooth skin marked where the arrowholes had been. He could meet the wasps in perfect health. She could always Heal him again afterward, if need be. Only if need be, however.
They left the coins lying beside Caniedrin's body, though the men plainly could have used them. They wanted nothing from the dead man. Bukama found his mount tied a short distance away in the trees, a white-stockinged brown gelding with a look of speed about him and a prancing step. Lan removed the animal's bridle and tied it to the saddle, then slapped the horse's rump and sent him racing toward Ravinda.
'So he can eat until somebody finds him,' he explained when he saw her frowning after the gelding.
In all truth, she had been regretting not searching the saddlebags tied behind the gelding's saddle. But Lan had shown a surprising touch of kindness. She had not expected any such to be found in him. For that, he would escape the wasps. There had to be something memorable, in any case. She had only two more nights to crack him, after all. Once they reached Chachin, she would be too busy to attend to Lan Mandragoran. For a time she would be.
CHAPTER 22
If Canluum was a city of hills, Chachin was a city of mountains. The three highest rose almost a mile even with their peaks sheared off short, and all glittered in the noonday sun with colorful glazed tile roofs and tile- covered palaces. Atop the tallest, the Aesdaishar Palace shone brighter than any other in red and green, the prancing Red Horse flying above its largest dome. Three towered ring-walls surrounded the city, as did a deep dry moat a hundred paces wide spanned by two-dozen bridges, each with a fortress hulking at its mouth. The traffic was too great here, and the Blight too far away, for the helmeted and breastplated guards with the Red Horse on their chests to be so diligent as in Canluum, but crossing the Bridge of Sunrise, amid tides of wagons and carts and people mounted and afoot flowing both ways, still took some little while.
Once inside the first wall, Lan wasted no time drawing rein, out of the way of the heavy-laden merchants' wagons lumbering past. Even with Edeyn waiting, he had never been so glad to see any place in his life. By the letter of the law, they were not truly inside Chachin-the second, higher, wall lay more than a hundred paces ahead, and the third, still taller, as much beyond that-but he wanted to be done with this Alys. Where in the Light had she found fleas this early in the year? And blackflies! Blackflies should not appear for another month! He was a mass of itching welts. At least she had found no satisfaction in it. Of that, he was certain.
'The pledge was protection to Chachin, and it has been kept,' he told the woman. 'So long as you avoid the rougher parts of the city, you are as safe on any street as if you had a bodyguard of ten. So you may see to your affairs, and we will see to ours. Keep your coin,' he added coldly when she reached for her purse. Irritation flared, for losing self-control. Yet she offered insult atop insult.
