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.”
“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,