sat on the ground, propping up Moiraine, who was blinking and looking about her.
Mat spun on the tower and pointed upward. 'I know you're watching!' he said, thrilled. He had made it. He had bloody made it out alive! 'I beat you, you crusty boot-leavings! I, Matrim Cauthon, survived your traps! Ha!' He raised the ashandarei over his head. 'And you gave me the way out! Chew on that bitterness for lunch, you flaming, burning, misbegotten liars!'
Mat beamed, slamming the spear down butt first onto the ground beside him. He nodded. Nobody got the better of Matrim Cauthon. They had lied to him, told him vague prophecies and threatened him, and then they had hanged him. But Mat came out ahead in the end.
'Who was the other?' Moiraine's soft voice asked from behind. 'The one I saw, but did not know?'
'He didn't make it out,' Thom said somberly.
That dampened Mat's spirits. Their victory had come at a price, a terrible one. Mat been traveling with a legend all this time?
'He was a friend,' Thom said softly.
'He was a great man,' Mat said, turning and pulling his ashandarei from where he had planted it in the dirt. 'When you write the ballad of all this, Thom, make sure you point out that he was the hero.'
Thom glanced at Mat, then nodded knowingly. 'The world will want to know what happened to that man.' Light. As Mat thought about it Thom had not been at all surprised to hear Noal was Jain Farstrider. He had known. When had he figured it out? Why had he said nothing to Mat? Some friend Thom was.
Mat just shook his head. 'Well, we're out, one way or another. But Thom, next time I want to do the bloody negotiating, sneak up behind and hit me on the head with something large, heavy and blunt. Then take over.'
'Your request is noted.'
'Let's move on a little way. I don't like that bloody tower looming over me.'
'Yes,' Moiraine said, 'you could say that they feed off emotion. Though I wouldn't call it 'feeding off' so much as 'delighting in' emotion. They don't need it to survive, but it pleases them greatly.'
They sat in a wooded hollow a short walk from the tower, next to the meadow beside the Arinelle. The thick tree canopy cooled the air and obscured their view of the tower.
Mat sat on a small, mossy boulder as Thom made a fire. He had a few of Aludra's strikers in his pocket as well as some packets of tea, though there was nothing to warm the water in.
Moiraine sat on the ground, still wrapped in Thom's cloak, leaning back against a fallen log. She held the cloak closed from the inside, letting it envelop her completely, save for her face and those dark curls. She looked more a woman than Mat remembered—in his memories, she was like a statue. Always expressionless, face like polished stone, eyes like dark brown topaz.
Now she sat with pale skin, flushed cheeks, hair curled and falling naturally around her face. She was fetching, save for that ageless Aes Sedai face. Yet that face showed far more emotion than Mat remembered, a look of fondness when she glanced at Thom, a faint shiver when she spoke of her time in the tower.
She glanced at Mat, and her eyes were still appraising. Yes, this was the same Moiraine. Humbled, cast down. That made her seem stronger to him for some reason.
Thom blew at a hesitant flame that curled a lock of smoke into the air before flickering out. The wood was probably too wet. Thom cursed.
'It's all right, Thom,' Moiraine said softly. 'I will be well.'
'I won't have you catching cold the moment we free you from that place,' Thom said. He got out a striker, but suddenly the wood sparked, and then fire sputtered to life as it consumed the too-wet tinder.
Mat glanced at Moiraine, who had a look of concentration on her face.
'Oh,' Thom said, then chuckled. 'I'd forgotten about that, nearly…'
'It's all I can manage now on my own,' Moiraine said, grimacing. Light, had Moiraine grimaced before? She been too high-and-mighty for that, had she not? Or was Mat remembering her wrong?
Moiraine. He was talking to flaming Aloirainel Though he had gone into the tower with the distinct purpose of rescuing her, it seemed incredible that he was speaking with her. It was like talking to…
Well, like talking to Birgitte Silverbow or Jain Farstrider. Mat smiled, shaking his head. What a world this was, and what a strange place he had in it.
'What did you mean by that, Moiraine?' Thom asked, nurturing the fire with some sticks. 'It's all you can manage?'
'The Aelfinn and Eelfinn,' she explained, voice calm. 'They savor and relish powerful emotions. For some reason the effects of a ta'veren are even more intoxicating to them. There are other things that they enjoy.'
Thom glanced at her, frowning.
'My Power, Thom,' she explained. 'I could hear them barking and hissing to one another as they fed on me, both Aelfinn and Eelfinn in turn. They have not often had an Aes Sedai to themselves, it seems. While draining my ability to channel, they were fed twofold—my sorrow at what I was losing and the Power itself. My capacity has been greatly reduced.
'They claimed to have killed Lanfear by draining her too quickly, though I think they may have been trying to make me afraid. A man was there once, when they woke me. He said I was not the one he wanted.' She hesitated, then shivered. 'Sometimes I wished that they would drain me quickly and end my life.'
The small camp grew silent save for the popping of the fire. Thom looked toward Moiraine, seeming helpless.
'Do not show me such sorrow, Thom Merrilin,' Moiraine said, smiling. 'I have felt terrible things, but all people know such moments of despair. I believed that you would come.' She removed her hand from the cloak— revealing a slender, pale shoulder and collarbone—and reached toward him. He hesitated, then took the hand and squeezed it.
Moiraine looked to Mat. 'And you, Matrim Cauthon. Not a simple farm lad any longer. Does your eye pain you much?'
Mat shrugged.
'I would Heal the wound if I could,' Moiraine said. 'But even were I still as strong as I once was, I couldn't restore your eye.' She looked down releasing Thom's hand and holding up her arm. 'Do you have the angreal?'
'Oh, yes,' Thom said, fishing the strange bracelet out of his pocket. He put it on her arm.
'With this,' Moiraine said. 'I will be strong enough to at least take the pain away. They placed it on me to let me draw more of the Power, to make their feeding more succulent. I asked for it, actually, as one of my three demands. I did not realize they would end up using it against me.'
'They gave you your three demands?' Mat asked, frowning.
'I passed through the ter'angreal,' she said. 'The ancient treaty held for both of us, though with the doorway destroyed, there was no simple return. I knew from… previous events that I would not escape unless you came for me, no matter what my demands were or how carefully I worded them. So I used them for the best.'
'What did you ask for?' Mat asked. 'Beyond the angreal?'
She smiled. 'I shall keep that to myself, for now. You do have my thanks, young Matrim. For my life.'
'Then I guess we're equal,' he said. 'You saved me from life in the Two Rivers. Burn me if I haven't had a nice gallop of it since then.'
'And your wound?'
'Doesn't hurt so much.' Actually, it throbbed. Really, really badly. 'No need for you to waste strength on it.'
'Still afraid of the One Power, I see.'
He bristled. 'Afraid?'
'I should think you have good reason for that wariness.' She looked away from him. 'But take care. The most displeasing of events in our lives are sometimes for our good.'
Yes, she was still Moiraine. Quick with a moral and advice. But perhaps she had a right—after what she had been through—to lecture on suffering. Light! She had known what she would have to go through, and yet she had still pulled Lanfear into that ter'angreal? Maybe Mat was not the hero here, and maybe Noal was not either.
'So what now?' Thom said, settling back on a stump. The warmth of the fire did feel good.
'I must find Rand,' Moiraine said. 'He will need my help. I trust he has done well in my absence?'
'I don't know about that,' Mat said. 'He's half mad and the whole bloody world is at one another's throats.'
