She was clothed only in a fine white mist that shifted and shone around her, the details of her figure obfuscated but not hidden. Her eyes were closed, and her dark hair—curly but no longer in perfect ringlets—fluttered as if in a wind blowing up from beneath. Her hands rested atop her stomach, and there was a strange bracelet of something that looked like aged ivory on her left wrist.
Moiraine.
Mat felt a surge of emotions. Worry, frustration, concern, awe. She was the one who had started this all. He had hated her at times. He also owed her his life. She was the first one who had meddled, yanking him this way and that. Yet—looking back—he figured that she had been the most honest about it of anyone who had used him. Unapologetic, unyielding. And selfless.
She had dedicated everything to protecting three foolish boys, all ignorant of what the world would demand of them. She had determined to take them to safety. Maybe train them a little, whether they wanted it or not.
Because they needed it.
Light, her motives seemed clear to him now. That did not make him any less angry with her, but it did make him grateful. Burn her, but this was a confusing set of emotions! Those bloody foxes—how dare they keep her like this! Was she alive?
Thom and Noal were staring—Noal solemn, Thom disbelieving. So Mat stepped forward to pull Moiraine free. As soon as his hands touched the mist, however, he felt a blazing pain. He screamed, pulling back, shaking his hand.
“It’s bloody hot,” Mat said. “It—”
He cut off as Thom stepped forward.
“Thom…” Mat said warningly.
“I don’t care,” the gleeman said. He stepped up to the mist, reaching in, his clothing beginning to steam, his eyes watering from the pain. He did not flinch. He dug into that mist and took hold of her, then pulled her free. Her weight sank into his arms, but his aging limbs were strong, and she looked frail enough that she must not have weighed much.
Light! Mat had forgotten how small she was. A good head shorter than he was. Thom knelt, pulling off his gleeman’s cloak and wrapping her in it. Her eyes were still closed.
“Is she…” Noal asked.
“She lives,” Thom said quietly. “I felt her heartbeat.” He took the bracelet off her arm. It was in the shape of a man bent backward with his wrists bound to his ankles, clothed in a strange suit of clothing. “It looks like a ter’angreal of some sort,” Thom said, tucking it into his coat pocket. “I—”
“It is an angreal,” a voice proclaimed. “Strong enough to be nearly sa’angreal. It can be part of her price, should you wish to pay it.”
Mat spun. The pedestals were now occupied by Eelfinn, four males, four females. All eight wore white instead of black—white skirts with straps across the chests for the males and blouses for the females, made from that disturbing pale substance that looked like skin.
“Mark your tongues,” Mat said to Thom and Noal, trying to contain his worry. “Speak amiss, and they’ll have you strung up, claiming it was your own desire. Ask nothing of them.”
The other two fell silent, Thom holding Moiraine close, Noal carrying his torch and staff warily, pack over his shoulder.
“This is the great hall,” Mat said to the Eelfinn. “The place called the Chamber of Bonds. You must abide by the pacts you make here.”
“The bargain has been arranged,” one of the Eelfinn males said, smiling, showing pointed teeth.
The other Eelfinn leaned in, breathing deeply, as if smelling something. Or…as if drawing something from Mat and the others. Birgitte had said that they fed off emotion.
“What bargain?” Mat snapped, glancing around at the pedestals. “Burn you, what bargain?”
“A price must be paid,” one said.
“The demands must be met,” said another.
“A sacrifice must be given.” This from one of the females. She smiled more broadly than the others. Her teeth were pointed, too.
“I want the way out restored as part of the bargain,” Mat said. “I want it back where it was and open again. And I’m not bloody done negotiating, so don’t assume that this is my only request, burn you.”
“It will be restored,” an Eelfinn said. The others leaned forward. They could sense his desperation. Several of them seemed dissatisfied. They didn’t expect us to make it here, Mat thought. They don’t like to risk losing us.
“I want you to leave that way out open until we get through,” Mat continued. “No blocking it up or making it bloody vanish when we arrive. And I want the way to be direct, no changing rooms about. A straight pathway. And you bloody foxes can’t knock us unconscious or try to kill us or anything like that.”
They did not like that. Mat caught several of them frowning. Good. They would see they were not negotiating with a child.
“We take her,” Mat said. “We get out.”
“These demands are expensive,” one of the Eelfinn said. “What will you pay for these boons?”
“The price has been set,” another whispered from behind.
And it had been. Somehow, Mat knew. A part of him had known from the first time he had read that note. If he had never spoken to the Aelfinn that first time, would any of this have happened? Likely, he would have died. They had to tell the truth.
They had warned him of a payment to come. For life. For Moiraine. And he would have to pay it. In that moment, he knew that he would. For he knew that if he did not, the cost would be too great. Not just to Thom, not just to Moiraine, and not just to Mat himself. By what he’d been told, the fate of the world itself depended on this moment.
Well burn me for a fool, Mat thought. Maybe I am a hero after all. Didn’t that beat all?
“I’ll pay it,” Mat announced. “Half the light of the world.” To save the world.
“Done!” one of the male Eelfinn announced.
The eight creatures leaped—as if one—from their pedestals. They enclosed him in a tightening circle, like a noose. Quick, supple and predatory.
“Mat!” Thom cried, struggling to hold the unconscious Moiraine while reaching for one of his knives.
Mat held up a hand toward Thom and Noal. “This must be done,” he said, taking a few steps away from his friends. The Eelfinn passed them without sparing a glance. The gold studs on the straps crossing the male Eelfinn’s chests glittered in the yellow light. All eight creatures were smiling wide.
Noal raised his sword.
“No!” Mat yelled. “Don’t break this agreement. If you do, we all will die here!”
The Eelfinn stepped up in a tight circle around Mat. He tried to look at them all at once, heart thudding louder and louder in his chest. They were sniffing at him again, drawing in deep breaths, enjoying whatever it was they drew from him.
“Do it, burn you,” Mat growled. “But know this is the last you’ll get of me. I’ll escape your tower, and I’ll find a way to free my mind from you forever. You won’t have me. Matrim Cauthon is not your bloody puppet.”
“We shall see,” an Eelfinn male growled, eyes lustful. The creature’s hand snapped forward, too-sharp nails glittering in the dim light. He drove them directly into the socket around Mat’s left eye, then ripped the eye out with a snap.
Mat screamed. Light, but it hurt! More than any wound taken in battle, more than any insult or barb. It was as if the creature had pressed its deceitful claws into his mind and soul.
Mat fell to his knees, spear clattering to the ground as he raised hands to his face. He felt slickness on his cheek, and he screamed again as his fingers felt the empty hole where his eye had been.
He threw his head back and yelled into the room, bellowing in agony.
Eelfinn watched with their horrid, almost-human faces, eyes narrowed in ecstasy as they fed on something rising from Mat. An almost invisible vapor of red and white.
“The savor!” one Eelfinn exclaimed.
“So long!” cried another.
“How it twists around him!” said the one who had taken his eye. “How it spins! Scents of blood in the air! And the gambler becomes the center of all! I can taste fate itself!”
Mat howled, his hat falling back as he looked through a single, tear-muddled eye toward the darkness above. His eye socket seemed to be on fire! Blazing! He felt the blood and sera dry on his face, then flake away as he screamed. The Eelfinn drew in deeper breaths, looking drunk.
Mat let out one final scream. Then he clenched his fists and shut his jaw, though he could not stop a low groan—a growl of anger and pain—from sounding deep within his throat. One of the Eelfinn males collapsed, as if overwhelmed. He was the one who had taken Mat’s eye. He clutched it in his hands, curling around it. The others stumbled away, finding their way to pillars or the sides of the room, resting against them for support.
Noal dashed to Mat’s side, Thom following more carefully, still cradling Moiraine.
“Mat?” Noal asked.
Teeth still clenched against the pain, Mat forced himself to reach back and snatch his hat off the white floor. He was not leaving his hat, burn him. It was a bloody good hat.
He stumbled to his feet.
“Your eye, Mat…” Thom said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mat said. Burn me for a fool. A bloody, goat-headed fool. He could barely think through the agony.
His other eye blinked tears of pain. It really did seem he had lost half of the light of the world. It was like looking through a window with one half blackened. Despite the blazing pain in his left socket, he felt as he should be able to open his eye.
But he could not. It was gone. And no Aes Sedai channeling could replace that.
He pulled on his hat, defiantly ignoring the pain. He pulled the brim down on the left, shading the empty socket, then bent down and picked up his ashandarei, stumbling but managing it.
“I should have been the one to pay,” Thom said, voice bitter. “Not you, Mat. You didn’t even want to come.”
“It was my choice,” Mat said. “And I had to do it, anyway. It’s one of the answers I was told by the Aelfinn when I first came. I’d have to give up half the light of the world to save the world. Bloody snakes.”
“To save the world?” Thom asked, looking down at Moiraine’s peaceful face, her body wrapped in the patchwork cloak. He had left his pack on the floor.
“She has something yet to do,” Mat said. The pain was retreating somewhat. “We need her, Thom. Burn me, but it’s probably something to do with Rand. Anyway, this had to happen.”
“And if it hadn’t?” Thom asked. “She said she saw…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Mat said, turning toward the doorway. The Eelfinn were still overwhelmed. One would think they had been the ones to lose an eye, looking at those expressions! Mat set his pack on his shoulder, leaving Thom’s where it sat. He could not carry two, not and be able to fight.
“Now I’ve seen something,” Noal said, looking over the room and its occupants. “Something no man has ever seen, I warrant. Should we kill them?”
Mat shook his head. “Might break our bargain.”