Free Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan Page B

my Lord. Old Mil don’t know, but he thinks it so. Everybody says it, my Lord. Everybody says this Dragon did it. My Lord? Old Mil’s neck, my Lord! My Lord!”
    Gawyn jerked his hands away as though burned. He felt on fire inside. It had been another neck he wanted in his hands. “The Daughter-Heir.” His voice sounded far off. “Is there any word of the Daughter-Heir, Elayne?”
    Tesen backed away a long pace as soon as he was free. “Not as old Mil knows, my Lord. Some says she’s dead, too. Some says he killed her, but old Mil don’t know for sure.”
    Gawyn nodded slowly. Thought seemed to be drifting up from the bottom of a well.
My blood shed before hers; my life given before hers
. “Thank you, Master Tesen. I. . . .”
My blood shed before hers
. . . That was the oath he had taken when barely tall enough to peer into Elayne’s cradle. “You may trade with. . . . Some of my men may need . . .” Gareth Bryne had had to explain to him what it meant, but even then he had known he had to keep that oath if he failed at everything else in his life. Jisao and the others were looking at him worriedly. “Take care of the peddler,” he told Jisao roughly, and turned away.
    His mother dead, and Elayne. Only a rumor, but rumors on everyone’s lips sometimes had a way of turning out true. He climbed half a dozen paces toward the Aes Sedai camp before he knew it. His hands hurt. He had to look to realize they were cramping from the grip he had on his sword hilt, and he had to force them to let go. Coiren and the others meant to take Rand al’Thor to Tar Valon, but if his mother was dead. . . . Elayne. If they were dead, he would see whether the Dragon Reborn could live with a sword through his heart!
     
    Adjusting her red-fringed shawl, Katerine Alruddin rose from the cushions with the other women in the tent. She almost sniffed when Coiren,plump and pompous, intoned, “As it has been agreed, so shall it be.” This was a meeting with savages, not the conclusion of a treaty between the Tower and a ruler.
    The Aielwomen showed no more reaction, no more expression, than when they first arrived. That was something of a surprise; kings and queens betrayed their innermost feelings when faced by two or three Aes Sedai, much less half a dozen; brutish savages surely should be trembling visibly by now. Perhaps that should have been almost no reaction. Their leader—her name was Sevanna, followed by some nonsense about “septs” and “Shaido Aiel” and “wise”—said, “It is agreed so long as I get to see his face.” She had a sulky mouth, and wore her blouse unlaced to attract men’s eyes; that the Aiel chose one like her to lead showed how crude they were. “I want to see him, and have him see me, when he is defeated. Only with that will your Tower be allied to the Shaido.”
    The hint of eagerness in her voice made Katerine suppress a smile. Wise? This Sevanna truly was a fool. The White Tower did not have allies; there were those who served its ends willingly and those who served unwillingly, no others.
    A slight thinning at the corners of Coiren’s mouth betrayed her irritation. The Gray was a good negotiator, but she did like to have things done just so, every foot placed exactly where it had been planned to go. “Without doubt, your service deserves what you ask.”
    One of the gray-haired Aiel—Tarva, or some such—narrowed her eyes, but Sevanna nodded, hearing what Coiren had wanted her to hear.
    Coiren set out to escort the Aielwomen as far as the foot of the hill, along with Erian, a Green, and Nesune, a Brown, and the five Warders they had between them. Katerine went as far as the edge of the trees to watch. On arrival the Aiel had been allowed to come up alone, like the supplicants they were, but now they were given all honor to make them believe they truly were friends and allies. Katerine wondered whether they were civilized enough to recognize the subtleties.
    Gawyn was down