Towers of midnight

"We shall see," an Eelfi

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.

Eelfi

"The savor!" one Eelfi

"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 Eelfi

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 Eelfi

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 cha

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 Aelfi

"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 Eelfi

"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."

"Will they keep it?" Thom asked.

"Not if they can wiggle out of it," Mat said, then winced again. Light, but his head hurt! Well, he could not sit around and cry like he had lost his favorite foal. "Let's go."

They made their way out of the grand hall. Noal carried a torch, though he had reluctantly left his staff behind, favoring his shortsword.

There were no openings in the hallway this time, and Mat heard Noal muttering at that. It felt right. He had demanded a straight pathway back. The Eelfi

The hallway went on for a long while. Noal was growing more and more nervous; Mat kept on forward, footsteps in time with his throbbing skull. How would missing an eye change how he fought? He would have to be more careful of that left side. And he would have trouble judging distance now. In fact, he had that trouble now—walls and floor were disturbingly hard to judge.

Thom clutched Moiraine close to his chest, like a miser holding his gold. What was she to him, anyway? Mat had assumed that Thom was along for the same reason that Mat was—because it felt as if it needed to be done. That tenderness in Thom's face was not what Mat had expected to see.

The hallway ended abruptly in a five-sided arch. The room beyond appeared to be the one with the melted slag on the floor. No signs of the fight before were visible, no blood on the floor.

Mat took a deep breath and led the way through. He tensed as he saw Eelfi

But they held to their bargain. None attacked, and Mat began to feel right good about himself once they reached the other side of the room. He had beaten them. Last time, they had gotten the better end, but that was only because they had fought like cowards, punching a man who did not know the fight had started.

This time he had been ready. He had shown them that Matrim Cauthon was no fool.

They entered a corridor with the faintly glowing white steam at the top. The floor was of those black, interlocking triangles, curved on the sides like scales. Mat began to breathe easier as they entered one of the rooms with the twisting steam rising from the corners, though his eye socket still hurt like the nethers of a freshly gelded stallion.

He stopped in the center of the room, but then continued forward. He had demanded a straight pathway. That was what he would get. No doubling back and forth this time. "Blood and bloody ashes!" Mat said, realizing something as he walked.

"What?" Thom asked, looking up from Moiraine with alarm.

"My dice," Mat said. "I should have included getting my dice back in the bargain."

"But we discovered you don't need them to guide us."

"It's not about that," Mat grumbled. "I like those dice." He pulled his hat down again, looking down the hallway ahead. Was that motion he saw? All the way in the distance, a good dozen rooms away? No, it must be a trick of the shadows and the shifting steam.