deep brown cloak. He carried his pack slung over one arm and his ashandarei in his hand. He had practiced with the new iron counterweight on the butt, and was pleased.
The Eelfinn had given him the weapon. Well, if they dared stand between him and Moiraine, then they would see what he could do with their gift. Burn him, but they would.
The three men stepped up to the tower. It did not appear to have a single opening anywhere on its two- hundred-foot-tall height. Not a window, not a seam, not a scratch. Mat looked up, feeling disoriented as he stared along its gleaming length toward the distant gray sky. Did the tower reflect too much light?
He shuddered and turned to Thom. Mat gave a single nod.
Hesitating only briefly, Thom slid a bronze knife from its sheath on his belt and stepped over to set the tip against the tower. He grimly slid the knife in the shape of a triangle, about a palm wide, point down. Metal scraped against metal, but left no trail. Thom finished by making a wavy line through the center, as one did at the start of any game of Snakes and Foxes.
All stood silently. Mat glanced at Thom. 'Did you do it right?'
'I think so,' Thom said. 'But how do we know what 'right' is? That game has been passed down for—'
He cut off as a line of light appeared on the tower front. Mat jumped back, leveling his spear. The glowing lines formed a triangle matching the one that Thom had drawn, and then—quick as a single beat of a moth's wings—the steel in the center of the triangle vanished.
Noal eyed the palm-sized hole. 'That's a tad small to get through.' He stepped up to it and looked through. 'Nothing but darkness on the other side.'
Thom looked down at the knife. 'Guess that triangle is actually a doorway. That's what you're drawing when you start the game. Should I try a bigger one?'
'Guess so,' Mat said. 'Unless the gholam taught you how to squeeze through holes the size of a fist.'
'No need to be unpleasant,' Thom said, using the knife to draw another triangle around the first, this one large enough to walk through. He finished with the wavy line.
Mat counted. It took seven heartbeats for the lines of white to appear. The steel between them faded away, opening a triangular corridor leading into the tower. The inside looked to be solid steel.
'Light burn me,' Noal whispered. The corridor disappeared into darkness; the sunlight seemed hesitant to enter the opening, though it was probably just a trick of the light.
'And so we begin the game that cannot be won,' Thom said, sliding the knife back into its sheath.
'Courage to strengthen,' Noal whispered, stepping forward, holding up a lantern with a flickering flame. 'Fire to blind. Music to dazzle. Iron to bind.'
'And Matrim Cauthon,' Mat added. 'To bloody even the odds.' He stepped through the doorway.
Light flashed, brilliant white, blinding. He cursed, squeezing, his eyes shut and lowering his ashandarei in what he hoped was a threatening posture. He blinked and the whiteness faded. He was in the center of a wide room with a triangular opening behind him, freestanding, with the point down at the floor. It was pure black, made of twisting cords that in some places seemed metal and in other places seemed wood.
The room was black as well, shaped like an off-kilter square. Rippling white steam poured up from holes at all four corners; that mist glowed with a white light. There were four hallways extending from the room, one in each direction.
The chamber was not exactly square. Each side was a slightly different length than the others, making for an odd meeting of angles at the corners. And that steam! It gave off a sulphurous stench that made him want to breathe through his mouth. The onyx-colored walls were not stone, but were of some reflective material, like the scales of enormous fish. The steam collected at the ceiling, glowing faintly with a soft light.
Burn him! This was not like the first place he had visited, with its twisting coils and circular doorways, but nor was it like the second one, with the star-shaped rooms and lines of yellow light! Where was he? What had he gotten himself into? He turned about, nervous.
Thom stumbled through the doorway, blinking, dazed. Mat dropped his pack and caught the gleeman by one arm. Noal came next. The bony man kept his footing, but was obviously blinded, his lantern held forward defensively.
The two others blinked, tears streaming from Noal's eyes, but they eventually got their bearings and glanced about. The room, like the hallways extending in all four directions, was empty.
'This doesn't look like what you described, Mat,' Thom said. His voice echoed faintly, though the sounds seemed eerily warped. Almost like whispers thrown back at them. It made the hair on Mat's neck rise.
'I know,' Mat said, pulling a torch from his pack. 'This place doesn't makes sense. The stories agree about that, at least. Here, light this, Noal.'
Thom got out a torch of his own and both lit from Noal's lantern. They had strikers from Aludra, but Mat wanted to save those. He had been half-afraid that in the tower, flames would go out once lit. But the lights burned steady and true. That heartened him somewhat.
'So where are they?' Thom asked, walking around the perimeter of the black room.
'They're never here when you come through,' Mat said, holding up his own torch and inspecting a wall. Was that writing, carved into the not-stone? The unfamiliar script was so fine and delicate he could barely see it. 'But watch yourself. They can appear behind you, faster than an innkeeper who heard coins clink in your pouch.'
Noal inspected the triangular opening they had come through. 'Do you suppose we can use this to get back?' It resembled the stone ter'angreal Mat had stepped through before. Just a different shape.
'I hope so,' Mat said.'
'Maybe we should try,' Noal said.
Mat nodded to him. He did not like being separated, but they did need to know if this was a way back or not. Noal looked determined and stepped through. He vanished.
Mat held his breath for a long moment, but the aged man did not return. Was it a trick? Had this doorway been placed here to— Noal stumbled back into the room through the opening. Thom set his torch on the floor and dashed over to help. Noal recovered more quickly this time, blinking away the blindness. 'It sealed me out,' he explained. 'I had to draw another triangle to get back in.'
'At least we know we've got a means of escape,' Thom said.
Assuming those bloody Aelfinn or Eelfinn don't move it, Mat thought, remembering his previous visit, the one that had ended with him being hanged. That time, the rooms and corridors had shifted mysteriously, in total defiance of what was right.
'Will you look at that?' Thom said.
Mat lowered his spear and Noal had an iron shortsword in his hand in a moment. Thom was pointing at his torch, which burned fitfully where he had set it on the floor beside one of the glowing steam vents.
The white steam pushed away from the flames, like it was being blown by a breeze. Only, no breeze ever made steam move so unnaturally. It curved around the fire in a loop. Thom stepped over and picked up the torch. He moved it toward the column of steam, and it bowed out of the way. Thom rammed the torch directly into the steam's path, and the steam split, going around the flame and melding together into a single stream again above.
Thom glanced at the others.
'Don't ask me,' Mat said, scowling. 'I said this place doesn't make sense. If that's the oddest thing we see here, I'll be a Murandian's mustache. Come on.'
Mat picked one of the hallways and began to walk down it. The other two hurried to catch up. The steam glowed on the ceiling, bathing the black hallway with its milky light. The floor was made of interlocking triangular tiles that, once again, looked discomfortingly like scales. The corridor was wide and long, the other end distant and dark.
'To think,' Noal said, holding up his lantern, 'all of this hidden in that single tower.'
'I doubt we're in the tower anymore,' Mat said. Up ahead, he could see a slice out of the side of the wall, a kind of window. It was set up a little too high up to feel natural.
'Then where…' Noal trailed off as they reached the window, which was an off-center square. Through it, they could look out at an unnatural landscape. They were up several floors in some kind of spire, but that certainly was not Andor outside.
The window looked out over a canopy of dense vegetation that was too yellow. Mat recognized the wispy trees with a drooping umbrella of branches at the top, though before he had seen them from below. The fernlike
