Winter's Heart

The little woman drew herself up. By face and form she was a luscious plum, ready for plucking, but her big blue eyes were glacial. A peach, perhaps. Peaches were poisonous, here and now. 'You recall the Choedan Kal, I suppose.' No amount of effort could make that low, breathy voice anything except sultry, but she managed to inject sarcasm. 'Lews Therin has two of the access keys, one for each. And he knows a woman strong enough to use the female of the pair. He plans to use the Choedan Kal for his deed.'

Nearly everyone began to talk at once.

'I thought the keys were all destroyed!' Aran'gar exclaimed, surging to her feet. Her eyes were wide with fear. 'He could shatter the world just trying to use the Choedan Kal!'

'If you had ever read anything besides a history book, you would know they're almost impossible to destroy!' Osan'gar snarled at her. But he was tugging at his collar as if it were too tight, and his eyes seemed ready to fall out of his face. 'How can this girl know he has them? How?'

Graendal's wineglass had dropped from her hand as soon the words were out of Cyndane's mouth, bouncing end over end across the floor. Her gown turned as crimson as fresh blood, and her mouth twisted as if she were going to vomit. 'And you've just been hoping to blunder into him!' she screamed at Demandred. 'Hoping someone will find him for you! Fool! Fool!'

Demandred thought Graendal had been a touch flamboyant even for her. He would wager the announcement had been no surprise to her. It seemed she bore watching. He said nothing.

Putting a hand over his heart, for all the world like a lover, Moridin tilted up Cyndane's chin on his fingertips. Resentment burned in her eyes, but her face might have been a doll's unchanging face. She certainly accepted his attentions like a pliable doll. 'Cyndane knows many things,' Moridin said softly, 'and she tells me everything she knows. Everything.' The tiny woman's expression never altered, but she trembled visibly.

She was a puzzle to Demandred. At first he had thought she was Lanfear reincarnated. Bodies for transmigration supposedly were chosen by what was available, yet Osan'gar and Aran'gar were proof of the Great Lord's cruel sense of humor. He had been sure, until Mesaana told him the girl was weaker than Lanfear. Mesaana and the rest thought she was of this Age. Yet she spoke of al'Thor as Lews Therin, just as Lanfear had, and spoke of the Choedan Kal as one familiar with the terror they had inspired during the War of Power. Only balefire had been more feared, and only just. Or had Moridin taught her for purposes of his own? If he had any real purposes. There had always been times when the man's actions had been sheer madness.

'So it seems he must be killed after all,' Demandred said. Hiding his satisfaction was not easy. Rand al'Thor or Lews Therin Telamon, he would rest easier when the fellow was dead. 'Before he can destroy the world, and us. Which makes finding him all the more urgent.'

'Killed?' Moridin moved his hands as though weighing something. 'If it comes to that, yes,' he said finally. 'But finding him is no problem. When he touches the Choedan Kal, you will know where he is. And you will go there and take him. Or kill him, if necessary. The Nae'blis has spoken.'

'As the Nae'blis commands,' Cyndane said eagerly, bowing her head, and echos of her ran around the room, though Aran'gar sounded sullen, Osan'gar desperate, and Graendal oddly thoughtful.

Bending his neck hurt Demandred as much as speaking those words. So they would take al'Thor—while he was trying to use the Choedan Kal, no less, he and some woman drinking enough of the One Power to melt continents!—but there had been no indication that Moridin would be with them. Or his twin pets, Moghedien and Cyndane. The man was Nae'blis for now, but perhaps matters could be arranged so he did not get another body the next time he died. Perhaps it could be arranged soon.

Chapter 14: What the Veil Hides

The Victory of Kidron rolled on long sea swells, making the gilded lamps in the stern cabin swing on their gimbals, but Tuon sat calmly as the razor in Selucia's sure hand slid across her scalp. Through the tall stern windows she could see other greatships crashing through the gray-green swells in sprays of white, hundreds of them row on row, stretching to the horizon. Four times as many had been left at Tanchico. The Rhyagelle, Those Who Come Home. The Corenne, the Return, had begun.

A soaring albatross seemed to be following the Kidron, an omen of victory indeed, though the bird's long wings were black instead of white. It must still mean the same thing. Omens did not change according to location. An owl calling at dawn meant a death and rain without clouds an unexpected visitor whether in Imfaral or Noren M'Shar.

The morning ritual with her dresser's razor was soothing, and she needed that today. Last night, she had given a command in anger. No command should be issued in anger. She felt almost sei'mosiev, as if she had lost honor. Her balance was disturbed, and that boded as ill for the Return as a loss of sei'taer, albatross or no albatross.

Selucia wiped away the last of the lather with a warm damp cloth, then used a dry cloth, and finally powdered her smooth scalp lightly with a brush. When her dresser stepped back, Tuon rose and let her elaborately embroidered blue silk dressing gown slide to the gold-and-blue patterned carpet. Instantly the cool air pebbled her dark bare skin. Four of her ten maids rose gracefully from where they had been kneeling against the walls, cleanlimbed and comely in their filmy white robes. All had been purchased for their appearance as much as their skills, and they were very skilled. They had become used to the motions of the ship during the long voyage from Seanchan, and they scurried to fetch the garments that had already been laid out atop the carved chests and bring them to Selucia. Selucia never allowed the da'covale to actually dress her, not so much as stockings or slippers.

When she settled a pleated gown the color of well-aged ivory over Tuon's head, the younger woman could not help comparing the two of them in the tall mirror fastened to the inner wall. Golden-haired Selucia possessed a stately, cream-skinned beauty and cool blue eyes. Anyone might have taken her for one of the Blood, and of high rank, rather than so'jhin, if the left side of her head had not been shaved. A notion that would have shocked the woman to the quick, expressed aloud. The very idea of any stepping above her appointed station horrified Selucia. Tuon knew she herself would never have such a commanding presence. Her eyes were too large, and a liquid brown. When she forgot to keep a stern mask, her heart-shaped face belonged on a mischievous child. The top of her head barely came to Selucia's eyes, and her dresser was not a tall woman. Tuon could ride with the best, she excelled at wrestling and the use of suitable weapons, but she had always had to exercise her mind to impress. She had trained that tool as hard as she had trained at every other talent combined. At least the wide, woven belt of gold emphasized her waist enough that she would not be taken for a boy in a dress. Men watched when Selucia passed by, and Tuon had overheard some murmur about her full breasts. Perhaps that had nothing to do with a commanding presence, but it would have been nice to possess a little more bosom.

'The Light be upon me,' Selucia murmured, sounding amused, as the da'covale hurried back to kneel upright against the walls. 'You've done that every morning since the first day your head was shaved. Do you still think after three years that I'll leave a patch of stubble?'

Tuon realized that she had rubbed a hand across her bare scalp. Searching for stubble, she admitted to herself ruefully. 'If you did,' she said with mock severity, 'I would have you beaten. A repayment for all the times you used a switch on me.'

Placing a rope of rubies around Tuon's neck, Selucia laughed. 'If you pay me back for all that, I'll never be able to sit down again.'

Tuon smiled. Selucia's mother had given her to Tuon for a cradle-gift, to be her nursemaid, and more important, her shadow, a bodyguard no one knew about. The first twenty-five years of Selucia's life had been training for those jobs, training in secret for the second. On Tuon's sixteenth naming day, when her head was first shaved, she had made the traditional gifts of her House to Selucia, a small estate for the care she had shown, a pardon for the chastisements she had given, a sack of one hundred golden thrones for each time she had needed to punish her charge. The Blood assembled to watch her presented as an adult for the first time had been impressed by all those sacks of coin, more than many of them could have laid hand on themselves. She had been… unruly… as a child, not to mention headstrong. And the last traditional gift: the offer for Selucia to choose where she would be appointed next. Tuon was not sure whether she or the watching crowd had been more astonished when the