Later that day, long after night had fallen on Cairhien, Mat knocked on his sister's door. Hers and Natael's, he amended with a scowl. Burn Neya, what could she possibly see in the man? Mat had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that his little sister, who had been a girl when she disappeared over a year ago, was now a grown woman. With flaming terrible taste in men.
That wasn't the reason of his visit, of course. He'd had a pretty disturbing night, what with Melindhra attempting to stick a knife in him and all that. He still couldn't quite grasp the fact that he'd killed her, which was more or less the reason for his coming here in the middle of the bloody night. If Melindhra could turn out to be a Darkfriend, why not the gleeman, or anyone else for that matter?
Neya opened the door a crack and smiled when she saw him. Apparently, she hadn't been sleeping, although her hair was tousled. She gestured for him to come inside. Thankfully, Natael wasn't here. They settled in the two chairs on the balcony. "Is everything alright?" she asked him with a concerned frown. "You look a bit peaky."
Mat snorted. "Nothing out of the ordinary, really. The woman who's been sharing my blankets for the past few weeks tried to kill me, but I killed her first," he told her darkly.
"Melindhra?" Neya asked, shock painted on her face. Mat nodded. "Burn my eyes! What did you do to her?" Mat gave her an outraged look but, before he could protest, Neya raised her hands in a placating gesture. "Sorry. I didn't mean that. But I never did like her, you know," she went on with a faint grimace. "Why in the Pit of Doom did she attack you?"
Mat let out a deep sigh. "She was a Darkfriend," he muttered. "One of Sammael's. At least, I think she was. She had a knife with nine golden bees, so I assume she served him," he said. Suddenly he put his head in his hands. "I shared my bed with a bloody Darkfriend!"
Neya put a hand on his shoulder. "You couldn't have known," she told him in a comforting voice. "But why did she decide to attack you now? She certainly had better opportunities to stab you in the past," she said with a frown.
"She went rabid when I told her Rand was sending me to lead his army against Sammael. She was probably trying to buy some time so she could warn him. I'm not sure," he finished lamely.
Neya's eyes widened. "Rand is sending you to Illian? At the head of an army?" Her voice grew increasingly incredulous as she spoke.
"He seems to think I have a knack for it," Mat muttered sourly.
"Well, look who's there," Natael called from inside the room. He hadn't bothered to knock before letting himself in, Mat noticed. "Matrim bloody Cauthon himself. The hero who slayed Couladin in single combat and led his band of merry men to victory with barely a loss," he said dramatically. Mat shot him a baleful glare. Bloody gleeman. Natael grinned at him.
Neya sighed softly. "Behave, boys. Mat, do you want to stay here tonight?" she asked, concerned.
"Hey, I'm not a child!" he told her indignantly. Bloody woman. Neya gave him a bright smile, showing teeth. "Burn you," Mat grumbled, rising to his feet. "I just came here to warn you. Be careful. You never know who will be trying to stab you," he said with a pointed look in the gleeman's direction. They both chuckled softly. Burn them both! "I'll see you tomorrow," he threw the words over his shoulder as he exited the room.
"Do you think it was Sammael?" Neya asked Jasin some time later as they lay in bed.
"Hard to tell," he replied quietly. "It could have been Rahvin, trying to deflect attention from himself. Or any of the others, really. Who knows what they're up to?" he said, holding back a yawn.
"When Rand goes to face Rahvin tomorrow, I'm coming along," she announced matter-of-factly.
That brought him up short. "You can't come. You can't channel! What are you going to do when we're under attack?" he asked, staring at her in disbelief.
She gave him a sweet smile. "You do realise that, of the two of us, I'm the most likely to survive a sword fight, don't you?" she said teasingly. "Besides, I won't be the only person there who can't channel."
"Do you really believe that Rahvin or Sammael or any of them will give you the opportunity to demonstrate your sparring abilities before they crush you like an insect?" he asked sarcastically. "Well, Demandred might," he amended reluctantly, "but you won't live to tell about it."
"What was he like?" she questioned him suddenly. "Demandred. Did you know him? Before the War of Power, I mean."
He frowned slightly at the change of topic. "If you think I'm going to let it slide…" he began.
"I know you won't. I also know that I don't need your permission to go," she told him fiercely. He started to open his mouth. "Don't bother. It's the price you have to pay for putting me in this situation. If you're going to be in danger, I want to be there to make sure nothing happens to you," she said in a tone that brooked no argument. He muttered something under his breath. It sounded a lot like a curse in the Old Tongue, although she wasn't familiar with the phrase.
"Fine," he said eventually. "I didn't know him well, but I encountered him a few times, at social gatherings and such events."
"Really? Elan said he wasn't keen on that sort of things."
"He wasn't. He spent most of his time glaring at Lews Therin and drinking alone in a corner. At least when he wasn't being pursued by some woman," he said. "I only spoke to him once or twice, in passing. Before he turned to the Shadow, I mean. Not that he ever talked to me much after he became one of us," he added with a sneer. "Thought highly of himself, Demandred did. Everyone else was beneath his notice."
The crow calls the raven black, Neya thought amusedly. He was always quick to point out flaws in others but rarely acknowledged his own. "Did?" she said out loud. "He's still alive, isn't he?" she asked with a frown.
"As far as I know. I haven't seen him or even heard of him since I… woke up," he said after a brief hesitation.
"What was it like, waking up in Shayol Ghul after all this time?" She had been wondering about this for a while, but had never dared to ask.
He didn't answer right away. "It felt like suddenly coming to your senses after passing out from too much drinking," he ventured eventually. "We didn't realise what was happening. The last memory I had, before pulling myself off the floor, was of Ishamael cursing and charging toward the exit, Aginor and Balthamel on his heels. Next thing I know, I'm on the floor and Rahvin is giving me a quizzical look. A few of the others were still… asleep, Demandred among them," he went on. "I picked myself up, asked Ared what had happened, but he simply shook his head in puzzlement. We couldn't wake the others, so we decided to go out. There was nothing outside. A few Trollocs, some Shades. No armies. The sky was different. The whole world looked different."
"Wait," Neya cut in. "You had no idea that you'd been asleep? Or unconscious, or whatever it was?" she asked in a surprised voice. He shook his head. "So, when you went out, you didn't know that three thousand years had just passed you by," she went on slowly.
He shook his head again. "No idea whatsoever. We looked around for a long time, trying to make sense of it. Then Ishamael appeared," he said glumly. "His eyes and mouth were on fire. He was clearly not all there, and the more he explained, the more I wondered if he'd gone mad, plain and simple. I couldn't believe it, you see. It's one thing to be promised immortality, and quite another to realise you've just spent three millennia… sleeping. We stared at him in shock, and he laughed like a loon at the look on our faces. When he recovered he told us to follow him. We stepped into a library of sorts, although it looked nothing like any library I'd ever seen. It was small and dingy and it smelled horrible. I still don't know where it was. He showed us a few books, most of them written in a language neither Ared nor I could make sense of. The Common Tongue," he clarified when she frowned. "Neither of us could understand it at the time, you see. Ishamael had taken the time to make summaries in the Old Tongue, but he told us we would need to learn this barbaric language of yours quickly." He grimaced a little at that, to show how much he'd appreciated the process. "Lews Therin Telamon: the Kinslayer. A Brief Account of the Breaking. The Life and Death of Artur Hawkwing. Others as well, I don't remember all the titles. Ishamael talked as we read his notes. How Lews Therin had sealed the Great Lord's prison. The taint, the madness. We were stunned into silence. He explained what he'd been up to until then, or part of it, and said that only Aginor, Balthamel, Be'lal, Sammael and Mierin had awakened so far. He told us to find our marks, do some research. He'd meet with us when we'd accommodated."
They were both silent for a moment. "I can't imagine what that must have been like," Neya whispered, snuggling closer to him. "To have your whole life turned upside down like that, so abruptly." She knew exactly what he had been up to before he was imprisoned in Shayol Ghul, and most of it was rather gruesome, but it was still quite a traumatic experience, Forsaken or not.
He turned to face her, smiling. A genuine smile, not his usual grin or leer. "You are such a strange woman," he told her affectionately.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" she said wryly. "What makes me so strange?" she asked curiously.
"The way you always put aside the bad in people and focus on the rest, no matter how well hidden it might be," he replied softly, nuzzling her neck. "The way you care about everyone. Even me." That was all the answer she received. Things quickly escalated after that.