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!”