(Horned Skull) Hunter of Trollocs
Remnants of the earlymorning rain still dripped from the leaves of the apple trees, and a purple finch hopped along a limb where fruit was forming that would not be harvested this year. The sun was well up, but hidden behind thick gray clouds. Seated crosslegged on the ground, Perrin unconsciously tested his bowstring; the tightly wrapped, waxed cords had a tendency to go slack in wet weather. The storm Verin had called up to hide them from pursuit the night of the rescue had surprised even her with its ferocity, and beating rains had come three more times in the six days since. He believed it was six days. He had not really thought since that night, only drifted as events took him, reacting to what presented itself. The flat of his axe blade dug into his side, but he hardly noticed.
Low, grassy mounds marked generations of Aybaras buried here. The oldest among the carved wooden headpieces, cracked and barely legible, bore dates nearly three hundred years old, over graves indistinguishable from undisturbed ground. It was the mounds smoothed by rains but barely covered by grass that stabbed him. Generations of Aybaras buried here, but surely never fourteen at one time. Aunt Neain over by Uncle Carlin’s older grave, with their two children beside her. Great Aunt Ealsin in the row with Uncle Eward and Aunt Magde and their three children, the long row with his mother and his father. Adora and Deselle and little Pact. A long row of mounds with bare, wet earth still showing through the grass. He counted the arrows remaining in his quiver by touch. Seventeen. Too many had been damaged, worth recovering only for the steel arrowheads. No time to make his own; he would have to see the fletcher in Emond’s Field soon. Buel Dowtry made good arrows, even better than Tam.
A faint rustle behind his back made him sniff the air. “What is it, Dannil?” he said without looking around.
There was a catch of breath, a moment of startled surprise, before Dannil Lewin said, “The Lady is here, Perrin.” None of them had gotten used to him knowing who was who before he saw them, or in the dark, but he no longer really cared what they found strange.
He frowned over his shoulder. Dannil looked leaner than he had; farmers could only feed so many at once, and food had been feast or famine as the hunting went. Mostly famine. “The Lady?”
“The Lady Faile. And Lord Luc, too. They came from Emond’s Field.”
Perrin rose smoothly, taking long strides that made Dannil hurry to keep up. He managed not to look at the house. The charred timbers and sooty chimneys that had been the house where he grew up. He did scan the trees for his lookouts, those nearest the farm. Close to the Waterwood as it was, the land held plenty of tall oak and hemlock, and goodsized ash and bay. Thick foliage hid the lads well — drab
farm clothes made for good hiding — so even he had difficulty picking them out. He would have to talk with those farther out; they were supposed to see that no one came close without a warning. Even Faile and this Luc.
The camp, in a large thicket where he had once pretended to be in a far wilderness, was a rough place among the undergrowth, with blankets strung between trees to make shelters, and more scattered on the ground between the small cook fires. The branches dripped here, too. Most of the nearly fifty men in the camp, all young, were unshaven, either in imitation of Perrin or because it was unpleasant shaving in cold water. They were good hunters — he had sent home any who were not — but unaccustomed to more than a night or two outdoors at a time. And not used to what he had them doing, either.
Right then they were standing around gaping at Faile and Luc, and only four or five had longbow in hand. The rest of the bows lay with the bedding, and the quivers, too, more often than not. Luc stood idly flipping the reins of a tall black stallion, the very pose of indolent, redcoated arrogance, cold blue eyes ignoring the men around him. The man’s smell stood out among the others, cold and separate, too, almost as if he had nothing in common with the men around him, not even humanity.
Faile came hurrying to meet Perrin with a smile, her narrow divided skirts making a soft whiskwhisk as gray silk brushed silk. She smelled faintly of sweet herbal soap, and of herself. “Master Luhhan said we might find you here.”
He meant to demand what she was doing there, but found himself putting his arms around her and saying into her hair, “It’s good to see you. I have missed you.”
She pushed back enough to look up at him. “You look tired.”
He ignored that; he had no time to be tired. “You got everyone safely to Emond’s Field?”
“They are at the Winespring Inn.” She grinned suddenly. “Master al’Vere found an old halberd and says if the Whitecloaks want them, they will have to go through him. Everyone’s in the village now, Perrin. Verin and Alanna, the Warders. Pretending to be someone else, of course. And Loial. He certainly created a sensation. Even more than Bain and Chiad.” The grin faded into a frown. “He asked me to deliver a message to you. Alanna vanished twice without a word, once alone. Loial said Ihvon seemed surprised to find her gone. He said I wasn’t to let anyone else know.” She studied his face. “What does it mean, Perrin?”
“Nothing, maybe. Just that I can’t be sure I can trust her. Verin warned me against her, but can I trust Verin? You say Bain and Chiad are in Emond’s Field? I suppose that means he knows about them.” He jerked his head toward Luc. A few of the men had approached him, asking diffident questions, and he was answering with a condescending smile.
“They came with us,” she said slowly. “They are scouting around your camp now. I do not think they have a very high opinion of your sentries. Perrin, why don’t you want Luc to know about the Aiel?”
“I’ve talked to a number of people who were burned out.” Luc was too far to overhear, but he held his voice low. “Counting Flann Lewin’s place, Luc was at five on the day they were attacked, or the day before.”
“Perrin, the man’s an arrogant fool in some ways — I hear he’s hinted at a claim to one of the Borderland thrones, for all he told us he’s from Murandy — but you cannot really believe he is a Darkfriend. He gave some very good advice in Emond’s Field. When I said everyone was there, I meant everyone.” She shook her dark head wonderingly. “Hundreds and hundreds of people have come in from north and south, from every direction, with their cattle and their sheep, all talking of Perrin Goldeneyes’s warnings. Your little village is preparing to defend itself if need be, and Luc has been everywhere the last days.”
“Perrin who?” he gasped, wincing. Trying to change the subject, he said, “From the south? But this is as far south as I’ve gone. I haven’t talked to a farmer more than a mile below the Winespring Water.”
Faile tugged at his beard with a laugh. “News spreads, my fine general. I think half of them expect you to form them into an army and chase the Trollocs all the way back to the Great Blight. There will be stories about you in the Two Rivers for the next thousand years. Perrin Goldeneyes, hunter of Trollocs.”
“Light!” he muttered.
Hunter of Trollocs. There had been little so far to justify that. Two days after freeing Mistress Luhhan and the others, the day after Verin and Tomas rode on their own way, they had come on the stillsmoking ruins of a farmhouse, he and the fifteen Two Rivers lads with him then. After burying what they found in the ashes, it was easy enough to follow the Trollocs, between Gaul’s tracking and his own nose. The sharp fetid stink of the Trollocs had not had time to fade away, not to him. Some of the lads had grown hesitant when they realized he meant what he had said about hunting Trollocs. If they had had to go very far, he suspected most would have drifted away when no one was looking, but the trail led to a thicket no more than three miles off. The Trollocs had not bothered with sentries — they had no Myrddraal with them to overawe their laziness — and the Two Rivers men knew how to stalk silently. Thirtytwo Trollocs died, many in their filthy blankets, pierced through with arrows before they could raise a howl, much less sword or axe. Dannil and Ban and the others had been ready to celebrate a great triumph — until they found what was in the Trollocs’ big iron cookpot sitting in the ashes of the fire. Most dashed away to throw up, and more than one wept openly. Perrin dug the grave himself. Only one: there was no way to tell what had belonged to whom. Cold as he felt inside, he was not sure he could have stood it himself if there had been.
Late the next day no one hesitated when he picked up another fetid trail, though a few mutters wondered what he was following, until Gaul found the tracks of hooves and boots too big for men. Another thicket, close to the Waterwood, held fortyone Trollocs and a Fade, with sentries set, though most snored at their posts. It
would have made no difference had they all been awake. Gaul killed those that were, sliding through the trees like a shadow, and the Two Rivers men were nearly thirty themselves by then. Besides, those who had not seen the cookpot had heard of it; they shouted as they shot, with a satisfaction not much less savage than the guttural Trolloc howls. The blackgarbed Myrddraal had been last to die, a porcupine quilled with arrows. No one cared to recover a shaft from that, even after it finally stopped thrashing.
That evening the second rain came, hours of drenching downpour with a sky full of roiling black clouds and stabbing lightning. Perrin had not smelled Trolloc scent since, and the ground had been washed clean of tracks. Most of their time had been spent avoiding Whitecloak patrols, which everyone said were more numerous than in the past. The farmers Perrin had spoken to said the patrols seemed more interested in finding their prisoners again and those who had broken them free than in looking for Trollocs.
Quite a few of the men had gathered around Luc now. He was tall enough for his redgold hair to show above their darker heads. He seemed to be talking, and they listening. And nodding.
“Let’s see what he has to say,” Perrin said grimly.
The Two Rivers men gave way before Faile and him with only a little prodding.
They were all intent on the redcoated lord, who was indeed holding forth.
“. . . so the village is quite secure, now. Plenty of people gathered together to defend it. I must say I enjoy sleeping under a roof when I can. Mistress al’Vere, at the inn, provides a tasty meal. Her bread is among the best I have ever eaten. There truly is nothing like freshbaked bread and freshchurned butter, and putting your feet up of an evening with a fine mug of wine, or some of Master al’Vere’s good brown ale.”
“Lord Luc was saying we should go to Emond’s Field, Perrin,” Kenley Ahan said, scrubbing his reddened nose with the back of a grimy hand. He was not the only one who had been unable to wash as often as he would like, and not the only one coming down with a cold, either.
Luc smiled at Perrin much the way he would have at a dog he expected to see do a trick. “The village is quite secure, but there is always a need for more strong backs.”
“We are hunting Trollocs,” Perrin said coolly. “Not everyone has left their farms yet, and every band we find and kill means farms not burned and more people with a chance to reach safety.”
Wil al’Seen barked a laugh. He was not so pretty with a red puffy nose and a spotty, sixday growth of beard. “We’ve not smelled a Trolloc in days. Be reasonable, Perrin. Maybe we’ve killed them all already.” There were mutters of agreement.
“I do not mean to spread dissension.” Luc spread his hands guilelessly. “No doubt you have had many great successes beside those we have heard of. Hundreds
of Trollocs killed, I expect. You may well have chased them all away. I can tell you, Emond’s Field is ready to give you all a hero’s welcome. The same must be true at Watch Hill for those who live up that way. Any Deven Riders?” Wil nodded, and Luc clapped him on the shoulder with a hollow good fellowship. “A hero’s welcome, without a doubt.”
“Anyone who wants to go home, can,” Perrin said in a level voice. Faile directed a warning frown at him; this was no way to be a general. But he did not want anyone with him who did not want to be there. He did not want to be a general, for that matter. “Myself, I don’t think the job is done yet, but it is your choice.”
No one took him up, though Wil at least looked ready to, but twenty more stared at the ground and scuffed their boots in last year’s leaves.
“Well,” Luc said casually, “if you have no Trollocs left to chase, perhaps it is time to turn your attentions to the Whitecloaks. They are not happy at you Two Rivers folk deciding to defend yourselves. And I understand they meant to hang the lot of you in particular, as outlaws, for stealing their prisoners.”
Anxious frowns passed between a good many of the Two Rivers lads.
It was then that Gaul came pushing through the crowd, followed close by Bain and Chiad. Not that the Aiel had to push, of course; the men cleared aside as soon as they realized who it was. Luc frowned at Gaul thoughtfully, perhaps disapprovingly; the Aielman stared back stonyfaced. Wil and Dannil and the others brightened at sight of the Aiel; most still believed hundreds more were hiding somewhere in the thickets and forests. They never questioned why all those Aiel stayed hidden, and Perrin certainly never brought it up. If believing in a few hundred Aiel reinforcements helped them keep their courage, well and good.
“What did you find?” Perrin asked. Gaul had been gone since the day before; he could move as fast as a man on horseback, faster in woods, and he could see more.
“Trollocs,” Gaul replied as though reporting the presence of sheep, “moving up through this wellnamed Waterwood to the south. They number no more than thirty, and I believe they mean to make camp on the edge of the forest and strike tonight. There are men still holding to the soil to the south.” He gave a sudden, wolfish grin. “They did not see me. They will have no warning.”
Chiad leaned closer to Bain. “He moves well enough, for a Stone Dog,” she whispered loudly enough to be heard twenty feet off. “He makes little more noise than a lame bull.”
“Well, Wil?” Perrin said. “Do you want to go to Emond’s Field? You can shave, and maybe find a girl to kiss while these Trollocs have supper tonight.”
Wil flushed a dark red. “I will be wherever you are tonight, Aybara,” he said in a hard voice.
“Nobody means to go home if there are Trollocs still about, Perrin,” Kenley added.
Perrin looked around at the others, meeting only agreeing nods. “What of you,
Luc? We would be pleased to have a lord and Hunter for the Horn with us. You could show us how it is done.”
Luc smiled fractionally, a gash on stone that never came close to those cold blue eyes. “I regret the defenses of Emond’s Field still need me. I must see to protecting your people, should the Trollocs come there in greater numbers than thirty. Or the Children of the Light. My Lady Faile?” He held out a hand to assist her in mounting, but she shook her head.
“I will remain with Perrin, Lord Luc.”
“A pity,” he murmured, shrugging as if to say there was no accounting for women’s taste. Tugging on his wolfembroidered gauntlets, he swung into the black stallion’s saddle smoothly. “Good luck to you, Master Goldeneyes. I do hope you all have good luck.” With a halfbow to Faile, he whirled his tall horse showily and spurred him to a gallop that forced some of the men to leap out of his way.
Faile frowned at Perrin in a manner that suggested a lecture on rudeness when they were alone. He listened to Luc’s horse until he could hear it no more, then turned to Gaul. “Can we get ahead of the Trollocs? Be waiting somewhere before they reach wherever they mean to stop?”
“The distances are right if we start now,” Gaul said. “They are moving in a straight line, and not hurrying. There is a Nightrunner with them. It will be easier surprising them in their blankets than facing them awake.” He meant that the Two Rivers men might do better; there was no fear smell on him.
There was certainly fear smell on some of the others, yet no one suggested that a confrontation with Trollocs up and alert, and a Myrddraal to boot, might not be the best plan. They broke camp as soon as he gave the order, dousing the fires and scattering the ashes, gathering their few pots and mounting their illassorted horses and ponies. With the sentries in — Perrin reminded himself to have that word with them — they numbered nearly seventy. Surely enough to ambush thirty Trollocs. Ban al’Seen and Dannil each still led half — it seemed the way to keep arguments down — with Bili al’Dai and Kenley and others each heading ten or so. Wil, too; he was not too bad a fellow usually, when he could keep his mind off the girls.
Faile rode Swallow close beside Stepper as they started south with the Aiel running ahead. “You truly do not trust him at all,” she said. “You think he is a Darkfriend.”
“I trust you and my bow and my axe,” he told her. Her face looked sad and pleased at the same time, but it was the simple truth.
For two hours Gaul led them south before turning into the Waterwood, a tangle of towering oak and pine and leatherleaf, bushy bay trees and coneshaped redoil trees, tall roundtopped ash and sweetberry and black willow, with thickets of vinewoven brush below. A thousand squirrels chittered on the branches, and thrushes and finches and redwings darted everywhere. Perrin smelled deer and rabbits, too, and foxes. Tiny streams abounded, and rushbordered pools and ponds dotted the forest, often shaded but sometimes open, from less than ten paces across
to a few almost fifty. The ground seemed sodden after all the rain it had received, squelching under the horses’ hooves..
Between a large, willowringed pond and a narrow rivulet a pace wide, perhaps two miles into the wood, Gaul halted. Here the Trollocs would come if they continued as they had been. The three Aiel melted into the trees to make sure of that, and bring back warning of their approach.
Leaving Faile and a dozen men to watch the horses, Perrin spread the others out in a narrow curve, a cup into which the Trollocs should march. After making certain each man was well hidden and knew what he was to do, he placed himself at the bottom of the cup, beside an oak with a trunk thicker than he was tall.
Easing his axe in its belt loop, he nocked an arrow and waited. A light breeze blew in his face, swelling and falling. He should be able to smell the Trollocs long before they came in sight. They should be coming right at him. Touching the axe again, he waited. Minutes passed. An hour. More. How long before the Shadowspawn appeared? Much longer in this damp and bowstrings would need to be changed.
The birds vanished a moment before the squirrels went silent. Perrin drew a deep breath, and frowned. Nothing. On that breeze he should surely be able to smell Trollocs as soon as the animals sensed them.
A vagrant gust brought him the putrid stink, like centuriesold sweat and rot. Whirling, he shouted, “They’re behind us! Rally to me! Two Rivers to me!” Behind. The horses. “Faile!”
Screams and shouts erupted from every side, howls and savage cries. A ramhorned Trolloc leaped into the open twenty paces away, raising a long curved bow. Perrin drew fletchings to ear and fired in one smooth motion, reaching for another shaft as soon as his arrow cleared bow. His broadhead point took the Trolloc between its eyes; it bellowed once as it fell. And its arrow, the size of a small spear, took Perrin in the side like a hammerblow.
Gasping with shock, he hunched over, dropping bow and fresh arrow alike. Pain spread out in sheets from the blackfletched shaft; it quivered when he drew breath, and every quiver shot out new pain.
Two more Trollocs leaped over their dead companion, wolf snout and goat horns, blackmailed shapes half again as tall as Perrin and twice as broad. Baying, they rushed at him, curved swords upraised.
Forcing himself upright, he gritted his teeth and snapped the thumbthick arrow off short, pulled his axe free and rushed to meet them. Howling, he realized dimly. Howling with rage that filmed his eyes red. They towered over him, their armor all spikes at elbows and shoulders, but he swung his axe in a frenzy, as if trying to cut down a tree with every blow. For Adora. For Deselle. “My mother!” he screamed. “Burn you! My mother!”
Abruptly he realized he was hacking at bloody shapes on the ground. Growling, he made himself stop, shaking with the effort as much as with the pain in his side.
There was less shouting now. Fewer screams. Was anyone left but him? “Rally to me! Two Rivers to me!”
“Two Rivers!” someone shouted frantically, off through the damp woods, and then another, “Two Rivers!”
Two. Only two. “Faile!” he cried. “Oh, Light, Faile!”
A flicker of black flowing through the trees announced a Myrddraal before he could see it clearly, snakelike black armor down its chest, inky cloak hanging undisturbed by its running. As it came closer, it slowed to a sinuous, assured walk; it knew he was hurt, knew him for easy meat. Its palefaced, eyeless stare stabbed him with fear. “Faile?” it said mockingly. Its voice made the name sound like burned leather crumbling. “Your Faile was delicious.”
Roaring, Perrin hurled himself at it. A blackbladed sword turned his first stroke. And his second. His third. The thing’s slugwhite face became fixed with concentration, but it moved like a viper, like lightning. For the moment he had it on the defensive. For the moment. Blood trickled down his side; his side burned like a forgefire. He could not keep this up. And when his strength failed, that sword would find his heart.
His foot slipped in the mud churned up beneath his boots, the Fade’s blade drew back — and a blurring sword halfsevered the eyeless head, so it fell over on one shoulder in a fountain of black blood. Stabbing blindly, the Myrddraal staggered forward, stumbling, refusing to die completely, still instinctively trying to kill.
Perrin scrambled out of its path, but his attention was all for the man coolly wiping his blade with a fistful of leaves. Ihvon’s colorshifting cloak hung down his back. “Alanna sent me to find you. I almost didn’t, the way you have been moving, but seventy horses do leave tracks.” The dark, slender Warder seemed as composed as if he were lighting his pipe before a fireplace. “The Trollocs were not linked to that…” He indicated the Myrddraal with his sword; it had fallen, but still stabbed randomly. “…more’s the pity, but if you can gather your people together, they might not be willing to try you without one of the Faceless to goad them. I would estimate about a hundred, to begin. A few less, now. You have bloodied them some.” He began a calm survey of the shadows beneath the trees, only the blade in his hand indicating anything out of the ordinary.
For a bare moment Perrin gaped. Alanna wanted him? She had sent Ihvon? Just in time to save his life. Shaking himself, he raised his voice again. “Two Rivers to me! For the love of the Light, rally to me! Here! Rally! Here!”
This time he kept it up until familiar faces appeared, stumbling through the trees. Bloodstreaked faces, often as not. Shocked, staring faces. Some men halfsupported others, and some had lost their bows. The Aiel were among them, apparently unhurt except that Gaul limped slightly.
“They did not come as we expected” was all the Aielman said. The night was colder than we expected. There was more rain than we expected. That was how he said it.
Faile seemed to materialize with the horses. With half the horses, including Stepper and Swallow, and nine of the twelve men he had left with her. A scrape marred one cheek, but she was alive. He tried to hug her, but she pushed his arms away, muttering angrily over the brokenoff arrow even while she gently pulled his coat away from the thick shaft in an effort to examine where it had gone in.
Perrin studied the men around him. They had stopped coming now, yet there were faces missing. Kenley Ahan. Bili al’Dai. Teven Marwin. He made himself name the missing, made himself count them. Twentyseven. Twentyseven not there. “Did you bring all the wounded?” he asked dully. “Is anybody left out there?” Faile’s hand trembled on his side; her expression as she frowned at his wound was a blend of worry and fury. She had a right to be angry. He should never have gotten her into this.
“Only the dead,” Ban al’Seen said in a voice as leaden as his face.
Wil looked to be frowning at something just out of sight. “I saw Kenley,” he said. “His head was in the crook of an oak, but the rest of him was down at the foot. I saw him. His cold won’t bother him now.” He sneezed, and looked startled.
Perrin sighed heavily, and wished he had not; pain shooting up his side clenched his teeth. Faile, a greenandgold silk scarf wadded in her hand, was trying to pull his shirt out of his breeches. He pushed her hands away despite her scowl; there was no time for tending wounds now. “Wounded on the horses,” he said when he could speak. “Ihvon, will they attack us?” The forest seemed too still. “Ihvon?” The Warder appeared, leading a dark gray gelding with a fierce eye. Perrin repeated his question.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. On their own, Trollocs kill whomever is easiest. Without a Halfman, they would probably rather find a farm than someone who might put arrows in them. Make sure everyone who can stand upright carries a bow with an arrow nocked even if they cannot draw it. They may decide the price is too high for the fun.”
Perrin shivered. If the Trollocs did attack, they would have as much fun as a dance at Sunday. Ihvon and the Aiel were the only ones really ready to fight back. And Faile; her dark eyes shone with fury. He had to get her to safety.
The Warder did not offer his own horse for the wounded, which made sense. The animal was not likely to let anyone else on its back, and a wartrained horse with its master in the saddle would be a formidable weapon if the Trollocs came again. Perrin tried to put Faile up on Swallow, but she stopped him. “The wounded, you said,” she told him softly. “Remember?”
To his disgust, she insisted he ride Stepper. He expected the others to protest, after he had brought them to disaster, but no one did. There were just enough horses for those who could not walk, and those unable to walk far — grudgingly he admitted that he was one of the latter — so he ended up in his saddle. Half the other riders had to cling to theirs. He sat upright, gritting his teeth to do it.
Those who walked or stumbled, and some who rode, clutched their bows as if
they meant salvation. Perrin carried one, too, and so did Faile, though he doubted she could even draw a Two Rivers longbow. It was appearance that counted now; illusion that might see them safe. Like Ihvon, alert as a coiled whip; the three Aiel looked unchanged as they glided ahead, spears stuck through the harness of the bow cases on their backs, horn bows in hand and ready. The rest, including himself, were a ragbag remnant, nothing like the band he had led here, so confident and full of his own pride. Yet illusion worked as well as reality. For the first mile through the tangle vagrant breezes brought him Trolloc stink, the scent of Trollocs shadowing, stalking. Then the stench slowly faded and vanished as the Trollocs fell behind, deluded by a mirage.
Faile walked beside Stepper, one hand on Perrin’s leg as though she meant to hold him up. Now and then she looked up at him, smiling encouragingly, but with worry creasing her forehead. He smiled back as best he could, trying to make her think he was all right. Twentyseven. He could not stop the names from running through his head. Colly Garren and Jared Aydaer, Dael al’Taron and Ken Chandin. Twentyseven Two Rivers folk he had killed with his stupidity. Twentyseven.
They took the most direct route back out of the Waterwood, breaking clear sometime in the afternoon. It was hard to tell exactly how late with the sky still blanketed in gray and everything blandly shadowed. Highgrass pasture dotted with trees stretched in front of them, and some scattered sheep, and a few farmhouses in the distance. No smoke rose from any of the chimneys; if there was anyone in those houses, something hot would have been cooking in the fireplace. The nearest rising smoke plume looked five miles off at least.
“We should find a farm for the night,” Ihvon said. “Some place under cover in case it rains again. A fire. Food.” He looked at the Two Rivers men and added, “Water and bandages.”
Perrin only nodded. The Warder was better than he at knowing the right thing to do. Old Bili Congar with his head full of ale was probably better. He just let Stepper follow Ihvon’s gray.
Before they had gone much beyond a mile, a faint thread of music caught Perrin’s ear, fiddles and flutes playing merry tunes. At first he thought he was dreaming, but then the others heard, too, exchanging incredulous looks, then relieved grins. Music meant people, and happy people by the sound, someone celebrating. That anyone might have something to celebrate was enough to pick their feet up somewhat.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 41
(Leaf)
Among the Tuatha’an
A gathering of wagons came in sight, a little off to the south, like small houses on wheels, tall wooden boxes, painted and lacquered in violent shades of red and blue and green and yellow, all standing in a large, rough circle around a few broadlimbed oak trees. The music came from there. Perrin had heard there were Tinkers, Traveling People, in the Two Rivers, but he had not seen them until now. Hobbled horses cropped the long grass nearby.
“I will sleep elsewhere,” Gaul said stiffly when he saw Perrin meant to go to the wagons, and loped away without another word.
Bain and Chiad spoke softly yet urgently to Faile. Perrin caught enough to know they were trying to convince her to spend the night with them in some snug thicket and not with “the Lost Ones.” They sounded appalled at the idea of speaking to the Tinkers, much less eating or sleeping with them. Faile’s hand tightened on his leg as she refused, quietly, firmly. The two Maidens frowned at each other, blue eyes meeting gray with a deep measure of concern, but before the Traveling People’s wagons came much closer, they trotted away after Gaul. They seemed to have recovered some of their spirits, though. Perrin heard Chiad suggesting they induce Gaul to play some game called Maidens’ Kiss. They were both laughing as they passed out of his earshot.
Men and women were working in the camp, sewing, mending harness, cooking, washing clothes and children, levering a wagon up to replace a wheel. Other children ran playing, or danced to the tunes of half a dozen men playing fiddle or flute. From oldest to youngest, the Tinkers wore clothes even more colorful than their wagons, in eyewrenching combinations that had to have been chosen blindly. No sane man would have worn anything near those hues, and not many women.
As the ragtag party approached the wagons, silence fell, people stopping where they were to watch with worried expressions, women clutching infants and children running to hide behind adults, peering around a leg or hiding their faces in skirts. A wiry man, grayhaired and short, stepped forward and bowed gravely, both hands pressed to his chest. He wore a bright blue, highcollared coat and baggy trousers of a green that almost seemed to glow tucked into kneeboots. “You are welcome to our fires. Do you know the song?”
For a moment, trying not to hunch around the arrow in him, Perrin could only stare. He knew this man, the Mahdi, or Seeker, of this band. What chance? he wondered. Of all the Tinkers in the world, what chance it should be folk I know? Coincidences made him uneasy; when the Pattern produced coincidence, the Wheel seemed to be forcing events. I’m beginning to sound like a bloody Aes Sedai. He could not manage the bow, but he remembered the ritual. “Your welcome warms my spirit, Raen, as your fires warm the flesh, but I do not know the song.” Faile and
Ihvon gave him startled looks, but no more than did the Two Rivers men. Judging by the mutters he heard from Ban and Tell and others, he had just given them something else to talk about.
“Then we seek still,” the wiry man intoned. “As it was, so shall it be, if we but remember, seek, and find.” Grimacing, he surveyed the bloody faces confronting him, his eyes flinching away from the weapons. The Traveling People would not touch anything they considered a weapon, “You are welcome to our fires. There will be hot water, and bandages and poultices. You know my name,” he added, looking at Perrin searchingly. “Of course. Your eyes.”
Raen’s wife had come to his side as he spoke, a plump woman, grayhaired but smoothcheeked, a head taller than her husband. Her red blouse and bright yellow skirt and greenfringed shawl jarred the eye, but she had a motherly manner. “Perrin Aybara!” she said. “I thought I knew your face. Is Elyas with you?”
Perrin shook his head. “I have not seen him in a long time, Ila.”
“He leads a life of violence,” Raen said sadly. “As you do. A violent life is stained even if long.”
“Do not try to bring him to the Way of the Leaf standing here, Raen,” Ila said briskly, but not unkindly. “He is hurt. They all are.”
“What am I thinking of?” Raen muttered. Raising his voice, he called, “Come, people. Come and help. They are hurt. Come and help.”
Men and women gathered quickly, murmuring their sympathy as they helped injured men down from their horses, guiding men toward their wagons, carrying them when necessary. Wil and a few of the others looked concerned over being separated, but Perrin was not. Violence was the farthest thing from the Tuatha’an. They would not raise a hand against anyone, even to defend their own lives.
Perrin found he had to accept Ihvon’s assistance to dismount. Climbing down sent jolts of pain radiating out from his side. “Raen,” he said, a touch breathless, “you shouldn’t be out here. We fought Trollocs not five miles from this spot. Take your people to Emond’s Field. They will be safe there.”
Raen hesitated — and seemed surprised at it — before shaking his head. “Even if I wished to, the people would not want it, Perrin. We try not to camp very close to even the smallest village, and not only because the villagers may falsely accuse us of stealing whatever they have lost or of trying to convince their children to find the Way. Where men have built ten houses together, there is the potential for violence. Since the Breaking the Tuatha’an have known this. Safety lies in our wagons, and in always moving, always seeking the song.” A plaintive expression came over his face. “Everywhere we hear news of violence, Perrin. Not just here in your Two Rivers. There is a feel in the world of change, of destruction. Surely we must find the song soon. Else I do not believe it will ever be.”
“You will find the song,” Perrin said quietly. Maybe they abhorred violence too much for a ta’veren to overcome; maybe even a ta’veren could not fight the Way of the Leaf. It had seemed attractive to him once, too. “I truly hope that you will.”
“What will be, will be,” Raen said. “All things die in their time. Perhaps even the song.” Ila put a comforting arm around her husband, though her eyes were as troubled as his.
“Come,” she said, trying to hide her ill ease, “we must get you inside. Men will talk if their coats are afire.” To Faile, she said, “You are quite beautiful; child. Perhaps you should beware of Perrin. I never see him but in the company of beautiful girls.” Faile gave Perrin a flat, considering look, then tried to gloss it over quickly.
He made it as far as Raen’s wagon — yellow trimmed in red, with red and yellow spokes in tall, redrimmed wheels, and red and yellow trunks lashed to the outside, standing beside a cook fire in the middle of the camp — but when he put his foot on the first of the wooden steps at the back, his knees gave way. Ihvon and Raen more than halfcarried him inside, followed hurriedly by Faile and Ila, and laid him on the bed built into the front of the wagon, with just room to get by to the sliding door leading to the driver’s seat.
It truly was like a little house, even to pale pink curtains at the two small windows on either side. He lay there staring at the ceiling. Here, too, the Tinkers made use of their colors; the ceiling was lacquered sky blue, the high cabinets green and yellow. Faile unfastened his belt and took away his axe and quiver while Ila rummaged in one of the cabinets. Perrin could not seem to rouse any interest in what they were doing.
“Anyone can be surprised,” Ihvon said. “Learn from it, but do not take it too much to heart. Not even Artur Hawkwing won every battle.”
“Artur Hawkwing.” Perrin tried to laugh, but it turned into a groan. “Yes,” he managed. “I am certainly not Artur Hawkwing, am I?”
Ila frowned at the Warder — or at his sword, rather; she seemed to find that even worse than Perrin’s axe — and came to the bed with a wad of folded bandages. Once she had pulled Perrin’s shirt away from the arrow stub, she winced. “I do not think I am competent to remove this. It is bedded deep.”
“Barbed,” Ihvon said in a conversational tone. “Trollocs do not use bows very often, but when they do the arrows are barbed.”
“Out,” the plump woman said firmly, rounding on him. “And you as well, Raen. Tending the sick is no business of men. Why don’t you go see if Moshea has that wheel on his wagon yet?”
“A good idea,” Raen said. “We may want to move tomorrow. There has been hard traveling this last year,” he confided to Perrin. “All the way to Cairhien, then back again to Ghealdan, then up into Andor. Tomorrow, I think.”
When the red door shut behind him and Ihvon, Ila turned to Faile worriedly. “If it is barbed, I do not think I can remove it at all. I will try if I must, but if there is anyone nearby who knows more of such things…”
“There is someone in Emond’s Field,” Faile assured her. “But is it safe to leave it in him until tomorrow?”
“Safer than me cutting, perhaps. I can mix something for him to drink for the pain, and blend a poultice against infection.”
Glaring at the two women, Perrin said, “Hello? Do you remember me? I am right here. Stop trying to talk over my head.”
They looked at him for a moment.
“Keep him still,” Ila told Faile. “It is all right to let him talk, but do not allow him to move about. He may injure himself more.”
“I will see to it,” Faile replied.
Perrin gritted his teeth and did his best to help in getting his coat and shirt off, but they had to do most of the work. He felt as weak as the worst wrought iron, ready to bend to any pressure. Four inches of thumbthick arrow stuck out almost atop his last rib, rising from a puckered gash thick with dried blood. They pushed his head down on a pillow, for some reason not wanting him to look at it. Faile washed the wound while Ila prepared her salve with a stone mortar and pestle — plain smooth gray stone, the first things he had seen in the Tinker camp that were not brightly colored. They mounded the salve around the arrow and wrapped him with bandages to hold it.
“Raen and I will sleep beneath the wagon tonight,” the Tuatha’an woman said at last, wiping her hands. Frowning at the arrow stub sticking up from his bandages, she shook her head. “Once I thought he might eventually find the Way of the Leaf. He was a gentle boy, I think.”
“The Way of the Leaf is not for everyone,” Faile said gently, but Ila shook her head again.
“It is for everyone,” she replied just as gently, and a touch sadly, “if they only knew it.”
She left then, and Faile sat on the edge of the bed blotting his face with a folded cloth. He seemed to be sweating a great deal for some reason.
“I blundered,” he said after a time. “No, that is too soft. I don’t know the right word.”
“You did not blunder,” she said firmly. “You did what seemed fitting at the time. It was fitting; I cannot imagine how they got behind us. Gaul is not one to make a mistake about where his enemies are. Ihvon was right, Perrin. Anyone can find circumstances that have changed when he did not know. You held everyone together. You brought us out.”
He shook his head hard and made his side hurt worse. “Ihvon brought us out. What I did was get twentyseven men killed,” he said bitterly, trying to sit up to face her. “Some of them were my friends, Faile. And I got them killed.”
Faile threw her weight on his shoulders to push him back down. It was a measure of his weakness, how easily she held him. “There will be time enough for that in the morning,” she said firmly, peering down into his face, “when we have to put you back on your horse. Ihvon did not bring us out; I do not think he cared particularly if anyone but you and he did get out. Those men would have scattered
in every direction if not for you, and then we’d all have been hunted down. They would not have held together for Ihvon, a stranger. As for your friends —” Sighing, she sat back down again. “Perrin, my father says a general can take care of the living or weep for the dead, but he cannot do both.”
“I am not a general, Faile. I am a fool of a blacksmith who thought he could use other people to help him get justice, or maybe revenge. I still want it, but I don’t want to use anyone else for it any longer.”
“Do you think the Trollocs will go away because you decide your motives are not pure enough?” The heat in her voice made him raise his head, but she pushed it back to the pillow almost roughly. “Are they any less vile? Do you need a purer reason to fight them than what they are? Another thing my father says. The worst sin a general can commit, worse than blundering, worse than losing, worse than anything, is to desert the men who depend on him.”
A tap came at the door, and a slender, handsome young Tinker in a redandgreen striped coat put his head in. He flashed a smile at Faile, all white teeth and oozing charm, before looking at Perrin. “Grandfather said it was you. I thought this was where Egwene said she came from.” He frowned suddenly, disapprovingly. “Your eyes. I see you have followed Elyas after all, to run with the wolves. I was sure you would never find the Way of the Leaf.”
Perrin knew him; Aram, Raen and Ila’s grandson. He did not like him; he smiled like Wil “Go away, Aram. I am tired.”
“Is Egwene with you?”
“Egwene’s Aes Sedai now, Aram,” he growled, “and she would rip your heart out with the One Power if you asked her to dance. Go away!”
Aram blinked, and hastily shut the door. With himself outside.
Perrin let his head fall back. “He smiles too much,” he muttered. “I cannot abide a man who smiles too much.” Faile made a choking noise, and he looked at her suspiciously. She was biting her underlip.
“I have something in my throat,” she said in a strangled voice, getting up hastily. She hurried to the wide shelf below the foot of the bed where Ila had prepared her poultice and stood with her back to him, pouring water from a greenandred pitcher into a blueandyellow mug. “Would you like something to drink, too? Ila left this powder, for the pain. It will help you sleep.”
“I don’t want any powder,” he said. “Faile, who is your father?”
Her back went very stiff. After a moment she turned with the mug in both hands and an unreadable look in her tilted eyes. Another minute passed before she said, “My father is Davram of House Bashere, Lord of Bashere, Tyr and Sidona, Guardian of the Blightborder, Defender of the Heartland, MarshalGeneral to Queen Tenobia of Saldaea. And her uncle.”
“Light! What was all that about him being a wood merchant, or a fur dealer? I seem to remember him dealing in ice peppers once, too.”
“It was not a lie,” she said sharply, then in a weaker voice, “Just not… the whole
truth. My father’s estates do produce lumber and fine woods, and ice peppers, and furs, and more besides. And his stewards sell them for him, so he does trade in them. In a way.”
“Why couldn’t you just tell me? Hiding things. Lying. You’re a lady!” He frowned at her accusingly. He had not expected this. A small merchant for a father, a former soldier, maybe, but not this. “Light, what are you doing running around as a Hunter of the Horn? Don’t tell me the Lord of Bashere and all that just sent you off to find adventure.”
Still holding the cup, she came back to sit beside him. For some reason she seemed very intent on his face. “My two older brothers died, Perrin, one fighting Trollocs, the other in a fall from his horse hunting. That made me the eldest, and it meant I had to study account books and trading. While my younger brothers learned to be soldiers, while they were being readied for adventures, I had to learn how to manage the estates! It is the eldest’s duty. Duty! It is dull, dry and boring. Buried in paper and clerks.
“When Father took Maedin with him to the Blightborder — he’s two years younger than I — that was more than I could stand. Girls are not taught the sword, or war, in Saldaea, but father had named an old soldier from his first command as my footman, and Eran was always more than happy to teach me to use knives and fight with my hands. I think it amused him. In any case, when Father took Maedin with him, the news had arrived calling the Great Hunt of the Horn, so I… left. I wrote Mother a letter explaining, and I… left. And I reached Illian in time to take the oath of a Hunter…” Picking up the cloth, she patted at the sweat on his face again. “You really should sleep if you can.”
“I suppose you are the Lady Bashere or some such?” he said. “How did you ever come to like a common blacksmith?”
“The word is ‘love,’ Perrin Aybara.” The firmness of her voice was at sharp odds with the gentle way that the cloth moved on his face. “And you are not such a common blacksmith, I think.” The cloth paused. “Perrin, what did that fellow mean about running with wolves? Raen mentioned this Elyas, too.”
For a moment he was frozen, unbreathing. Yet he had just berated her for keeping secrets from him. It was what he got for being hasty and angry. Swing a hammer in haste, and you usually hit your own thumb. He exhaled slowly, and told her. How he had met Elyas Machera and learned he could talk to wolves. How his eyes had changed color, grown sharper, and his hearing and his sense of smell, like a wolf’s. About the wolf dream. About what would happen to him, if he ever lost his hold on humanity. “It’s so easy. Sometimes, especially in the dream, I forget I’m a man, not a wolf. If one of these times I don’t remember quickly enough, if I lose hold, I’ll be a wolf. In my head, at least. A sort of halfwrong image of a wolf. There won’t be anything of me left.” He stopped, waiting for her to flinch, to move away.
“If your ears are really that sharp,” she said calmly, “I will have to watch what I say close to you.”
He caught her hand to stop her patting. “Did you hear anything I said? What will your father and mother think, Faile? A halfwolf blacksmith. You’re a lady! Light!”
“I heard every word. Father will approve. He has always said our family blood is growing too soft; not like it was in the old days. I know he thinks I am terribly soft.” She gave him a smile fierce enough for any wolf. “Of course, Mother always wanted me to marry a king who splits Trollocs in two with one stroke of his sword. I suppose your axe will suffice, but could you tell her you are the king of the wolves? I don’t think anyone will come forward to dispute your claim to that throne. In truth, the splitting of Trollocs will probably do for Mother, but I truly think she would like the other.”
“Light!” he said hoarsely. She sounded almost serious. No, she did sound serious. If she was even half serious, he was not sure the Trollocs might not be better than meeting her parents.
“Here,” she said, holding the mug of water to his lips. “You sound as though your throat is dry.”
Swallowing, he spluttered at the bitter taste. She had stirred in Ila’s powder! He tried to stop, but she filled his mouth, and it was a matter of swallow or choke. By the time he could push the mug away, she had emptied half of it into him. Why did medicine always taste so vile? He suspected women did it on purpose. He would have bet that whatever they took for themselves did not taste that way. “I told you I did not want any of that. Gaaah!”
“Did you? I must not have heard. But whether you did or not, you need sleep.” She stroked his curly hair. “Sleep, my Perrin.”
He tried to tell her he had indeed told her so, and she had heard it, but the words seemed to tangle around his tongue. His eyes wanted to slide shut. In fact, he could not keep them open. The last thing he heard was her soft murmurs.
“Sleep, my wolf king. Sleep.”
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 42
(Wolf)
A Missing Leaf
Perrin stood near the Tuatha’an wagons under bright sunlight, alone, and there was no arrow in his side, no pain. Among the wagons firewood was stacked ready to be lit beneath iron cookpots hanging from tripods, and clothes hung from washlines; there were no people or horses. He wore neither coat nor shirt, but a blacksmith’s long leather vest that left his arms bare. It could have been any dream, perhaps, except that he was aware it was a dream. And he knew the feel of the wolf dream, the reality and solidity of it, from the long grass around his boots to the breeze out of the west that ruffled his curly hair, to the scattered ash and hemlock. The Tinkers’ gaudy wagons did not seem real, though; they had an air of insubstantiality, a feel that they might shimmer and be gone any moment. They never remained long in one place, Tinkers. No soil held them.
Wondering how much the land held him, he rested a hand on his axe — and looked down in surprise. The heavy blacksmith’s hammer hung in the loop on his belt, not the axe. He frowned; once he would have chosen that way, had even thought he had, but surely no more. The axe. He had chosen the axe. Hammerhead suddenly became halfmoon blade and thick spike, flickered back to stout cylinder of cold steel, fluttered between. Finally it stopped, as his axe, and he exhaled slowly. That had never happened before. Here, he could change things as he wanted with ease, things about himself at least. “And I want the axe,” he said firmly. “The axe.”
Looking around, he could just see a farmhouse to the south, arid deer browsing the barley field, surrounded by a rough stone wall. There was no feel of wolves, and he did not call Hopper. The wolf might or might not come, or even hear, but Slayer could well be out there somewhere. A bristling quiver abruptly tugged at his belt opposite the axe, and he had a stout longbow in his hand with a broadhead arrow nocked. A long leather bracer covered his left forearm. Nothing moved except those deer.
“Not likely I’ll wake soon,” he muttered to himself. Whatever that stuff was that Faile had fed him, it had taken him right off; he remembered it as clearly as if he had watched over her shoulder. “Fed it to me like I was a babe,” he growled. Women!
He took one of those long strides — the land blurred around him— and stepped into the farmyard. Two or three chickens scattered, running as if they had already gone feral. The rockwalled sheepfold stood empty, and both thatchroofed barns were barred shut. Despite curtains still at the windows, the twostory farmhouse had the look of emptiness. If this was a true reflection of the waking world — and the wolf dream usually was, in an odd way — the people here had been gone for days. Faile was right; his warning had spread beyond the places he had gone.
“Faile,” he murmured wonderingly. Daughter of a lord. No, not just a lord.
Three times a lord, a general, and uncle to a queen. “Light, that makes her a queen’s cousin!” And she loved a simple blacksmith. Women were wondrous strange.
Seeking to see how far the word had spread, he zigzagged more than halfway to Deven Ride, a mile or more at a stride, doubling back and crisscrossing his own path. Most farms he saw had that same emptiness; less than one in five showed signs of habitation, doors open and windows up, wash hung out on a line, dolls or hoops or carved wooden horses lying around a doorstep. The toys especially made his stomach clench. Even if they had not believed his warning, surely there were enough burned farms about to tell them the same, tumbled heaps of charred timbers, sootblack chimneys like stark, dead fingers.
Bending to replace a doll with a smiling glass face and a flowerembroidered dress — some woman had loved her daughter to do all that tiny needlework — he blinked. The same doll still sat on the fieldstone steps where he had picked it up. As he reached out, the one in his hand faded and vanished.
Flashes of black in the sky cut short his amazement. Ravens, twenty or thirty together, winging toward the Westwood. Toward the Mountains of Mist, where he had first seen Slayer. He watched coldly while the ravens dwindled to black specks and disappeared. Then he set off after them.
Long, racing strides carried him five miles each, the land a blur except in the moment between one step and the next, into the thicktreed, rocky Westwood, across the scrubcovered Sand Hills, into the cloudcapped mountains, where fir and pine and leatherleaf forested valleys and slopes, to the very valley where he had first seen the man Hopper called Slayer, to the mountainside where he had returned from Tear.
The Way gate stood there, closed, the Avendesora leaf seemingly just one among a myriad of intricately carved leaves and vines. Scattered trees, wizened and windsculpted, dotted the sparse soil among the glazed stone where Manetheren had been burned away. Sunlight sparkled on the waters of the Manetherendrelle below. A faint wind up the valley brought him the scent of deer, rabbits, foxes. Nothing moved that he could see.
On the point of leaving, he stopped. The Avendesora leaf. One leaf. Loial had locked the Waygate by placing both leaves on this side. He turned, and his hackles rose. The Waygate stood open, twin masses of living greenery stirring in the breeze, exposing that dull silvery surface; his reflection shimmered in it. How? he wondered. Loial locked the bloody thing.
Unaware of crossing the distance, suddenly he was right at the Waygate. There was no trefoil leaf among the verdant tangle on the inside of the two gates. Strange to think that at that moment, in the waking world, someone — or something — was passing through where he stood. Touching the dull surface, he grunted. It might as well have been a mirror; his hand slid across it as across the smoothest glass.
From the corner of his eye he caught the Avendesora leaf suddenly in its place on the inside, and leaped back just as the Waygate began swinging shut. Someone
— or something — had come out, or gone in. Out. It has to be out. He wanted to doubt that it was more Trollocs, and Fades, coming into the Two Rivers. The gates merged, became stone carvings again.
A sense of being watched was all the warning he had. He jumped— a halfseen image of black streaking through where his chest had been; an arrow — jumped in one of those worldblurring stretches, landed on a far slope and jumped again, out of the valley of Manetheren into a stand of towering fir, and again. Running, he thought furiously, picturing the valley in his mind, and that brief glimpse of the arrow. It had come from that direction, at that angle when it reached him, so it had to have come from…
A final bound took him back onto a slope above Manetheren’s grave, crouching among meager, windslanted pines with bow ready to draw. Below him, among the stunted trees and boulders, the arrow had been fired. Slayer had to be down there somewhere. He had to be down…
Without thinking, Perrin leaped away, the mountains a smear of gray and brown and green.
“Almost,” he growled. Almost, he had duplicated his mistake in the Waterwood, thinking again an enemy would move to suit him, wait where he wanted.
This time he ran as hard as he could, only three flashing strides to the edge of the Sand Hills, hoping he had not been seen. This time he circled wide, coming back higher on that same mountainside, up where the air felt thin and cold and the few trees were thicktrunked bushes fifty paces or more apart, up above where a man might set himself to watch for another who meant to sneak up on the place that arrow had fired.
And there his quarry was, a hundred paces below, darkhaired and darkcoated, a tall man crouched beside a tablesized granite outcrop, his own halfdrawn bow in hand, studying the slope farther down with eager patience. This was the first time Perrin had gotten a good look at him; a hundred paces was little distance for his eyes. This Slayer’s high collared coat had a Borderland cut, and his face looked enough like Lan’s to be the Warder’s brother’s. Only Lan had no brothers — no living kin at all, that Perrin knew — and if he had had any, they would not have been here. A Borderlander, though. Maybe Shienaran, though his hair was long, not shaved to a topknot, and was held back by a braided leather cord just like Lan’s. He could not be Malkieri; Lan was the last living Malkieri.
Wherever he came from, Perrin felt no compunction at all in drawing his bow, broadhead point aimed at Slayer’s back. The man had tried to kill him from ambush. A downhill shot could be tricky.
Perhaps he had taken too long, or perhaps the fellow felt his cold gaze, but suddenly Slayer became a blur, streaking away east.
With a curse, Perrin pursued, three strides to the Sand Hills, another into the Westwood. Among the oaks and leatherleaf and underbrush, Slayer seemed to vanish.
Halting, Perrin listened. Silence. The squirrels and birds had gone still. He inhaled deeply. A small herd of deer had passed that way not long since. And a faint tinge of something, human but too cold for a man, too emotionless, a scent that tickled his mind with familiarity. Slayer was somewhere close. The air lay as still as the forest; no stir of breeze to tell him which way that scent came.
“A neat trick, Goldeneyes, locking the Waygate.”
Perrin tensed, ears straining. No telling from where in this dense growth that voice had come. Not so much as a leaf rustled.
“If you knew how many of the Shadowwrought died trying to get out of the Ways there, it would lift your heart. Machin Shin feasted at that gate, Goldeneyes. But not a good enough trick. You saw: the gate is open now.”
There, off to the right. Perrin slipped through the trees as silently as he had when he had hunted here.
“It was only a few hundred to begin, Goldeneyes. Just enough to keep those fool Whitecloaks off balance and see that the renegade died.” Slayer’s voice became angry. “The Shadow consume me if that man does not have more luck than the White Tower.” Abruptly he chuckled. “But you, Goldeneyes. Your presence was a surprise. There are those who want your head on a pike. Your precious Two Rivers will be harrowed from end to end, now, to root you out. What do you say to that, Goldeneyes?”
Perrin froze close beside the gnarled trunk of a great oak. Why was the man talking so much? Why was he talking at all? He’s drawing me right to him.
Putting his back against the oak’s thick bole, he studied the forest. No movement. Slayer wanted him to come nearer. No doubt into an ambush. And he wanted to find the man and rip his throat out. Yet it could easily be himself who died, and if that happened, no one would know the Waygate was open, and Trollocs coming by hundreds, maybe even thousands. He would not play Slayer’s game.
With a mirthless smile he stepped out of the wolf dream, telling himself to wake, and…
…Faile twined her arms around his neck and nipped his beard with small white teeth, while Tinkers’ fiddles sang some wild, heated tune around the campfires. Ila’s powder. I can’t wake up! Awareness that it was a dream faded. Laughing, he scooped Faile up in his arms and carried her into the shadows, where the grass was soft.
Waking was a slow process wrapped around the dull pain filling his side. Daylight streamed in at the small windows. Bright light. Morning. He tried to sit up, and fell back with a groan.
Faile sprang up from a low stool; her dark eyes looked as if she had not slept. “Lie still,” she said. “You did enough thrashing in your sleep. I have not kept you from rolling over and driving that thing the rest of the way through you just to watch you do it now you’re awake.” Ihvon stood leaning against the doorframe like a dark blade.
“Help me up,” Perrin said. Talking hurt, but so did breathing, and he had to talk. “I have to get to the mountains. To the Waygate.”
She put a hand to his forehead, frowning. “No fever,” she murmured. Then, more strongly, “You are going to Emond’s Field, where one of the Aes Sedai can Heal you. You are not going to kill yourself trying to ride into the mountains with an arrow in you. Do you hear me? If I hear one more word about mountains or Waygates, I will have Ila mix something that will put you back to sleep, and you will travel on a litter. I’m not certain you should not anyway.”
“The Trollocs, Faile! The Waygate is open again! I have to stop them!”
The woman did not even hesitate before shaking her head. “You can do nothing about it, the state you are in. It is Emond’s Field for you.”
“But —!”
“But me no buts, Perrin Aybara. Not another word on it.”
He ground his teeth. The worst was that she was right. If he could not rise from a bed alone, how could he stay in the saddle as far as Manetheren? “Emond’s Field,” he said graciously, but she still sniffed and muttered something about “pigheaded.” What did she want? I was bloody gracious, burn her for stubborn!
“So there will be more Trollocs,” Ihvon said musingly. He did not ask how Perrin knew. Then he shook his head as if dismissing Trollocs. “I will tell the others you are awake.” He slipped out, closing the door behind him.
“Am I the only one who sees the danger?” Perrin muttered. “I see an arrow in you,” Faile said firmly.
The reminder gave him a twinge; he just stifled a groan. And she gave a satisfied nod. Satisfied!
He wanted to be up and on the way immediately; the sooner he was Healed, the sooner he could see to closing the Waygate again, permanently this time. Faile insisted on feeding him breakfast, a broth thick with mashed vegetables suitable for a toothless infant, one spoon at a time, with pauses to wipe his chin. She would not let him feed himself, and whenever he protested or asked her to go faster, she shoved the words back into his mouth with a spoonful of pap. She would not even let him wash his own face. By the time she got around to brushing his hair and combing his beard, he had settled on dignified silence.
“You are pretty when you sulk,” she said. And pinched his nose!
Ila, in green blouse and blue skirt this morning, climbed into the wagon with his coat and shirt, both cleaned and mended. To his irritation, he had to let the two women help him don them. He had to let them help him sit up to don them, the coat unbuttoned and the shirt not tucked in, but bunched around the arrow stub.
“Thank you, Ila,” he said, fingering the neat darns. “This is fine needlework.” “It is,” she agreed. “Faile has a deft touch with a needle.”
Faile colored, and he grinned, thinking of how fiercely she had told him she would never mend his clothes. A glint in her eye held his tongue. Sometimes silence was the wiser course. “Thank you, Faile,” he said gravely instead. She blushed even
redder.
Once they had him on his feet he reached the door easily enough, but he had to let the two women halfsupport him to climb down the wooden steps. At least the horses were saddled, and all the Two Rivers lads gathered, bows slung on their backs. With clean faces and clothes, and only a few bandages out where they showed.
A night with the Tuatha’an had obviously been good for their spirits, too, even those who still looked as though they could not walk a hundred paces. The haggardness that had been in their eyes yesterday was only a shadow now. Wil had each arm around a pretty, bigeyed Tinker girl, of course, and Ban al’Seen, with his nose and a bandage around his head making his dark hair stand up in a brush, held hands with another smiling shyly. Most of the others held bowls of thick vegetable stew and spoons, shoveling away.
“This is good, Perrin,” Dannil said, giving up his empty bowl to a Tinker woman. She gestured as if to ask the beanpole fellow whether he wanted more, and he shook his head, but said, “I don’t think I could ever get enough of it, do you?”
“I had my fill,” Perrin told him sourly. Mashed vegetables and broth.
“The Tinker girls danced last night,” Dannil’s cousin Tell said, wideeyed. “All the unmarried women, and some of the married! You should have seen it, Perrin.”
“I’ve seen Tinker women dance before, Tell.”
Apparently he had not kept his voice clear of what he had felt watching them, for Faile said dryly, “You’ve seen the tiganza, have you? Someday, if you are good, I may dance the sa’sara for you, and show you what a dance really is.” Ila gasped in recognition of the name, and Faile went even redder than she had inside.
Perrin pursed his lips. If this sa’sara set the heart pounding any harder than the Tinker women’s swaying, hiprolling dance — the tiganza, was it? — he definitely would like to see Faile dance it. He carefully did not look at her.
Raen came, in the same bright green coat but trousers redder than any red Perrin had ever seen before. The combination made his head ache. “Twice you have visited our fires, Perrin, and for the second time you go without a farewell feast. You must come again soon so we can make up for it.”
Pushing away from Faile and Ila — he could stand by himself, at least — he put a hand on the wiry man’s shoulder. “Come with us, Raen. No one in Emond’s Field will harm you. At worst it’s safer than out here with the Trollocs.”
Raen hesitated, then shook himself, muttering, “I do not know how you can even make me consider such things.” Turning, he spoke loudly. “People, Perrin has asked us to come with him to his village, where we will be safe from Trollocs. Who wishes to go?” Shocked faces stared back at him. Some women gathered their children close, and the children hid in their skirts, as if the very idea frightened them. “You see, Perrin?” Raen said: “For us, safety lies in moving, not in villages. I assure you, we do not spend two nights in one place, and we will travel all day before stopping again.”
“That may not be enough, Raen.”
The Mahdi shrugged. “Your concern warms me, but we will be safe, if the Light wills it.”
“The Way of the Leaf is not only to do no violence,” Ila said gently, “but to accept what comes. The leaf falls in its proper time, uncomplaining. The Light will keep us safe for our time.”
Perrin wanted to argue with them, but behind all the warmth and compassion on their faces lay a stony firmness. He thought he would get Bain and Chiad to don dresses and give up their spears — or Gaul to! — before he made these people budge an inch.
Raen shook Perrin’s hand, and with that the Tinker women began hugging the Two Rivers lads, and Ihvon, too, and the Tinker men began shaking hands, all laughing and saying goodbyes and wishing everyone a safe journey, hoping they would come again. Almost all the men did. Aram stood off to one side, frowning to himself, hands thrust into his coat pockets. The last time Perrin met him he had seemed to have a sour streak, odd for a Tinker.
The men did not content themselves with shaking Faile’s hand, but hugged her. Perrin kept his face smooth when some of the younger men became overly enthusiastic, only grinding his teeth a little; he managed to smile. No woman much younger than Ila hugged him. Somehow, even while Faile was letting some skinny, gaudycoated Tinker fold his arms around her and try to squeeze her flat, she stood guard on him like a mastiff. Women without gray in their hair took one look at her face and chose someone else. Meanwhile Wil appeared to be kissing every woman in the camp. So was Ban, and his nose. Even Ihvon was enjoying himself, for that matter. It would serve Faile right if one of those fellows cracked a rib for her.
Finally the Tinkers moved back, except for Raen and Ila, opening a space around the Two Rivers folk. The wiry, grayhaired manbowed formally, hands to chest. “You came in peace. Depart now in peace. Always will our fires welcome you. The Way of the Leaf is peace.”
“Peace be on you always,” Perrin replied, “and on all the People.” Light, let it be so. “I will find the song, or another will find the song, but the song will be sung, this year or in a year to come.” He wondered if there ever had been a song, or if the Tuatha’an had begun their endless journey seeking something else. Elyas had told him they did not know what song, only that they would know it when they found it. Let them find safety, at least. At least that. “As it once was, so shall it be again, world without end.”
“World without end,” the Tuatha’an responded in a solemn murmur. “World and time without end.”
A few final hugs and handshakes were handed ’round while Ihvon and Faile were helping Perrin up on Stepper. A few last kisses collected by Wil. And Ban. Ban! And his nose! Others, the badly wounded, were halflifted onto their horses, with Tinkers waving as if to old neighbors off on a long journey.
Raen came to shake Perrin’s hand. “Will you not reconsider?” Perrin asked. “I remember hearing you say once there was wickedness loose in the world. It’s worse now, Raen, and here.”
“Peace be on you, Perrin,” Raen replied, smiling. “And on you,” he said sadly.
The Aiel did not appear until they were a mile north of the Tinker camp, Bain and Chiad looking to Faile before trotting ahead to their usual place. Perrin was not sure what they thought might have happened to her among Tuatha’an.
Gaul moved in beside Stepper, striding easily. The party was not moving very fast, with nearly half the men walking. He glanced at Ihvon measuringly as usual, before turning to Perrin. “Your injury is well?”
His injury hurt like fury; every step his horse took jolted that arrowhead. “I feel fine,” he said, not gritting his teeth. “Maybe we’ll have a dance in Emond’s Field tonight! And you? Did you pass a good night playing Maidens’ Kiss?” Gaul stumbled and nearly fell on his face. “What is the matter?”
“Who did you hear suggest this game?” the Aielman said quietly, staring straight ahead.
“Chiad. Why?”
“Chiad,” Gaul muttered. “The woman is Goshien. Goshien! I should take her back to Hot Springs as gai’shain.” The words sounded angry, but not his odd tone. “Chiad.”
“Will you tell me what is the matter?”
“A Myrddraal has less cunning than a woman,” Gaul said in a flat voice, “and a Trolloc fights with more honor.” After a moment he added, in a fierce undertone, “And a goat has more sense.” Quickening his pace, he ran forward to join the two Maidens. He did not speak to them, as far as Perrin could make out, only slowed to walk alongside.
“Did you understand any of that?” Perrin asked Ihvon. The Warder shook his head.Faile sniffed. “If he thinks to make trouble for them, they will hang him by his heels from a branch to cool off.”
“Did you understand it?” Perrin asked her. She walked along, neither looking at him nor answering, which he took to mean she did not. “I think I might have to find Raen’s camp again. It has been a long time since I saw the tiganza. It was . . . interesting.”
She muttered something under her breath, but he caught it: “You could do with hanging by the heels yourself!”
He smiled down at the top of her head. “But I won’t have to. You promised to dance this sa’sara for me.” Her face went crimson. “Is it anything close to the tiganza? I mean, there is no point, otherwise.”
“You musclebrained oaf!” she snapped, glaring up at him. “Men have thrown their hearts and fortunes at the feet of women who danced the sa’sara. If Mother suspected I knew it —” Her teeth clicked shut as though she had said too much, and
her head whipped back to face forward; scarlet mortification covered her from her dark hair down to the neck of her dress.
“Then there isn’t any reason for you to dance it,” he said quietly. “My heart and fortune, such as they are, already lie at your feet.”
Faile missed a step, then laughed softly and pressed her cheek against his booted calf. “You are too clever for me,” she murmured. “One day I will dance it for you, and boil the blood in your veins.”
“You already do that,” he said, and she laughed again. Pushing her arm behind his stirrup, she hugged his leg to her as she walked.
After a while even the thought of Faile dancing — he extrapolated from the Tinker dance; it must be something to top that — could not compete with the pain in his side. Every stride Stepper took was agony. He held himself upright. It seemed to hurt a fraction less, that way. Besides, he did not want to spoil the lift the Tuatha’an had given everyone’s spirits. The other men were sitting up straight in their saddles, too, even those who had been hunched over and clinging the day before. And Ban and Dannil and the others walked with heads up. He would not be the first to slump.
Wil began to whistle “Coming Home from Tarwin’s Gap,” and three or four more took it up. After a time, Ban began to sing in a clear, deep voice:
“My home is waiting there for me, and the girl I left behind.
Of all the treasure that waits for me, that’s what I want to find.
Her eyes so merry, and her smile so sweet, her hugs so warm, and her ankle neat,
her kisses hot, now there’s a treat.
If there’s a treasure greater, it lies not in my mind.”
More joined in on the second verse, until everyone sang, even Ihvon. And Faile. Not Perrin, of course; he had been told often enough that he sounded like a steppedon frog, singing. Some even fell into step with the music.
“Oh, I have seen stark Tarwin’s Gap, and the Trollocs’ raving horde.
I have stood ‘fore the Halfman’s charge, and walked on death’s cold borde.
But a winsome lass, she waits for me,
for a dance, and a kiss ‘neath the apple tree…”
Perrin shook his head. A day before they had been ready to run and hide. Today they sang, about a battle so long ago that it had left no memory but this song in the Two Rivers. Perhaps they were becoming soldiers. They would have to, unless he managed to close that Waygate.
Farms began to appear more often, closer together, until they traveled along hardpacked dirt between fields bordered by hedges or low, rough stone walls.
Abandoned farms. No one here clung to the land.
They came to the Old Road, which ran north from the White River, the Manetherendrelle, through Deven Ride to Emond’s Field, and at last began to see sheep in the pastures, great clumps like a dozen men’s flocks gathered together, with ten shepherds where there once would have been one, and half of them grown men. Bowarmed shepherds watched them pass, singing at the tops of their lungs, not knowing quite what to make of it.
Perrin did not know what to make of his first view of Emond’s Field, and neither did the other Two Rivers men, from the way their singing faltered and died.
The trees, fences and hedges closest to the village were simply gone, cleared away. The westernmost houses of Emond’s Field had once stood among the trees on the edge of the Westwood. The oaks and leatherleaf between the houses remained, but now the forest’s brim stood five hundred paces away, a long bowshot, and axes rang loud as men pushed it back farther. Row on row of waisthigh stakes, driven into the ground at an angle, surrounded the village a little out from the houses and presented a continuous hedge of sharpened points, except where the road ran in. At intervals behind the stakes men stood like sentries, some wearing bits of old armor or leather shirts sewn with rusty steel discs, a few in dented old steel caps, with boar spears, or halberds rooted out of attics, or bush hooks fitted to long poles. Other men, and boys, were up on some of the thatched roofs with bows; they stood when they saw Perrin and the others coming, and shouted to people below.
Beside the road behind the stakes stood a contraption of wood and thick, twisted rope, with a nearby pile of stones bigger than a man’s head. Ihvon noticed Perrin frowning at it as they came closer. “Catapult,” the Warder said. “Six, so far. Your carpenters knew what to do once Tomas and I showed them. The stakes will hold off charging Trollocs or Whitecloaks, either one.” He might have been discussing the prospects for more rain.
“I told you your village was preparing to defend itself.” Faile sounded fiercely proud, as though it were her village. “A hard people, for such a soft land. They could almost be Saldaean. Moiraine always said Manetheren’s blood runs strong here still.”
Perrin could only shake his head.
The hardpacked dirt streets were nearly crowded enough for a city, the gaps between houses filled with carts and wagons, and through open doors and unshuttered windows he could see more people. The crowd parted before Ihvon and the Aiel, and rustling whispers accompanied them along the street.
“It’s Perrin Goldeneyes.” “Perrin Goldeneyes.” “Perrin Goldeneyes.”
He wished they would not do that. These people knew him, some of them. What did they think they were doing? There was horsefaced Neysa Ayellin, who had paddled his tenyearold backside that time Mat talked him into stealing one of her
gooseberry pies. And there was pinkcheeked, bigeyed Cilia Cole, the first girl he had ever kissed and still pleasingly plump, and Pel Aydaer, with his pipe and his bald head, who had taught Perrin how to catch trout with his hands, and Daise Congar herself, a tall, wide woman who made Alsbet Luhhan seem soft, with her husband Wit, a scrawny man overshadowed as always by his wife. And they were all staring at him, and whispering to the people from off, who might not know who he was. When old Cenn Buie lifted a little boy up on his shoulder, pointing at Perrin and talking enthusiastically to the boy, Perrin groaned. They had all gone mad.
Townsfolk trailed after Perrin and the others, around them, in a parade that rode a swell of murmurs. Chickens scurried every which way under people’s feet. Bawling calves and pigs squealing in pens behind the houses competed with the noise of the humans. Sheep crowded the Green, and blackandwhite milkcows cropped the grass in company with flocks of geese, gray and white.
And in the middle of the Green rose a tall pole, the redbordered white banner at its peak rippling lazily, displaying a red wolf’s head. He looked at Faile, but she shook her head, as surprised as he.
“A symbol.”
Perrin had not heard Verin approach, though now he caught hushed whispers of “Aes Sedai” floating around her. Ihvon did not look surprised. People stared at her with awefilled eyes.
“People need symbols,” Verin went on, resting a hand on Stepper’s shoulder. “When Alanna told a few of the villagers how much Trollocs fear wolves, everyone seemed to think this banner a grand idea. Don’t you, Perrin?” Was there a dryness in her voice then? Her dark eyes looked up at him, birdlike. A bird watching a worm?
“I wonder what Queen Morgase will think of that,” Faile said. “This is part of Andor. Queens seldom like strange banners being raised in their realms.”
“That’s nothing but lines on a map,” Perrin told her. It was good to be still; the throbbing from the arrowhead seemed to have abated somewhat. “I did not even know we were supposed to be part of Andor until I went to Caemlyn. I doubt many people here do.”
“Rulers have a tendency to believe maps, Perrin.” There was no doubt of the dryness in Faile’s tone. “When I was a child, there were parts of Saldaea that had not seen a taxman in five generations. Once Father could turn his attention from the Blight for a time, Tenobia made sure they knew who their queen was.”
“This is the Two Rivers,” he said, grinning, “not Saldaea.” They did sound very fierce, up there in Saldaea. As he turned back to Venn, the grin became a frown. “I thought you were… hiding… who you are.” He could not say which was more disturbing; Aes Sedai there in secret, or Aes Sedai in the open.
The Aes Sedai’s hand hovered an inch from the brokenoff arrow jutting from his side. Something tingled around the wound. “Oh, this is not good,” she murmured. “Caught in the rib, and some infection in spite of that poultice. This needs Alanna, I think.” She blinked and pulled her hand back; the tingle went, too. “What? Hiding?
Oh. With what has been stirred up here now, we could hardly remain hidden. I suppose we could have… gone away. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” There was that sharp, considering, birdlike stare again.
He hesitated, and finally sighed. “I suppose not.” “Oh, that is good to hear,” she said with a smile. “Why did you really come here, Verin?”
She did not seem to hear him. Or did not want to. “Now we need to see to that thing in you. And these other lads need to be looked after, too. Alanna and I will see to the worst, but…”
The men with him were as stunned by what they found here as he was. Ban scratched his head at the banner, and a few just stared around in amazement. Most looked at Verin, though, wideeyed and uneasy; they had surely heard the whispers of “Aes Sedai.” Perrin was not escaping those looks entirely himself, he realized, talking to an Aes Sedai as though she were just any village woman.
Verin considered them right back, then suddenly, without seeming to look, reached behind her to snatch a girl of about ten or twelve out of the onlookers. The girl, her long dark hair caught up with blue ribbons, went rigid with shock. “You know Daise Congar, girl?” Verin said. “Well, you find her and tell her there are injured men who need a Wisdom’s herbs. And tell her to jump. You tell her I’ll have no patience with her airs. Do you have that? Off with you.”
Perrin did not recognize the girl, but evidently she did know Daise, because she flinched at the message. But Verin was an Aes Sedai. After a moment of weighing
— Daise Congar against an Aes Sedai — the girl scampered away into the crowd. “And Alanna will take care of you,” Verin said, peering up at him again.
He wished she did not sound as though there might be two meanings to that.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 43
(Flame of Tar Valon) Care for the Living
Taking Stepper’s bridle, Verin led him to the Winespring Inn herself, the crowd melting back to let her through, then falling in after. Dannil and Ban and the others trailed along on horse and afoot, kin mingling with them now. Astounded as they were by the changes in Emond’s Field, the lads still showed their pride by striding even if they limped, or sitting up straighter in the saddle; they had faced Trollocs and come home. But women ran their hands over sons and nephews and grandsons, often biting back tears, and their low moans made a soft, pained murmur. Tighteyed men tried to hide their worries behind proud smiles, clapping shoulders and exclaiming over newly begun beards, yet frequently their hugs just happened to turn into a shoulder to lean on. Sweethearts rushed in with kisses and loud cries, equal parts happiness and commiseration, and little brothers and sisters, uncertain, alternated between fits of weeping and clinging in wideeyed wonder to a brother everyone seemed to be taking for a hero.
It was the other voices Perrin wished he could not hear.
“Where is Kenley?” Mistress Ahan was a handsome woman, with streaks of white in her nearly black braid, but she wore a fearfilled frown as she scanned faces and saw eyes flinch from hers. “Where’s my Kenley?”
“Bili!” old Hu al’Dai called uncertainly. “Has anyone seen Bili al’Dai?”“. . .
Hu… !”
“. . . Jared… !”
“. . . Tim… !”
“. . . Colly…!”
In front of the inn, Perrin fell out of the saddle in his need to escape those names, not even seeing whose hands caught him. “Get me inside!” he grated. “Inside!”
“. . . Teven… !”
“. . . Haral… !”
“. . . Had… !”
The door cut off the heartlost wails, and the cries of Dael al’Taron’s mother for someone to tell her where her son was.
In a Trolloc cookpot, Perrin thought as he was lowered into a chair in the common room. In a Trolloc’s belly, where I put him, Mistress al’Taron. Where I put him. Faile had his head in her hands, peering into his face worriedly. Care for the living, he thought. I’ll weep for the dead later. Later.
“I am all right,” he told her. “I just got a little lightheaded dismounting. I’ve never been a good rider.” She did not seem to believe him.
“Can’t you do something?” she demanded of Verin.
The Aes Sedai calmly shook her head. “I think better not, child. A pity neither
of us is Yellow, but Alanna is still a much better Healer than I. My Talents lie in other directions. Ihvon will bring her. Wait with patience, child.”The common room had been turned into an armory of sorts. Except in front of the fireplace, the walls were a solid mass of propped spears of every description, with the occasional halberd or bill mixed in, and some polearms with oddly shaped blades, many pitted and discolored where old rust had been scoured away. Even more surprisingly, a barrel near the foot of the stairs held swords all jumbled together, most without scabbards and no two alike. Every attic within five miles must have been turned out for relics dustcovered for generations. Perrin would not have suspected there were five swords in the whole Two Rivers. Before the Whitecloaks and Trollocs came, anyway.
Gaul took a place off to one side, near the stairs that led up to the inn’s rooms and the al’Veres’ living quarters, watching Perrin but plainly aware of Verin and every move she made. On the other side of the room, watching Faile and all else, the two Maidens cradled their spears in the crook of an elbow and took a hipshot stance that seemed at once casual and yet balanced on the toes. The three young fellows who had carried Perrin in shifted their feet by the door, staring at him and the Aes Sedai and the Aiel with equally wide eyes. That was all.
“The others,” Perrin said. “They need —”
“They will be taken care of,” Verin interrupted smoothly, seating herself at another table. “They will want to be with their families. Much better to have loved ones close.”
Perrin felt a stab of pain — the graves below the apple trees flashed in his mind
— but he pushed it down. Take care of the living, he reminded himself harshly. The Aes Sedai brought out her pen and ink and began making notes in that small book in a precise hand. He wondered whether she cared how many Two Rivers folk died, so long as he lived, to be used in the White Tower’s plans for Rand.
Faile squeezed his hand, but it was to the Aes Sedai that she spoke. “Should we not take him up to a bed?”
“Not yet,” Perrin told her irritably. Verin looked up and opened her mouth, and he repeated in a firmer voice, “Not yet.” The Aes Sedai shrugged and went back to her notetaking. “Does anyone know where Loial is?”
“The Ogier?” one of the three by the door said. Dav Ayellin was stockier than Mat, but he had that same twinkle in his dark eyes. He had the same rumpled, uncombed look about him as Mat, too. In the old days, what little mischief Mat did not get up to, Dav did, though Mat usually led the way. “He’s out with the men clearing back the Westwood. You’d think we were cutting down his brother every time we cut a tree, but he clears three to anybody else’s one with that monstrous axe he had Master Luhhan make. If you want him, I saw Jaim Thane running to tell them you had come in. I’ll bet they all come to get a look at you.” Peering at the brokenoff arrow, he winced and rubbed his own side in sympathy. “Does it hurt much?”
“It hurts enough,” Perrin said curtly. Coming to get a look at him. What am I, a gleeman? “What about Luc? I don’t want to see him, but is he here?”
“I’m afraid not.” The second man, Elam Dowtry, rubbed his long nose. Incongruous with his farmer’s wool coat and his cowlick, he wore a sword at his belt; the hilt had been freshly wrapped in rawhide and the leather scabbard flaked and peeling. “Lord Luc is off hunting the Horn of Valere, I think. Or maybe Trollocs.”
Dav and Elam were Perrin’s friends, or had been, companions in hunting and fishing, both his age near enough, but their thrilled grins made them seem younger. Either Mat or Rand could have passed for five years older at least. Maybe he could, too.
“I hope he comes back soon,” Elam went on. “He has been showing me how to use a sword. Did you know he’s a Hunter for the Horn? And a king, if he had his rights. Of Andor, I hear.”
“Andor has queens,” Perrin muttered absently, meeting Faile’s gaze, “not kings.”
“So he is not here,” she said. Gaul shifted slightly; he looked ready to go hunting for Luc, his eyes blue ice. It would not have surprised Perrin to see Bain and Chiad veil themselves on the spot.
“No,” Verin said vaguely, manifestly more intent on her notes than what she was saying. “Not that he hasn’t been a help sometimes, but he does have a way of causing trouble when he is here. Yesterday, before anyone knew what he was doing, he led a delegation out to meet a Whitecloak patrol and told them Emond’s Field was closed to them. He apparently told them not to come within ten miles. I cannot approve of Whitecloaks, but I do not suppose they took that very well. Not wise to antagonize them more than is strictly necessary.” Frowning at what she had written, she rubbed her nose, seemingly unaware of leaving a smudge of ink.
Perrin did not much care how the Whitecloaks took anything. “Yesterday,” he breathed. If Luc had come back to the village yesterday, it was not likely he could have had anything to do with Trollocs being where they were not expected. The more Perrin thought about how that ambush turned around, the more he thought the Trollocs must have been expecting them. And the more he wanted to blame Luc. “Wanting won’t make a stone cheese,” he muttered. “But he still smells like cheese to me.”
Dav and the other two looked at each other doubtfully. Perrin supposed he must not seem to be making much sense.
“It was a bunch of Coplins, mainly,” the third fellow said in a startlingly deep voice. “Darl and Hari and Dag and Ewal. And Wit Congar. Daise gave him a fit over it.”
“I heard they all liked the Whitecloaks.” Perrin thought the bassvoiced fellow seemed familiar. He was younger than Elam and Dav by two or three years yet an inch taller, leanfaced but with wide shoulders.
“They did.” The fellow laughed. “You know them. They drift naturally toward anything that makes trouble for somebody else. Since Lord Luc has been talking, they’re all for marching up to Watch Hill and telling the Whitecloaks to get out of the Two Rivers. Anyway, they’re for somebody else marching up there. I think they mean to be well back in the pack.”
If that face had been pudgy, and half a foot or more nearer the ground… “Ewin Einngar!” Perrin exclaimed. It could not be; Ewin was a stout, squeaky little nuisance who tried to crowd in whenever the older fellows got together. This lad would be as big as he was, or bigger, by the time he stopped growing. “Is that you?” Ewin nodded with a broad grin. “We’ve been hearing all about you, Perrin,” he said in that surprising bass, “fighting Trollocs, and having all kinds of adventures
out in the world, so they say. I can still call you Perrin, can’t I?”
“Light, yes!” Perrin barked. He was more than tired of this Goldeneyes business.
“I wish I’d gone with you last year.” Dav rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Coming home with Aes Sedai, and Warders, and an Ogier.” He made them sound like trophies. “All I ever do is herd cows and milk cows, herd cows and milk cows. That and hoe, and chop wood. You’ve had all the luck.”
“What was it like?” Elam put in breathlessly. “Alanna Sedai said you’ve been all the way to the Great Blight, and I hear you’ve seen Caemlyn, and Tear. What’s a city like? Are they really ten times as big as Emond’s Field? Did you see a palace? Are there Darkfriends in the cities? Is the Blight really full of Trollocs and Fades and Warders?”
“Did a Trolloc give you that scar?” Voice like a bull or not, Ewin managed a sort of squeaky excitement. “I wish I had a scar. Did you see a queen? Or a king? I think I’d rather see a queen, but a king would be grand. What is the White Tower like? Is it as big as a palace?”
Faile smiled, amused, but Perrin blinked at the onslaught. Had they forgotten the Trollocs on Winternight, forgotten the Trollocs in the countryside right then? Elam clutched his sword hilt as if he wanted to be off for the Blight on the instant, and Dav was up on his toes, eyes gleaming, and Ewin looked ready to grab Perrin’s collar. Adventure? They were idiots. Yet there were hard times coming, harder than the Two Rivers had seen so far, he was afraid. It could not hurt if they had a little while longer before they learned the truth.
His side hurt, but he tried to answer. They seemed disappointed he had never seen the White Tower, or a king or a queen. He thought Berelain might suffice for a queen, but with Faile there he was not about to mention her. Some other things he shied away from; Falme, and the Eye of the World, the Forsaken, Callandor. Dangerous subjects, those, leading inevitably to the Dragon Reborn. He could tell them a little of Caemlyn, though, and Tear, of the Borderlands and the Blight. It was odd what they accepted and what not. The corrupted landscape of the Blight, seeming to rot while you looked at it, they ate up, and topknotted Shienaran
soldiers, and Ogier stedding where Aes Sedai could not wield the Power and Fades were reluctant to enter. But the size of the Stone of Tear, or the immensity of cities…
About his own supposed adventures, he said “Mainly I’ve just tried to keep from having my head split open. That’s what adventures are, that and finding a place to sleep for the night, and something to eat. You go hungry a lot having adventures, and sleep cold or wet or both.”
They did not like that very much, or appear to believe it any more than they believed that the Stone was as big as a small mountain. He reminded himself that he had known as little of the world before he left the Two Rivers. It did not help much. He had never been this wideeyed. Had he? The common room seemed to be hot. He would have taken his coat off, but moving seemed too much effort.
“What about Rand and Mat?” Ewin demanded. “If it’s all being hungry and getting rained on, why didn’t they come home, too?”
Tam and Abell had come in, Tam with a sword belted on over his coat and both men with bows — oddly, the sword looked right on Tam, farm coat or no — so he told it much as he had before, Mat gambling and carousing in taverns and chasing girls, and Rand in his fine coat with a pretty, yellowhaired girl on his arm. He made Elayne a lady, expecting they would never believe the DaughterHeir of Andor, and was proved right when they expressed incredulity. Still, it all seemed satisfactory, the kind of thing they wanted to hear, and disbelief faded a bit when Elam pointed out that Faile was a lady and seemed to be dancing attendance on Perrin pretty sharp. That made Perrin grin; he wondered what they would say if he told them she was cousin to a queen.
Faile no longer appeared to be amused for some reason. She turned on them with a stare to match Elayne’s haughtiest, stiffbacked and frostyfaced. “You have badgered him enough. He is wounded. Off with you, now.”
For a wonder, they bowed clumsily — Dav made an awkward leg, looking a complete fool — and murmured hasty apologies — to her, not him! — and turned to go. Their departure was delayed by the arrival of Loial, stooping through the doorway with his shaggy hair brushing the transom. They stared at the Ogier almost as if seeing him for the first time — then glanced at Faile and hurried on their way. That cold, lady’s stare of hers did work.
When Loial straightened, his head came just short of the ceiling. His capacious coat pockets bore the usual squared bulges of books, but he carried a huge axe. Its haft stood as tall as he did, and its head, shaped like a woodaxe, was at least as big as Perrin’s battleaxe. “You are hurt,” he boomed as soon as his eyes fell on Perrin. “They told me you had returned, but they did not say you were hurt, or I would have come faster.”
The axe gave Perrin a start. Among Ogier, “putting a long handle on your axe” meant being hasty, or angry — Ogier seemed to see the two as much the same thing for some reason. Loial did look angry, tufted ears drawing back, frowning so his
dangling eyebrows hung down on his broad cheeks. At having to cut trees, no doubt. Perrin wanted to get him alone and find out if he had seen anything more concerning Alanna’s doings. Or Verin’s. He rubbed his face and was surprised to find it dry; he felt as if he should be sweating.
“He is also stubborn,” Faile said, turning on Perrin with the same commanding look she had used on Dav and Elam and Ewin. “You should be in a bed. Where is Alanna, Verin? If she is to Heal him, where is she?”
“She will come.” The Aes Sedai did not look up. She was back into her little book again, frowning thoughtfully, pen poised.
“He should still be in a bed!”
“I will have time for that later,” Perrin said firmly. He smiled at her to soften it, but all that did was make her look worried and mutter “stubborn” under her breath. He could not ask Loial about the Aes Sedai in front of Verin, but there was something else at least as important. “Loial, the Waygate is unlocked, and Trollocs coming through. How can that be?”
The Ogier’s brows sank even deeper, and his ears wilted. “My fault, Perrin,” he rumbled mournfully. “I put both Avendesora leaves on the outside. That locked the Waygate on the inside, but from the outside, anyone could still open it. The Ways have been dark for long generations, yet we grew them. I could not bring myself to destroy the Gate. I am sorry, Perrin. It is all my fault.”
“I did not believe a Waygate could be destroyed,” Faile said.
“I did not mean destroy, exactly.” Loial leaned on his longhandled axe. “A Waygate was destroyed once, less than five hundred years after the Breaking, according to Damelle, daughter of Ala daughter of Soferra, because the Gate was near a stedding that had fallen to the Blight. There are two or three Gates lost in the Blight as it is. But she wrote that it was very difficult, and required thirteen Aes Sedai working together with a sa’angreal. Another attempt she wrote of, by only nine, during the Trolloc Wars, damaged the Gate in such a way that the Aes Sedai were pulled into —” He cut off, ears wriggling with embarrassment, and knuckled his wide nose. Everyone was staring at him, even Verin and the Aiel. “I do let myself be carried away, sometimes. The Waygate. Yes. I cannot destroy it, but if I remove both Avendesora leaves completely, they will die.” He grimaced at the thought. “The only means of opening the Gate again will be for the Elders to bring the Talisman of Growing. Though I suppose an Aes Sedai could cut a hole in it.” This time he shuddered. Damaging a Waygate must have seemed like tearing up a book to him. A moment later, he was grimfaced once more. “I will go now.”
“No!” Perrin said sharply. The arrowhead seemed to throb, but it did not really hurt anymore. He was talking too much; his throat was dry. “There are Trollocs up there, Loial. They can fit an Ogier into a cookpot as well as a human.”
“But, Perrin, I —”
“No, Loial. How are you going to write your book if you go off and get yourself killed?”
Loial’s ears twitched. “It is my responsibility, Perrin.”
“The responsibility is mine,” Perrin said gently. “You told me what you were doing with the Waygate, and I didn’t suggest anything different. Besides, the way you jump every time your mother is mentioned, I don’t want her coming after me. I will go, as soon as Alanna Heals this arrow out of me.” He wiped his forehead, then frowned at his hand. Still no sweat. “Can I have a drink of water?”
Faile was there in an instant, her cool fingers where his hand had been. “He is burning up! Verin, we cannot wait for Alanna. You must—!”
“I am here,” the dark Aes Sedai announced, appearing from the door at the back of the common room, Marin al’Vere and Alsbet Luhhan at her heels, and Ihvon right behind them. Perrin felt the tingle of the Power before Alanna’s hand replaced Faile’s, and she added in a cool, serene voice, “Carry him into the kitchen. The table there is large enough to lay him out. Quickly. There is not much time.”
Perrin’s head spun, and abruptly he realized Loial had leaned his axe beside the door and picked him up, cradling him in his arms. “The Waygate is mine, Loial.” Light, I’m thirsty. “My responsibility.”
The arrowhead truly did not seem to hurt as much as it had, but he ached all over. Loial was carrying him somewhere, bending through doorways. There was Mistress Luhhan, biting her lip, eyes squinched as if about to cry. He wondered why. She never cried. Mistress al’Vere looked worried, too.
“Mistress Luhhan,” he murmured, “Mother says I can come be apprenticed to Master Luhhan.” No. That was a long time ago. That was… What was? He could not seem to remember.
He was lying on something hard, listening to Alanna speak. “…barbs are caught on bone as well as flesh, and the arrowhead has twisted. I must realign it with the first wound and pull it out. If the shock does not kill him, I can then Heal the damage I have done as well as the rest. There is no other way. He is near the brink now.” Nothing to do with him.
Faile smiled down at him tremulously, her face upside down. Had he really once thought her mouth was too wide? It was just right. He wanted to touch her cheek, but Mistress al’Vere and Mistress Luhhan were holding his wrists for some reason, leaning with all their weight. Someone was lying across his legs, too, and Loial’s big hands swallowed his shoulders, pressing them flat to the table. Table. Yes. The kitchen table.
“Bite down, my heart,” Faile said from far away. “It will hurt.”
He wanted to ask her what would hurt, but she was pressing a leatherwrapped stick into his mouth. He smelled the leather and the spicewood and her. Would she come hunting with him, running across the endless grassy plains after endless herds of deer? Icy cold shivered through him; vaguely he recognized the feel of the One Power. And then there was pain. He heard the stick snap between his teeth before blackness covered everything.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 44
(Horned Skull)
The Breaking Storm
Perrin opened his eyes slowly, staring up at the plain white plastered ceiling. It took a moment to realize he was in a fourposted bed, lying on a feather mattress with a blanket over him and a goosedown pillow under his head. A myriad of scents danced in his nose; the feathers and the wool of the blanket, a goose roasting, bread and honeycakes baking. One of the Winespring Inn’s rooms. With unmistakable bright morning light streaming in at the whitecurtained windows. Morning. He fumbled at his side. Unbroken skin met his fingers, but he felt weaker than at any time since being shot. A small enough price, though, and a fair enough exchange. His throat felt parched, too.
When he moved, Faile leaped up from a chair beside the small stone fireplace, tossing aside a red blanket and stretching. She had changed to a darker narrowskirted riding dress, and wrinkles in the gray silk said she had slept in that chair. “Alanna said you needed sleep,” she said. He reached toward the white pitcher on the small table beside the bed, and she hurriedly poured a cup of water and held it for him to drink. “You need to stay right here for another two or three days, until you have your strength back.”
The words sounded normal, except for an undercurrent he barely caught, a tightness at the corners of her eyes. “What is wrong?”
She replaced the cup carefully on the bedside table and smoothed her dress. “Nothing is wrong.” The taut underlying tone was even clearer.
“Faile, don’t lie to me.”
“I do not lie!” she snapped. “I will have some breakfast brought up to you, and you’re lucky I do that, calling me —”
“Faile.” He said her name as sternly as he could, and she hesitated, her most arrogant, chinup glare changing to foreheadcreasing worry and back again. He met her gaze straight on; she was not going to get away with any fine lady’s haughty tricks with him.
At last, she sighed. “I suppose you have a right to know. But you are still staying in that bed until Alanna and I say you can get up. Loial and Gaul are gone.”
“Gone?” He blinked in confusion. “What do you mean gone? They left?”
“In a way. The sentries saw them go, this morning at first light, trotting off into the Westwood together. None of them thought anything of it; certainly none tried to stop them, an Ogier and an Aiel. I heard of it less than an hour ago. They were talking about trees, Perrin. About how the Ogier sing to trees.”
“Trees?” Perrin growled. “It’s that bloody Waygate! Burn me, I told him not to…
They’ll get themselves killed before they reach it!”
Throwing off the blanket, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, wobbling to his feet. He had nothing on, he realized, not even his smallclothes. But if they
expected to keep him caged under a blanket, they were sadly mistaken. He could see everything folded neatly on the tallbacked chair by the door, with his boots beside it and his axe hanging by its belt from a peg on the wall. Stumbling to his clothes, he began dressing as quickly as he could.
“What are you doing?” Faile demanded. “You put yourself back in that bed!” One fist on her hip, she pointed commandingly, as if her finger could transport him there.
“They can’t have gotten that far,” he told her. “Not afoot. Gaul won’t ride, and Loial always did claim he trusted his own feet more than any horse. I can catch them up on Stepper by midday latest.” Pulling his shirt over his head he left it hanging loose over his breeches and sat down— dropped, actually — to draw on his boots.
“You are mad, Perrin Aybara! What chance you can even find them in that forest?”
“I am not so bad at tracking, myself. I can find them.” He smiled at her, but she was not having any.
“You can get yourself killed, you hairy fool! Look at you. You can hardly stand.
You would fall out of the saddle before you had gone a mile!”
Hiding the effort involved, he stood and stamped his feet to settle them in his boots. Stepper would do all the work; he only needed to hold on. “Nonsense. I’m strong as a horse. Stop trying to bully me.” Shrugging into his coat, he snatched up his axe and belt. Faile caught his arm as he opened the door, and was pulled along, vainly trying to haul him back.
“Sometimes you have the brains of a horse,” she panted. “Less! Perrin, you must listen to me. You must —”
The room lay only a few steps along the narrow hallway from the stairs leading down to the empty common room, and it was the stairs that betrayed him. When his knee bent to lower him that first step, it kept right on bending; he toppled forward, vainly trying to catch the banister, pulling a yelling Faile with him. Rolling over and over, they thumped down the stairs to come up with a final thud against the barrel at the bottom, Faile lying stretched fulllength atop him. The barrel teetered and spun, rattling the swords inside, before settling with a final clank.
It took a moment for Perrin to gather enough breath to speak. “Are you all right?” he said anxiously. She was sprawled limply on his chest. He shook her gently. “Faile, are you —?”
Slowly she raised her head and brushed a few short strands of dark hair from her face, then stared at him intently. “Are you all right? Because if you are, I may very well do something violent to you.”
Perrin snorted; she was probably hurt less than he. Gingerly, he felt at where the arrow had been, but that was in no worse shape than the rest of him. Of course, the rest of him seemed bruised from head to toe. “Get off of me, Faile. I need to fetch Stepper.”
Instead, she seized his collar with both hands and leaned very close, until their noses almost touched. “Listen to me, Perrin,” she said urgently. “You — can — not
— do — everything. If Loial and Gaul have gone to lock the Waygate, you must let them. Your place is here. Even if you were strong enough — and you are not! Do you hear me? You are not strong enough! — but even if you were, you must not go after them. You cannot do everything!”
“Why, whatever are you two doing?” Marin al’Vere said. Wiping her hands on her long white apron, she came from the back door of the common room. Her eyebrows looked to be trying to climb into her hair. “I expected Trollocs after all that racket, but not this.” She sounded half scandalized, and half amused.
What they looked like, Perrin realized, with Faile lying on him that way, their heads close together, was a couple playing kissing games. On the floor of the common room.
Faile’s cheeks reddened and she got up very quickly, dusting her dress. “He is as stubborn as a Trolloc, Mistress al’Vere. I told him he was too weak to rise. He must go back to his bed immediately. He has to learn he cannot do everything himself, especially when he cannot even walk down a flight of steps.”
“Oh, my dear,” Mistress al’Vere said, shaking her head, “that is quite the wrong way.” Leaning close to the younger woman, she whispered softly, but Perrin heard every word. “He was an easy little boy to manage most of the time, if you handled him properly, but when you tried to push him, he was as muley as any in the Two Rivers. Men don’t really change that much, only grow taller. If you go telling him what he must and musn’t do, he will surely lay his ears back and dig his heels in. Let me show you.” Marin turned a beaming smile on him, ignoring his glare. “Perrin, don’t you think one of my good goosefeather mattresses is better than that floor? I’ll bring you some of my kidney pie just as soon as we have you tucked in. You must be hungry, after no supper last night. Here. Why don’t let me help you up?”
Pushing their hands away, he stood on his own. Well, with the aid of the wall. He thought he might have sprained half the muscles in his body. Muley? He had never been muley in his life. “Mistress al’Vere, would you have Hu or Tad saddle Stepper?”
“When you’re better,” she said, trying to turn him toward the stairs. “Don’t you think you could do with just a little more rest?” Faile took his other arm.
“Trollocs!” The cry from outside came muffled through the walls, echoed by a dozen voices. “Trollocs! Trollocs!”
“That needn’t concern you today,” Mistress al’Vere said, firm and soothing at the same time. It made him want to grit his teeth. “The Aes Sedai will handle things nicely. In a day or two we’ll have you back on your feet. You will see.”
“My horse,” he said, trying to pull free. They had good holds on his coatsleeves; all he accomplished was swinging them back and forth. “For the love of the Light, will you stop tugging at me and let me get my horse? Let go of me.”
Looking at his face, Faile sighed and released his arm. “Mistress al’Vere, will you have his horse saddled and brought around?”
“But my dear, he really needs —”
“If you please, Mistress al’Vere,” Faile said firmly. “And my horse, too.” The two women looked at each other as if he did not exist. At last Mistress al’Vere nodded.
Perrin frowned at her back as she hurried across the common room and vanished toward the kitchen, and the stable. What had Faile said different from what he had? Turning his attention to her, he said, “Why did you change your mind?”
Tucking his shirt in for him, she muttered under her breath. Doubtless he was not supposed to hear well enough to understand. “I musn’t say must, must I? When he is too stubborn to see straight, I must lead him with honey and smiles, must I?” She shot him a glare that surely had no honey in it, then abruptly changed to a smile so sweet he very nearly backed away. “My dear heart,” she almost cooed, pulling his coat straight, “whatever is happening out there, I do hope you will stay in your saddle, and as far from Trollocs as you can. You really are not up to facing a Trolloc just yet, are you? Maybe tomorrow. Please remember you are a general, a leader, and every bit as much a symbol to your people as that banner out there. If you are up where people can see you, it will lift everyone’s heart. And it is much easier to see what needs doing and give orders if you aren’t in the fighting yourself.” Picking his belt off the floor, she buckled it around his waist, settling the axe carefully on his hip. She also batted her eyes at him! “Please say you will do that. Please?”
She was right. He would not last two minutes against a Trolloc. More like two seconds against a Fade. And much as he hated to admit it, he would not last two miles in the saddle chasing after Loial and Gaul. Fool Ogier. You’re a writer, not a hero. “All right,” he said. A mischievous impulse seized him. The way she and Mistress al’Vere had been talking over his head, and batting her eyes as if he were a fool. “I can’t refuse you anything when you smile so prettily.”
“I am glad.” Still smiling, she brushed at his coat, picking lint he could not see. “Because if you don’t, and you manage to survive, I’ll do to you what you did to me that first day in the Ways. I don’t think you are strong enough yet to stop me.” That smile beamed up into his face, all springtime and sweetness. “Do you understand me?”
He chuckled in spite of himself. “Sounds as if I had better let them kill me.” She did not seem to think that was funny.
Hu and Tad, the lanky stablemen, led Stepper and Swallow around soon after they stepped outside. Everyone else seemed to be gathered at the far end of the village, beyond the Green with its sheep and cows and geese, and that crimsonandwhite wolfhead banner rippling on the morning breeze. As soon as he and Faile were up on their horses, the stablemen took off running that way, too, without a word.
Whatever was going on, it was clearly not an attack. He could see women and children in the crowd, and the shouts of “Trolloc” had died down to a murmur like an echo of the geese. He rode slowly, not wanting to waver in his saddle; Faile kept Swallow close, watching him. If she could change her mind once for no reason, she could again, and he did not want any arguments about whether he should be there.
The babbling crowd did appear to contain everyone in Emond’s Field, villagers and farmers alike, all jammed shoulder to shoulder, but they made way for him and Faile when they saw who he was. His name entered the murmurs, usually tagged with Goldeneyes. He picked up the word “Trollocs,” too, but in tones more wondering than frightened. From Stepper’s back he had a good view over their heads.
The knotted mass of people stretched all the way beyond the last houses to the hedge of sharpened stakes. The edge of the forest, nearly six hundred paces off across a field of stumps nearly level with the ground, was quiet and empty of men with axes. Those men made a sweaty, barechested ring in the crowd surrounding Alanna and Verin and two men. Jon Thane, the miller, was wiping a smear of blood from his ribs, lantern jaw on his chest so he could stare at what his hands were doing. Alanna straightened from the other man, a grizzlehaired fellow Perrin did not know, who leaped to his feet and danced a step as if not quite believing he could. He and the miller both looked at the Aes Sedai with awe.
The tangle around the Aes Sedai was too tight for anyone to shift aside for Stepper and Swallow, but there were smaller clear pockets around Ihvon and Tomas, off to either side on their warhorses. Folk did not want to come too near those fierceeyed animals, both looking as though they only wanted an opportunity to bite or trample.
Perrin managed to reach Tomas without too much trouble. “What happened?” “A Trolloc. Only one.” Despite the graying Warder’s conversational tone, his
dark eyes did not rest on Perrin and Faile, but kept an almost equal watch on Verin and on the treeline. “They usually are not very smart, alone. Sly, but not smart. The timbering party drove it away before it did more than draw some blood.”
From out of the trees the two Aiel women appeared, running, heads shoufawrapped and veiled so he could not tell which was which. They slowed to snake between the sharppointed stakes, then slipped deftly through the crowd, people moving out of their way as much as possible in that press. By the time they reached Faile, they had unveiled, and she leaned down to listen.
“Perhaps five hundred Trollocs,” Bain told her, “probably no more than a mile or two behind us.” Her voice was level, but her dark blue eyes sparkled with eagerness. So did Chiad’s gray.
“As I expected,” Tomas said calmly. “That one likely wandered off from the larger body hoping to find a meal. The rest will be coming soon, I think.” The Maidens nodded.
Perrin gestured in consternation at the jam of people. “They shouldn’t be out
here, then. Why haven’t you cleared them away?”
It was Ihvon, bringing his gray into the gathering, who answered. “Your people do not seem to want to listen to outsiders, not when they can watch Aes Sedai. I would suggest you see what you can do.”
Perrin was sure they could have imposed some sort of order had they really tried. Verin and Alanna surely could have. So why did they wait and leave it to me, if they expected Trollocs? It would have been easy to put it down to ta’veren — easy, and foolish. Ihvon and Tomas were not going to let Trollocs kill them — or Verin, or Alanna — while waiting for a ta’veren to tell them what to do. The Aes Sedai were maneuvering him, risking everyone, maybe even themselves. But to what possible end? He met Faile’s eyes, and she nodded slightly, as if she knew what he was thinking.
He had no time to try figuring it out now. Scanning the crowd, he spotted Bran al’Vere, putting his head together with Tam al’Thor and Abell Cauthon. The Mayor had a long spear on his shoulder and a dented old round steel cap on his head. A leather jerkin sewn all over with steel discs strained around his bulk.
All three men looked up when Perrin pushed Stepper through the crowd to them. “Bain says Trollocs are heading this way, and the Warders think we may be attacked soon.” He had to shout because of the incessant drone of voices. Some of the nearer folk heard and fell silent; quiet spread on ripples of “Trolloc” and “attack.”
Bran blinked. “Yes. It had to come, didn’t it? Yes, well, we know what to do.” He should have looked comic, with his jerkin ready to pop its seams and his steel cap wobbling when he nodded, but he only looked determined. Raising his voice, he announced, “Perrin says the Trollocs will be here soon. You all know your places. Hurry, now. Hurry.”
The crowd stirred and flowed, women herding children back toward the houses, men milling every which way. Confusion seemed to grow more rather than less.
“I’ll see to getting the shepherds in,” Abell told Perrin, and dove into the throng. Cenn Buie pushed past in the moil, using a halberd to herd sourfaced Hari Coplin and Hari’s brother Darl and old Bili Congar, who staggered as if already full of ale this morning, which he probably was. Of the three, Bili carried his spear most as if he meant to use it. Cenn touched his forehead to Perrin in a sort of salute. A number of the men did. It made him uncomfortable. Dannil and the other lads were
one thing, but these men were half again his age and more. “You are doing fine,” Faile said.
“I wish I knew what Verin and Alanna were up to,” he muttered. “And I don’t mean right now.” Two of the catapults the Warders had had built stood at this end of the village, squarish things taller than a man, all heavy timbers and thick, twisted ropes. From their horses, Ihvon and Tomas were overseeing the stout wooden beams being winched down. The two Aes Sedai were more interested in the big fieldstones, fifteen or twenty pounds each, being loaded in cups on the end of those
arms.
“They mean you to be a leader,” Faile replied quietly. “It is what you were born for, I think.”
Perrin snorted. He had been born to be a blacksmith. “I’d be a lot more comfortable if I knew why they wanted it.” The Aes Sedai were looking at him, Verin with head tilted, birdlike, Alanna with a franker stare and a small smile. Did they both want the same thing, and for the same reason? That was one of the troubles with Aes Sedai. There were always more questions than answers.
Order asserted itself with surprising quickness. Along this west end of the village a hundred men knelt on one knee right behind the bristle of stakes, uneasily fingering spears or halberds or some polearm made from a bush hook or scythe. Here and there one wore a helmet or some bit of armor. To their rear, twice as many formed two lines holding good Two Rivers longbows, each with a pair of quivers at his belt. Young boys came running from the houses with bundles of more arrows that the men drove pointdown in the ground in front of their feet. Tam seemed to be in charge, dressing the ranks and speaking a few words to each man, but Bran marched along with him, offering his own encouragement. Perrin could not see that they needed him at all.
To his surprise, Dannil and Ban and all the other lads who had ridden with him came trotting out of the village to surround him and Faile, all with their bows. They looked odd, in a way. The Aes Sedai had apparently Healed the more seriously injured, leaving those less hurt for Daise’s poultices and ointments, so fellows who had been barely clinging to a saddle yesterday walked along sprightly now, while Dannil and Tell and others still limped or wore bandages. If he was surprised to see them, he was disgusted by what they brought. Leof Torfinn, the dressing wrapped around his head making a pale cap above his deepset eyes, had his bow slung on his back and carried a tall staff with a smaller version of the redbordered banner with its wolfhead.
“I think one of the Aes Sedai had it made,” Leof said when Perrin asked where it came from. “Milli Ayellin brought it to Will’s da, but Wil didn’t want to carry it.” Wil al’Seen hunched his shoulders a bit.
“I wouldn’t want to carry it, either,” Perrin said dryly. They all laughed as if he had made a joke, even Wil, after a minute.
The hedge of stakes looked fierce enough, but on the other hand, it seemed a pitiful thing to keep Trollocs out. Maybe it would, but he did not want Faile there if they made it through. When he looked at her, though, she had that look in her eyes again as if she knew what he was thinking. And did not like it. If he tried to send her back, she would argue and balk, refusing to see sense. Weak as he felt right then, she probably had a better chance of leading him back to the inn than he her. The way she was sitting her saddle so ferociously, she likely intended to defend him, if the Trollocs broke through. He would just have to keep a close eye on her; that was all there was to it.
Suddenly she smiled, and he scratched his beard. Maybe she could read his mind.
Time passed, the sun inching up, the day’s warmth building. Now and then a woman called from the houses to ask what was happening. Here and there men sat down, but Tam or Bran was on them before they had their legs folded, chivying them back into line. No more than a mile or two, Bain had said. She and Chiad were sitting near the stakes, playing some game that apparently involved flipping a knife into the foot of ground between them. Surely if the Trollocs were coming, they would have come by now. He was beginning to find it hard to sit up straight. Conscious of Faile’s watchful eyes, he kept his back stiff.
A horn blared, brazen and shrill.
“Trollocs!” half a dozen voices shouted, and bestial, blackmailed shapes flooded out of the Westwood, howling as they ran across the stumpy ground, waving scythecurved swords and spiked axes, spears and tridents. Three Myrddraal rode behind them on black horses, darting back and forth as though driving the Trolloc charge before them. Their dead black cloaks hung motionless no matter how their mounts dashed or whirled. The horn sounded continuously in sharp, urging cries.
Twenty arrows leaped out as soon as the first Trolloc appeared, the strongest shot falling nearly a hundred paces short.
“Hold, you lackwitted sheepbrains!” Tam shouted. Bran jumped and gave him a startled look, no less incredulous than those coming from Tam’s friends and neighbors; some muttered about not standing still for that kind of talk, Trollocs or no Trollocs. Tam rode right over their protests, though. “You hold till I give the word, the way I showed you!” Then, as if hundreds of shrieking Trollocs were not galloping toward him, Tam turned calmly to Perrin. “At three hundred paces?”
Perrin nodded quickly. The man was asking him? Three hundred paces. How quickly could a Trolloc cover three hundred paces? He eased his axe in its loop. That horn wailed and wailed. The spearmen crouched behind the stakes as if forcing themselves not to edge back. The Aiel had veiled their faces.
Onward the screaming tide came, all horned heads and faces with snouts or beaks, each half again as tall as a man, each shrieking for blood. Five hundred paces. Four hundred. Some were stretching out in front. They ran as fast as horses. Had the Aiel been right? Could there be only five hundred? It looked like thousands.
“Ready!” Tam called, and two hundred bows were raised. The young men with Perrin hurriedly formed up in front of him in imitation of their elders, ranking themselves with that fool banner.
Three hundred paces. Perrin could see those misshapen faces, contorted with rage and frenzy, as clearly as if they were right on top of him.
“Loose!” Tam shouted. Bowstrings slapped like one huge whipcrack. With twin crashes of beam against leatherpadded beam, the catapults fired.
Broadhead arrows rained down into the Trollocs. Monstrous shapes fell, but
some rose and staggered on, harried by the Fades. That horn wove into their guttural bellowing, sounding forward for the kill. The catapults’ stones fell among them — and exploded in fire and shards, ripping open holes in the mass. Perrin was not the only one to jump; so that was what the Aes Sedai had been doing with the catapults. He wondered wildly what would happen if they dropped one of those stones loading it into the cup.
Another flight of arrows leaped out, and another, another, and again and again, and more stones from the catapults, if at a slower pace. Fiery explosions tore at the Trollocs. Broadhead points hailed down on them. And they came on, shrieking, howling, falling and dying, but always running forward. They were close now, close enough that the bowmen spread out, no longer firing in flights but choosing their targets. Men screamed their own rage, screamed in the face of death as they shot.
And then there were no more Trollocs standing. Only one Fade, bristling with arrows yet still staggering blindly. The shrill shrieks of a Myrddraal’s thrashing horse competed with the moaning bellows of downed and dying Trollocs. The horn had fallen silent at last. Here and there across the stumpfilled field, a Trolloc heaved and fell back. Under it all, Perrin could hear men panting as if they had run ten miles. His own heart seemed to be pounding out of his chest.
Suddenly someone raised a loud huzzah, and with that men began capering and shouting euphorically, waving bows or whatever they had over their heads, tossing caps in the air. Women rushed out from the houses, laughing and cheering, and children, all celebrating and dancing with the men. Some came running to grab Perrin’s hand and shake it.
“You’ve led us to a great victory, my boy.” Bran laughed up at him. He had his steel cap perched on the back of his head. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you that, now. A great victory, Perrin.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he protested. “I just sat on my horse. You did it.” Bran listened no more than any of the others. Embarrassed, Perrin sat up straight, pretending to survey the field, and after a while they left him alone.
Tam had not joined in the celebrating; he stood close behind the stakes, studying the Trollocs. The Warders were not laughing, either. Blackmailed shapes littered the field among the low stumps. There could be five hundred of them. Maybe less. Some, a few, might have made it back to the trees. None lay closer than fifty paces from the pointed hedge. Perrin found the other two Fades, writhing on the ground. That accounted for all three. They would admit they were dead eventually.
The Two Rivers folk raised a thunderous cheer, for him. “Perrin Goldeneyes!
Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”
“They had to know,” he muttered. Faile looked at him questioningly. “The Halfmen had to know this wouldn’t work. Look out there. Even I can see it, now; they must have from the start. If this was all they had, why did they try? And if there are more Trollocs out there, why didn’t they all come? Twice as many, and we’d have had to fight them at the stakes. Twice that, and they might have broken
through to the village.”
“You’ve a good natural eye,” Tomas said, reining in beside them. “This was a test. To see if you would break at the sight of a charge, perhaps to see how quickly you could react, or how your defenses are organized, or maybe something I’ve not thought of, but still a test. Now they see.” He pointed to the sky, where a lone raven winged over the field. A natural raven would have lighted to feast among the dead. The bird completed a last circle and peeled off toward the forest. “The next attack will not come right away. I saw two or three Trollocs reach the forest, so word of this will spread. The Halfmen will have to make them remember they’re more afraid of Myrddraal than of dying. That attack will come, however, and it will certainly be stronger than this. How strong depends on how many the Faceless have brought through the Ways.”
Perrin grimaced. “Light! What if there are ten thousand of them?”
“Not likely,” Verin said, walking up to pat Tomas’s mount on the neck. The warhorse allowed her touch as meekly as a pony. “At least, not yet. Not even a Forsaken could move a large party through the Ways safely, I think. One man alone risks death or madness between the closest Waygates, but. . . say… a thousand men, or a thousand Trollocs, would very likely draw Machin Shin within minutes, a monstrous wasp to a bowl of honey. It is much more probable that they travel no more than ten or twenty together, fifty at most, and the groups spaced out. Of course, the questions remain of how many groups they are bringing, and how much time they allow to elapse between. And they would lose some anyway. It might be that Shadowspawn attract Machin Shin less than humankind, but… Hmmm. Fascinating thought. I wonder…” Patting Tomas on the leg much in the manner she had patted his horse, she turned away, already lost in study. The Warder heeled his horse after her.
“If you ride even one step near the Westwood,” Faile said calmly, “I will haul you back to the inn by your ear and stuff you into that bed myself.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it,” Perrin lied, turning Stepper so his back was to the woods. One man and an Ogier might escape notice, make it to the mountains safely. They might. The Waygate had to be locked permanently if Emond’s Field was to have any chance. “You talked me out of it, remember?” Another man might find them, knowing they were there. Three sets of eyes could keep sharper watch than two, especially when one set was his, and he was certainly not doing anything here. His clothes stuffed with straw and set on Stepper could do as much.
Suddenly, above the shouting and carrying on around him, he heard sharper shouts, a clamor from the south, near the Old Road.
“He said they wouldn’t come again soon!” he growled, and dug his heels into Stepper’s flanks.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 45
(Sunburst)
The Tinker’s Sword
Galloping through the village with Faile at his heels, Perrin found the men on the south side in a cluster, peering out over the cleared fields and muttering, some with bows halfdrawn. Two wagons blocked the gap the Old Road made in the sharp stakes The nearest low stone fence still standing, bordering a field of tabac, lay five hundred paces off, with nothing between taller than barley stubble; the ground short of it sprouted arrows like weeds. Smoke curled up in the far distance, a dozen or more thick black plumes, some wide enough to be fields burning.
Cenn Buie was there, and Hari and Darl Coplin. Bili Congar had an arm around the shoulders of his cousin Wit, Daise’s bony husband, who looked as if he wished Bili would not breathe on him. None smelled of fear, only excitement. And Bili of ale. At least ten men at once tried to tell him what had happened; some were louder than others.
“The Trollocs tried us here, as well,” Hari Coplin shouted, “but we showed them, didn’t we?” There were murmurs of agreement, but just as many or more eyed each other doubtfully and shifted their feet.
“We’ve some heroes here, too,” Darl said in a loud, rough voice. “Your lot up at the wood aren’t the only ones.” A bigger man than his brother, he had that same weaselnarrow Coplin face, the same tight mouth as if he had just bitten a green persimmon. When he thought Perrin was not looking, he shot him a spiteful look. It did not necessarily mean he really wished he had been up facing the Westwood; Darl and Hari and most of their relatives usually found a way to see themselves being cheated, whatever the situation.
“This calls for a drink!” old Bili announced, then scowled in disappointment when no one echoed him.
A head lifted above the distant wall and hurriedly ducked back down, but not before Perrin saw a brilliant yellow coat. “Not Trollocs,” he growled disgustedly. “Tinkers! You were shooting at Tuatha’an. Get those wagons out of the way.” Standing in his stirrups, he cupped hands to his mouth. “You can come on!” he shouted. “It is all right! No one will hurt you! I said move those wagons,” he snapped at the men standing around staring at him. Taking Tinkers for Trollocs! “And go fetch your arrows; you’ll have real need for them sooner or later.” Slowly some moved to obey, and he shouted again, “No one will harm you! It is all right! Come on!” The wagons rolled to either side with the creak of axles that needed grease.
A few brightly garbed Tuatha’an climbed over the fence, then a few more, and started toward the village in a hesitant, footsore halfrun, seeming almost as afraid of what lay ahead as whatever lay behind. They huddled together at the sight of men dashing out from the village, balancing on the edge of turning back even when the
Two Rivers folk trotted by, looking at them curiously, to begin pulling arrows out of the dirt. Yet they did stumble on.
Perrin’s insides turned to ice. Twenty men and women, perhaps, some carrying small children, and a handful of older children running, too, their dazzling colors all torn and stained with dirt. And some with blood, he saw as they came closer. That was all. Out of how many in the caravan? There was Raen, at least, shuffling as though halfdazed and being guided by Ila, one side of her face a dark, swollen bruise. At least they had survived.
Short of the opening, the Tuatha’an stopped, staring uncertainly at the sharp stakes and the mass of armed men. Some of the children clutched their elders and hid their faces. They smelled of fear, of terror. Faile jumped down and ran to them, but though Ila hugged her, she did not take another step nearer. The older woman seemed to be drawing comfort from the younger.
“We won’t hurt you,” Perrin said. I should have made them come. The Light burn me, I should have made them! “You are welcome to our fires.”
“Tinkers.” Hari’s mouth twisted scornfully. “What do we want with a bunch of thieving Tinkers? Take everything that isn’t nailed down.”
Darl open his mouth, to support Hari no doubt, but before he could speak someone in the crowd shouted, “So do you, Hari! And you’ll take the nails, too!” Sparse laughter snapped Darl’s jaws shut. Not many laughed, though, and those that did eyed the bedraggled Tuatha’an and looked down in discomfort.
“Hari is right!” Daise Congar called, bulling through, pushing men out of her path. “Tinkers steal, and not just things! They steal children!” Shoving her way to Cenn Buie, she shook a finger as thick as Cenn’s thumb under his nose. He backed away as much as he could in the press; she overtopped him by a head and outweighed him by half. “You are supposed to be on the Village Council, but if you don’t want to listen to the Wisdom, I’ll bring the Women’s Circle into this, and we will take care of it.” Some of the men nodded, muttering.
Cenn scratched his thinning hair, eyeing the Wisdom sideways. “Aaah…well… Perrin,” he said slowly in that scratchy voice, “the Tinkers do have a reputation, you know, and —” He cut off, jumping back as Perrin whirled Stepper to face the Two Rivers folk.
A good many scattered before the dun, but Perrin did not care. “We’ll not turn anyone away,” he said in a tight voice. “No one! Or do you mean to send children off for the Trollocs?” One of the Tuatha’an children began to cry, a sharp wailing, and he wished he had not said that, but Cenn’s face went red as a beet, and even Daise looked abashed.
“Of course we’ll take them in,” the thatcher said gruffly. He rounded on Daise, all puffed up like a banty rooster ready to fight a mastiff. “And if you want to bring the Women’s Circle into it, the Village Council will sit the whole lot of you down sharp! You see if we don’t!”
“You always were an old fool, Cenn Buie,” Daise snorted. “Do you think we’d
let you send children back out there for Trollocs?” Cenn’s jaw worked furiously, but before he could get a word out Daise put a hand on his narrow chest and thrust him aside. Donning a smile, she strode out to the Tuatha’an and put a comforting arm around Ila. “You just come along with me, and I’ll see you all get hot baths and somewhere to rest. Every house is crowded, but we’ll find places for everyone. Come.”
Marin al’Vere came hurrying through the crowd, and Alsbet Luhhan, Natti Cauthon and Neysa Ayellin and more women, taking up children or putting arms around Tuatha’an women, urging them along, scolding the Two Rivers men to make way. Not that anybody was balking, now; it just took a little time for so many to jostle back and open a path.
Faile gave Perrin an admiring look, but he shook his head. This was not ta’veren work; Two Rivers people might need the right way pointed out to them sometimes, but they could see it when it was. Even Hari Coplin, watching the Tinkers brought in, did not look as sour as he had. Well, not. quite as sour. There was no use expecting miracles.
Shambling by, Raen looked up at Perrin dully. “The Way of the Leaf is the right way. All things die in their appointed time, and…” He trailed off as if he could not remember what he had been going to say.
“They came last night,” Ila said, mumbling because of her swollen face. Her eyes were almost as glazed as her husband’s. “The dogs might have helped us escape, but the Children killed all the dogs, and… There was nothing we could do.” Behind her, Aram shivered in his yellowstriped coat, staring at all the armed men. Most of the Tinker children were crying now.
Perrin frowned at the smoke rising to the south. Twisting in his saddle, he could make out more to the north and east. Even if most of those represented houses already abandoned, the Trollocs had had a busy night. How many would it take to fire that many farms, even running between and taking no more time than needed to toss a torch into an empty house or unwatched field? Maybe as many as they had killed today; What did that say about Trolloc numbers already in the Two Rivers? It did not seem possible one band had done it all, burning all those houses and destroying the Traveling People’s caravan, too.
Eyes falling on the Tuatha’an being led away, he felt a stab of embarrassment. They had seen kith and kin killed last night, and here he was coldly considering numbers. He could hear some of the Two Rivers men muttering, trying to decide which smoke represented whose farm. To all of these people those fires meant real losses, lives to be rebuilt if they could, not just numbers. He was useless here. Now, while Faile was caught up in helping see to the Tinkers, was the time for him to be off after Loial and Gaul.
Master Luhhan, in his blacksmith’s vest and long leather apron, caught Stepper’s bridle. “Perrin, you have to help me. The Warders want me to make parts for more of those catapults, but I’ve twenty men clamoring for me to repair bits of armor their
grandfathers’ fool grandfathers bought from some fool merchants’ guards.”
“I would like to give you a hand,” Perrin said, “but I have something else that needs doing. I’d likely be rusty, anyway. I haven’t had much work at a forge the last year.”
“Light, I didn’t mean that. Not for you to work a hammer.” The blacksmith sounded shocked. “Every time I send one of those goosebrains off with a bee in his ear, he’s back ten minutes later with a new argument. I cannot get any work done. They’ll listen to you.”
Perrin doubted it, not if they would not listen to Master Luhhan. Aside from being on the Village Council, Haral Luhhan was big enough to pick up nearly any man in the Two Rivers and toss him out bodily if need be. But he went along to the makeshift forge Master Luhhan had set up beneath a hastily built, opensided shed near the Green. Six men clustered around the anvils salvaged from the smithy the Whitecloaks had burned, and another idly pumping the big leather bellows until the blacksmith chased him away from the long handles with a shout. To Perrin’s surprise they did listen when he told them to go, with no speech to bend men ’round a ta’veren’s will, just a plain statement that Master Luhhan was busy. Surely the blacksmith could have done as much himself, but he shook Perrin’s hand and thanked him profusely before setting to work.
Bending down from Stepper’s saddle, Perrin caught one of the men by the shoulder, a baldheaded farmer named Get Eldin, and asked him to stay and warn off anyone else who tried to bother Master Luhhan. Get must have been three times his age, but the leathery, wrinklefaced man just nodded and took up a station near where Haral had his hammer ringing on hot iron. Now he could be off, before Faile turned up.
Before he could as much as turn Stepper, Bran appeared, spear on his shoulder and steel cap under one stout arm. “Perrin, there has to be a faster way to bring the shepherds and herdsmen in if we’re attacked again. Even sending the fastest runners in the village, Abell couldn’t get half of them back here before those Trollocs came out of the wood.”
That was easy to solve, a matter of remembering an old bugle, tarnished nearly black, that Cenn Buie had hanging on his wall, and settling on a signal of three long blasts that the farthest shepherd could hear. It did bring up signals for other things, of course, such as sending everyone to their places if an attack was expected. Which led to how to know when an attack was expected. Bain and Chiad and the Warders turned out to be more than amenable to scouting, but four were hardly enough, so good woodsmen and trackers had to be found, and provided with horses so they could reach Emond’s Field ahead of any Trollocs they
spotted.
After that, Buel Dowtry had to be settled down. The whitehaired old fletcher, with a nose nearly as sharp as a broadhead point, knew very well that most farmers usually made their own arrows, but he was adamantly opposed to anyone helping
him here in the village, as if he could keep every quiver filled by himself. Perrin was not sure how he smoothed Buel’s ruffled temper, but somehow he left the man happily teaching a knot of boys to tie and glue goosefeather fletchings.
Eward Candwin, the stout cooper, had a different problem. With so many folks needing water, he had more buckets and barrels to make than he could hoop in weeks, alone. It did not take long to find him hands he trusted to chamfer staves at least, but more people came with questions and problems they seemed to think only Perrin had the answers for, from where to burn the bodies of the dead Trollocs to whether it was safe to return to their farms to save what they could. That last he answered with a firm no whenever it was asked — and it was asked more often than any other, by men and women frowning at the smoke rising in the countryside — but most of the time he simply inquired what the questioner thought was a good solution and told him to do that. It was seldom he really had to come up with an answer; people knew what to do, they just had this fool notion they had to ask him.
Dannil and Ban and the others found him and insisted on riding about at his heels with that banner, as if the big one over the Green was not bad enough, until he sent them off to guard the men who had gone back to felling trees along the Westwood. It seemed that Tam had told them some tale about something called the Companions, in Illian, soldiers who rode with the general of an Illianer army and were thrown in wherever the battle was hottest. Tam, of all people! At least they took the banner with them. Perrin felt a right fool with that thing trailing after him.
In the middle of the morning, Luc rode in, all goldenhaired arrogance, nodding slightly to acknowledge a few cheers, though why anyone wanted to cheer him seemed a mystery. He brought a trophy that he pulled out of a leather bag and had set on a spear at the edge of the Green for everyone to gawk at. A Myrddraal’s eyeless head. The fellow was modest enough, in a condescending sort of way, but he did let slip that he had killed the Fade when he ran into a band of Trollocs. An admiring train took him around to see the scene of the battle here — they were calling it that — where horses were dragging Trollocs off to great pyres already sending up pillars of oily black smoke. Luc was properly admiring in turn, making only one or two criticisms of how Perrin had disposed his men; that was how the Two Rivers folk told it, with Perrin lining everybody up and giving orders he certainly never had.
To Perrin, Luc gave a patronizing smile of approval. “You did very well, my boy. You were lucky, of course, but there is such a thing as the luck of the beginner, is there not.”
When he went off to his room in the Winespring Inn, Perrin had the head taken down and buried. Not a thing people should be staring at, especially the children.
The questions continued as the day wore on, until he suddenly realized the sun stood straight overhead, he had had nothing to eat, and his stomach was talking to him in no uncertain terms. “Mistress al’Caar,” he said wearily to the longfaced woman at his stirrup, “I suppose the children can play anywhere, so long as
somebody watches to make sure they don’t go beyond the last houses. Light, woman, you know that. You certainly know children better than I do! If you don’t, how have you managed to raise four of your own?” Her youngest was six years older than he was!
Nela al’Caar frowned and tossed her head, graystreaked braid swinging. For a moment he thought she was going to snap his nose off, talking that way to her. He almost wished she would, for a change from everybody wanting to know what he thought should be done. “Of course I know children,” she said. “I just want to make sure it’s done the way you want. That’s what we’ll do, then.”
Sighing, he only waited for her to turn away before reining Stepper around toward the Winespring Inn. Two or three voices called to him, but he refused to listen. What he wanted done. What was wrong with these people? Two Rivers folk did not follow this way. Certainly not Emond’s Fielders. They wanted a say in everything. Arguments in front of the Village Council, arguments among the Council, had to come to blows before they occasioned comment. And if the Women’s Circle thought they kept their own affairs more circumspect, there was not a man who did not know the meaning of tightjawed women stalking about with their braids all but bristling like angry cats’ tails.
What I want! he thought angrily. What I want is something to eat, someplace where no one is jabbering in my ear. Stepping down in front of the inn, he staggered, and thought he could add a bed to that short list. Only midday, with Stepper doing all the work, and he already felt boneweary. Maybe Faile had been right after all. Maybe going after Loial and Gaul really was a bad idea.
When he walked into the common room, Mistress al’Vere took one look at him and all but pushed him into a chair with a motherly smile. “You can just give over handing out orders for a while,” she told him firmly. “Emond’s Field can very well survive an hour by itself while you put some food inside you.” She bustled away before he could say Emond’s Field could very well survive by itself without him at all.
The room was almost empty. Natti Cauthon sat at one table, rolling bandages and adding them to the pile in front of her, but she also managed to keep an eye on her daughters, across the room, though both were old enough to be wearing their hair in a braid. The reason was plain enough. Bode and Eldrin sat on either side of Aram, coaxing the Tinker to eat. Feeding him, actually, and wiping his chin, too. From the way they were grinning at the fellow, Perrin was surprised Natti was not at the table with them, braids or no. The fellow was goodlooking, he supposed; maybe handsomer than Wil al’Seen. Bode and Eldrin certainly seemed to think so. For his part, Aram smiled back occasionally — they were plumply pretty girls; he would have to be blind not to see it, and Perrin did not think Aram was ever blind to a pretty girl — but he hardly swallowed without running a wideeyed gaze over the spears and polearms against the walls. For a Tuatha’an, it had to be a horrible sight.
“Mistress al’Vere said you had finally gotten tired of your saddle,” Faile said,
popping in through the door to the kitchen. Startlingly, she wore a long white apron like Marin’s; her sleeves were pushed up above her elbows, and she had flour on her hands. As if just realizing it, she whipped the apron off, wiping her hands hastily, and laid it across the back of a chair. “I have never baked anything before,” she said, shoving her sleeves down as she joined him. “It is rather fun kneading dough. I might like to do it again someday.”
“If you don’t bake,” he said, “where are we going to get bread? I don’t intend to spend my whole life traveling, buying meals or eating what I can snare or fetch with bow or sling.”
She smiled as if he had said something very pleasing, though he could not for the life of him see what. “The cook will bake, of course. One of her helpers, really, I suppose, but the cook will oversee it.”
“The cook,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Or one of her helpers. Of course.
Why didn’t I think of that?”
“What is the matter, Perrin? You look worried. I don’t think the defenses could be any sounder without a fortress wall.”
“It isn’t that. Faile, this Perrin Goldeneyes business is getting out of hand. I do not know who they think I am, but they keep asking me what to do, asking if it’s all right, when they already know what has to be done, when they could figure it out with two minutes’ thought.”
For a long moment she studied his face, those dark, tilted eyes thoughtful, then said, “How many years has it been since the Queen of Andor ruled here in fact?”
“The Queen of Andor? I don’t really know. A hundred years, maybe. Two hundred. What does that have to do with anything?”
“These people do not remember how to deal with a queen — or a king. They are trying to puzzle it out. You must be patient with them.”
“A king?” he said weakly. He let his head drop down onto his arms on the table. “Oh, Light!”
Laughing softly, Faile ruffled his hair. “Well, perhaps not that. I doubt very much that Morgase would approve. A leader, at least. But she would very definitely approve a man who brought lands back to her that her throne has not controlled in a hundred years or more. She would surely make that man a lord. Perrin of House Aybara, Lord of the Two Rivers. It has a good sound.”
“We do not need any lords in the Two Rivers,” he growled at the oak tabletop. “Or kings, or queens. We are free men!”
“Free men can have a need to follow someone, too,” she said gently. “Most men want to believe in something larger than themselves, something wider than their own fields. That is why there are nations, Perrin, and peoples. Even Raen and Ila see themselves as part of something more than their own caravan. They have lost their wagons and most of their family and friends, but other Tuatha’an still seek the song, and they will again, too, because they belong to more than a few wagons.”
“Who owns these?” Aram asked suddenly.
Perrin raised his head. The young Tinker was on his feet, staring uneasily at the spears lining the walls. “They belong to anybody who wants one, Aram. Nobody is going to hurt you with any of them, believe me.” He was not sure if Aram did believe, not the way he began walking slowly around the room with his hands stuffed into his pockets, eyeing spears and halberds sideways.
Perrin was more than grateful to dig in when Marin brought him a plate of sliced roast goose, with turnips and peas and good crusty bread. At least, he would have dug in, if Faile had not tucked a flowerembroidered napkin under his chin and snatched the knife and fork out of his hands. She seemed to find it amusing to feed him the way Bode and Eldrin had been feeding Aram. The Cauthon girls giggled at him, and Natti and Marin wore little smiles, too. Perrin did not see what was so funny. He was willing to indulge Faile, though, even if he could have fed himself more easily. She kept making him stretch his neck to take what she had on the fork.
Aram’s slow wandering took him around the room three times before he stopped at the foot of the stairs, staring at the barrel of illassorted swords. Then he reached out and pulled a sword from the cluster, hefting it awkwardly. The leatherwrapped hilt was long enough for both of his hands. “Can I use this one?” he asked.
Perrin nearly choked.
Alanna appeared at the head of the stairs, with Ila; the Tuatha’an woman looked weary, but the bruise was gone from her face. “. . . best thing is sleep,” the Aes Sedai was saying. “It is shock to his mind that troubles him most, and I cannot Heal that.”
Ila’s eyes fell on her grandson, on what he held, and she screamed as if that blade had gone into her flesh. “No, Aram! Nooooo!” She almost fell in her haste to get down the stairs and flung herself on Aram, trying to pull his hands from the sword. “No, Aram,” she panted breathlessly. “You must not. Put it down. The Way of the Leaf. You must not! The Way of the Leaf! Please, Aram! Please!”
Aram danced with her, fending her off clumsily, trying to hold the sword away from her. “Why not?” he shouted angrily. “They killed Mother! I saw them! I might have saved her, if I had had a sword. I could have saved her!”
The words sliced at Perrin’s chest. A Tinker with a sword seemed an unnatural thing, almost enough to make his hackles stand, but those words… . His mother. “Leave him alone,” he said, more roughly than he intended. “Any man has a right to defend himself, to defend his… He has a right.”
Aram pushed the sword toward Perrin. “Will you teach me how to use it?” “I don’t know how,” Perrin told him. “You can find someone, though.”
Tears rolled down Ila’s contorted face. “The Trollocs took my daughter,” she sobbed, her entire body shaking, “and all my grandchildren but one, and now you take him. He is Lost, because of you, Perrin Aybara. You have become a wolf in your heart, and now you will make him one, too.” Turning, she stumbled back up the steps, still racked with sobs.
“I could have saved her!” Aram called after her. “Grandmother! I could have
saved her!” She never looked back, and when she vanished around the corner, he slumped against the banister, weeping. “I could have saved her, grandmother. I could have…”
Perrin realized Bode was crying, too, with her face in her hands, and the other women were frowning at him as though he had done something wrong. No, not all of them. Alanna studied him from the head of the stairs with that unreadable Aes Sedai calm, and Faile’s face was nearly as blank.
Wiping his mouth, he tossed the napkin on the table and got up. There was still time to tell Aram to put the sword back, to go ask Ila’s pardon. Time to tell him… what? That maybe next time he would not be there to watch his loved ones die? That maybe he could just come back to find their graves?
He put a hand on Aram’s shoulder, and the man flinched, hunching around the sword as if expecting him to take it. The Tinker’s scent carried a wash of emotions, fear and hate and bonedeep sadness. Lost, Ila had called him. His eyes looked lost. “Wash your face, Aram. Then go find Tam al’Thor. Say I ask him to teach you the sword.”
Slowly the other man raised his face. “Thank you,” he stammered, scrubbing at the tears on his cheeks with his sleeve. “Thank you. I will never forget this. Never. I swear it.” Suddenly he hoisted the sword to kiss the straight blade; the hilt had a brass wolfhead for a pommel. “I swear. Is that not how it is done?”
“I suppose it is,” Perrin said sadly, wondering why he should feel sad. The Way of the Leaf was a fine belief, like a dream of peace, but like the dream it could not last where there was violence. He did not know of a place without that. A dream for some other man, some other time. Some other Age perhaps. “Go on, Aram. You have a lot to learn, and there may not be much time.” Still bubbling thanks, the Tinker did not wait to wash his tears away, but ran straight out of the inn, carrying the sword upright before him in both hands.
Conscious of Eldrin’s scowl and Marin’s fists on her hips and Natti’s frown, not to mention Bode’s weeping, Perrin walked back to his chair. Alanna had gone from her place at the top of the stairs. Faile watched him pick up his knife and fork. “You disapprove?” he said quietly. “A man has a right to defend himself, Faile. Even Aram. No one can make him follow the Way of the Leaf if he doesn’t want to.”
“I do not like to see you in pain,” she said very softly.
His knife paused in cutting a piece of goose. Pain? That dream was not for him. “I am just tired,” he told her, and smiled. He did not think she believed him.
Before he had time to take a second mouthful, Bran stuck his head in at the front door. He wore his round steel cap again. “Riders coming from the north, Perrin. A lot of riders, I think it must be the Whitecloaks.”
Faile darted away as Perrin rose, and by the time he was outside on Stepper, with the Mayor muttering to himself about what he meant to say to the Whitecloaks, she came riding her black mare around the side of the inn. More people were running north than stayed at their tasks. Perrin was in no particular
hurry. The Children of the Light might well be there to arrest him. They probably were. He did not mean to go along in chains, but he was not anxious to ask people to fight Whitecloaks for him. He followed behind Bran, joining the stream of men and women and children crossing the Wagon Bridge across the Winespring Water, Stepper’s and Swallow’s hooves clattering on the thick planks. A few tall willows grew here along the water. The bridge was where the North Road began, than ran to Watch Hill and beyond. Some of the distant smoke plumes had thinned to wisps as fires burned themselves out.
Where the road left the village, he found a pair of wagons blocking the road and men gathered behind pointed, slanting stakes with their bows and spears and such, smelling of excitement, murmuring to each other and all jammed together to watch what was coming down the road: a long double column of whitecloaked horsemen trailing a cloud of dust, conical helmets and burnished plateandmail shining in the afternoon sun, steeltipped lances all at the same angle. At their head rode a youngish man, stiffbacked and sternfaced, who looked vaguely familiar to Perrin. With the arrival of the Mayor, the murmurs hushed expectantly. Or maybe it was Perrin’s arrival that quieted them.
Two hundred paces or so from the stakes, the sternfaced man raised a hand, and the column halted with sharp orders echoing down the files. He came on with just half a dozen Whitecloaks for company, running his eyes over the wagons and sharp stakes and the men behind. His manner would have named him a man of importance even without the knots of rank beneath the flaring sunburst on his cloak. Luc had appeared from somewhere, resplendent on his shiny black stallion in rich red wool and golden embroidery. Perhaps it was natural enough that the Whitecloak officer chose to address himself to Luc, though his dark eyes continued to probe. “I am Dain Bornhald,” he announced, reining in, “Captain of the Children of the Light. You have done this for us? I have heard that Emond’s Field is closed to the Children, yes? Truly a village of the Shadow if it is closed to the Children of the
Light.”
Dain Bornhald, not Geofram. A son, perhaps. Not that it made any difference. Perrin supposed one would try to arrest him as soon as another. Sure enough, Bornhald’s gaze swept past him, then jerked back. A convulsion seemed to seize the man; one gauntleted hand darted to his sword, his lips peeled back in a silent snarl, and for a moment Perrin was sure the man was about to charge, fling his horse onto the spiky barrier, to reach him. The man looked as if he bore Perrin a personal hatred. Up close, that hard face had a touch of slackness to it, a shine in those eyes that Perrin was used to seeing in Bili Congar’s. He thought he could smell brandy fumes.
The hollowcheeked man beside Bornhald was more than familiar. Perrin would never forget those deepset eyes, like dark burning coals. Tall and gaunt and hard as an anvil, Jaret Byar truly did look at him with hate. Whether or not Bornhald was a zealot, Byar surely was.
Luc apparently had the sense not to try usurping Bran’s place — indeed, he appeared intent on examining the whitecloaked column as the dust settled, revealing more Children stretching up the road — to Perrin’s disgust, though Bran looked to him — to the blacksmith’s apprentice — waited for his nod before answering. He was the Mayor! Bornhald and Byar plainly took note of the silent exchange.
“Emond’s Field is not precisely closed to you,” Bran said, standing up straight with his spear propped out to one side. “We have decided to defend ourselves, and have this very morning. If you want to see our work, look there.” He pointed toward the smoke rising from the Trollocs’ pyres. A sicklysweet smell of burning flesh drifted in the air, but no one except Perrin seemed to notice.
“You have killed a few Trollocs?” Bornhald said contemptuously. “Your luck and skill amaze me.”
“More than a few!” somebody called out of the Two Rivers crowd. “Hundreds!” “We had a battle!” another voice cried, and dozens more shouted angrily on top
of one another.
“We fought them and won!” “Where were you?”
“We can defend ourselves without any Whitecloaks!” “The Two Rivers!”
“The Two Rivers and Perrin Goldeneyes!” “Goldeneyes!”
“Goldeneyes!”
Leof, who should have been over guarding the woodsmen, started waving that crimson wolfhead banner.
Bornhald’s hoteyed hate took them all in, but Byar danced his bay gelding forward with a snarl. “Do you farmers think you know battle?” he roared. “Last night one of your villages was all but wiped out by Trollocs! Wait until they come at you in numbers, and you will wish your mother had never kissed your father!” He fell silent at a weary gesture from Bornhald, a fiercetrained dog obeying his master, but his words had quieted the Two Rivers people.
“Which village?” Bran’s voice was dignified and troubled both. “We all know people in Watch Hill, and Deven Ride.”
“Watch Hill has not been troubled,” Bornhald replied, “and I know nothing of Deven Ride. This morning a rider brought me word that Taren Ferry hardly exists any longer. If you have friends there, many people did escape across the river. Across the river.” His face tightened momentarily. “I myself lost nearly fifty good soldiers.”
The news produced a few queasy murmurs; no one liked to hear that sort of thing, but on the other hand, no one here knew anyone in Taren Ferry. Likely none of them had ever been that far.
Luc pushed his horse forward, the stallion snapping at Stepper. Perrin reined his own mount tightly before the two began fighting, but Luc appeared not to notice or
care. “Taren Ferry?” he said in a flat voice. “Trollocs attacked Taren Ferry last night?”
Bornhald shrugged. “I said it, did I not? It seems that the Trollocs have at last decided to raid the villages. How providential that you here were warned in time to prepare these fine defenses.” His stare ran over the pointed hedge and the men behind it before settling on Perrin.
“Was the man called Ordeith at Taren Ferry last night?” Luc asked.
Perrin stared at him. He had not known Luc even knew of Padan Fain, or the name he used now. But people did talk, especially when someone they knew as a peddler came back with authority among Whitecloaks.Bornhald’s reaction was as strange as the question. His eyes glittered a hate as strong as he had shown for Perrin, but his face went pale, and he scrubbed at slack lips with the back of his hand as though he had forgotten he wore steelbacked gauntlets. “You know Ordeith?” he said, leaning toward Luc in his saddle.
It was Luc’s turn to shrug casually. “I have seen him here and there since coming to the Two Rivers. A disreputablelooking man, and those who follow him no less. The sort who might have been careless enough to allow a Trolloc attack to succeed. Was he there? If so, one can hope he died for his folly. If not, one hopes you have him here with you, close under your eye.”
“I do not know where he is,” Bornhald snapped. “Or care! I did not come here to talk of Ordeith!” His horse pranced nervously as Bornhald flung out a hand, pointing at Perrin. “I arrest you as a Darkfriend. You will be taken to Amador, and there tried under the Dome of Truth.”
Byar stared at his Captain in disbelief. Behind the barrier separating the Whitecloaks from the Two Rivers men, angry mutters rose, spears and bills were hefted, bows raised. The farther Whitecloaks began spreading out in a gleaming line under shouted orders from a fellow as big in his armor as Master Luhhan, sliding lances into holders along their saddles, unlimbering short horsebows. At that range they could do little more than cover the escape of Bornhald and the men with him, if they did indeed manage an escape, but Bornhald appeared oblivious of any danger, and of anything at all save Perrin.
“There will be no arrests,” Bran said sharply, “We have decided that. No more arrests without proof of some crime, and proof we believe. You’ll never show me anything to convince me Perrin is a Darkfriend, so you might as well put your hand down.”
“He betrayed my father to his death at Falme,” Bornhald shouted. Rage shook him. “Betrayed him to Darkfriends and Tar Valon witches who murdered a thousand of the Children with the One Power!” Byar nodded vigorously.
Some of the Two Rivers folk shifted uncertainly; word had spread of what Verin and Alanna had done that morning, and the deeds had grown in spreading. Whatever they thought about Perrin, a hundred tales of Aes Sedai, almost all wrong, made for easy belief in Aes Sedai destroying a thousand Whitecloaks. And if they
believed that, they might come to believe the rest.
“I betrayed no one,” Perrin said in a loud voice so everyone could hear. “If your father died at Falme, those who killed him are called the Seanchan. I don’t know whether they are Darkfriends, but I do know they use the One Power in battle.”
“Liar!” Spittle flew from Bornhald’s lips. “The Seanchan are a tale concocted by the White Tower to hide their foul lies! You are a Darkfriend!”
Bran shook his head wonderingly, pushing his steel cap over to one side so he could scratch his fringe of gray hair. “I don’t know anything about these — Seanchan? — about these Seanchan. What I do know is that Perrin is no Darkfriend, and you are not arresting anybody.”
The situation was growing more dangerous by the minute, Perrin realized. Byar saw it and tugged at Bornhald’s arm, whispering to him, but the Whitecloak captain would not, or perhaps could not, back away now that he had Perrin in front of his eyes. Bran and the Two Rivers men had their heels planted, too; they might not be willing to let the Whitecloaks take him even if he confessed to everything Bornhald claimed. Unless someone tossed some water fast, everything was going to explode like a fistful of dry straw tossed on a forgefire.
He hated having to think quickly. Loial had the right of it. Hasty thinking led to people being hurt. But he thought he saw a way here. “Are you willing to hold off my arrest, Bornhald? Until the Trollocs are done with? I won’t be going anywhere before then.”
“Why should I hold off?” The man was blind with hate. If he went on, a good many men were going to die, including him most likely, and he could not see. There was no use pointing it out.
“Haven’t you noticed all the farms burning this morning?” Perrin said instead. He made a sweeping gesture that took in all the dwindling plumes of smoke. “Look around. You said it yourself. The Trollocs aren’t content with raiding a farm or two each night anymore. They’re up to raiding villages. If you try to make it back to Watch Hill, you may not get there. You were lucky to come this far. But if you stay here, in Emond’s Field…” Bran rounded on him, and other men shouted loud noes; Faile rode close and seized his arm, but he ignored all of them. “…you will know where I am, and your soldiers will be welcome to help our defenses.”
“Are you sure about this, Perrin?” Bran said, grabbing Stepper’s stirrup, while from the other side Faile said urgently, “No, Perrin! It is too great a risk. You must not — I mean… please don’t — Oh, the Light burn me to bloody ash! You must not do this!”
“I won’t have men fighting men if I can stop it,” he told them firmly. “We are not going to do the Trollocs’ work for them.”
Faile practically flung his arm away. Scowling at Bornhald, she produced a sharpening stone from her pouch and a knife from somewhere, and began honing the blade with a silksoft whiskwhisk.
“Hari Coplin won’t know what to think, now,” Bran said wryly. Straightening
his round helmet, he turned back to the Whitecloaks and planted his spear butt. “You have heard his terms. Now hear mine. If you come into Emond’s Field, you arrest no one without the sayso of the Village Council, which you will not get, so you arrest no one. You don’t go into anybody’s house unless you are asked. You make no trouble, and you share in the defense where and when you’re asked. And I don’t want to so much as smell a Dragon’s Fang! Will you agree? If not, you can ride back as you came.” Byar stared at the round man as if a sheep had reared up on its hind legs and offered to wrestle.
Bornhald never took his eyes off Perrin. “Done,” he said at last. “Until the Trolloc threat is gone, done!” Wrenching his horse around, he galloped back toward the line of his men, snowy cloak billowing behind him.
As the Mayor ordered the wagons rolled aside, Perrin realized that Luc was looking at him. The fellow sat slumped easily in his saddle, a languorous hand on his sword hilt, blue eyes amused.
“I thought you would object,” Perrin said, “the way I hear you’ve been talking people up against the Whitecloaks.”
Luc spread his hands smoothly. “If these people want Whitecloaks among them, let them have Whitecloaks. But you should be careful, young Goldeneyes. I know something of taking an enemy into your bosom. His blade goes in quicker when he is close.” With a laugh, he pushed his stallion off through the crowd, back into the village.
“He is right,” Faile said, still stropping her knife on the stone. “Perhaps this Bornhald will keep his word not to arrest you, but what is to stop one of his men from putting a blade in your back? You should not have done this.”
“I had to,” he told her. “Better than doing the Trollocs’ work.”
The Whitecloaks were beginning to ride in, Bornhald and Byar at their head. Those two glared at him with unabated hatred, and the others, riding by in pairs … Cold, hard eyes in cold, hard faces swung to regard him as they passed.
They did not hate, but they saw a Darkfriend when they saw him. And Byar, at least, was capable of anything.
He had had to do it, but he thought maybe it would not be such a bad idea to let Dannil and Ban and the others follow him around the way they wanted to. He was not going to be able to sleep easy without somebody guarding his door. Guards. Like some fool lord. At least Faile would be happy. If only he could make them lose that banner somewhere.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 46
(Female Silhouettes) Veils
The crowds were thick in the confined winding streets of the Calpene near the Great Circle; the smoke of countless cook fires rising above the high white walls gave the reason. Sour smells of smoke and cooking and long unwashed sweat hung heavy in the humid morning air with the crying of children and the vague murmurs that always clung to large masses of people, together enough to muffle the shrill caws of the gulls sailing overhead. The shops in this area had long since locked the iron grilles over their doors for good.
Disgusted, Egeanin threaded her way through the throng afoot. It was dreadful that order had broken down enough for penniless refugees to take over the circles, sleeping among the stone benches. It was as bad as their rulers letting them starve. Her heart should have been gladdened — this dispirited rabble could never resist the Corenne, and then proper order would be restored — but she hated looking at it. Most of the ragged people around her seemed too apathetic to wonder at a woman in their midst in a clean, welltended blue riding dress, silk if plainly cut. Men and women in once fine garb, soiled and wrinkled now, speckled the crowd, so perhaps she did not stand out enough for contrast. The few who seemed to wonder whether her clothes meant coins in her purse were dissuaded by the competent way she carried her stout staff, as tall as she was. Guards and chair and bearers had had to be left behind today. Floran Gelb would surely have realized he was being followed by that array. At least this dress with its divided skirts gave her a little
freedom of movement.
Keeping the weasely little man in sight was easy even in this mass of people, despite having to dodge oxcarts or the occasional wagon, hauled by sweating barechested men more often than animals. Gelb and seven or eight companions, burly roughfaced men all, shoved through in a knot, an eddy of curses following them. Those fellows angered her. Gelb meant to try kidnapping again. He had found three women since she sent him the gold he had asked for, none more than casually resembling any on her list, and had whined over every one she rejected. She should never have paid him for that first woman he snatched off the street. Greed and the memory of gold had apparently washed out the hideflaying tonguelashing she had given him along with the purse.
Shouts from behind pulled her head around and tightened her hands on the staff. A small space had opened up, as it always did around trouble. A bellowing man in a torn, oncefine yellow coat was on his knees in the street, clutching his right arm where it bent the wrong way. Huddling over him protectively, a weeping woman in a tattered green gown was crying at a veiled fellow already melting into the crowd. “He only asked for a coin! He only asked!” The crowd swirled in around them again.
Grimacing, Egeanin turned back. And stopped with an oath that drew a few startled glances. Gelb and his fellows had vanished. Pushing her way to a small stone fountain where water gushed from the mouth of a bronze fish on the side of a flatroofed wineshop, she roughly displaced two of the women filling pots and leaped up onto the coping, ignoring their indignant curses. From there she could see over the heads of the crowd, Cramped streets ran off in every direction, twisting around the hills. Bends and whiteplastered buildings cut her view to less than a hundred paces at best, but Gelb could not have gone farther than that in those few moments.
Abruptly she found him, hiding in a deep doorway thirty paces on, but up on his toes to peer down the street. The others were easy enough to locate then, leaning against buildings to either side of the street, trying not to be noticed. They were not the only ones lining the walls, but where the rest huddled dispiritedly, their scared, brokennosed faces held expectation.
So it was to be here, their abduction. Certainly no one would interfere, any more than people had when that fellow’s arm was broken. But who? If Gelb had finally found someone on the list, she could go away and wait for him to sell her the woman, wait her chance to see if an a’dam truly could hold other sul’dam besides Bethamin. However, she did not mean to face again the choice between slitting some unfortunate woman’s throat and sending her off to be sold.
There were plenty of women climbing up the street toward Gelb, most in those transparent veils, their hair braided. Without a second glance Egeanin ruled out two in sedan chairs, with bodyguards marching alongside; Gelb’s street toughs would not tangle with near their own number, nor face swords with their fists. Whoever they were after would have no more than two or three men for company if that, and none armed. That seemed to include all the other women in her view, whether in rags of drab country dresses or the more clinging styles Taraboner women favored.
Suddenly two of those women, talking together as they rounded a far bend, seized Egeanin’s eye. With their hair in slender braids and transparent veils across their faces, they appeared to be Taraboners, but they were out of place here. Those thin, scandalously draped dresses, one green, the other blue, were silk, not linen or finespun wool. Women clothed like that rode in sedan chairs; they did not walk, especially not here. And they did not carry barrel staves on their shoulders like clubs.
Dismissing the one with redgold hair, she studied the other. Her dark braids were unusually long, nearly to her waist. At this distance, the woman looked very much like a sul’dam named Surine. Not Surine, though. This woman would have come no higher than Surine’s chin.
Muttering under her breath, Egeanin jumped down and began pushing through the jostling mass between her and Gelb. With luck she could reach him in time to call him off. The fool. The greedy, weaselbrained fool!
“We should have hired chairs, Nynaeve,” Elayne said again, wondering for the
hundredth time how Taraboner women talked without catching the veils in their mouths. Spitting it out, she added, “We are going to have to use these things.”
A weedyfaced fellow stopped drifting toward them through the crowd when Nynaeve hefted her barrel stave threateningly. “That is what they are for.” Her glare might have encouraged the man’s loss of interest. She fumbled at the dark braids hanging over her shoulders and made a disgusted sound; Elayne did not know when she would become used to not having that one thick braid to tug. “And feet are for walking. How could we look or ask questions being carried around like pigs to sale? I would feel a complete fool in one of those idiot chairs. In any case, I’d rather trust to my own wits than men I do not know.”
Elayne was sure Bayle Domon could have provided trustworthy men. The Sea Folk certainly would have; she wished Wavedancer had not sailed, but the Sailmistress and her sister had been eager to spread word of the Coramoor to Dantora and Cantorin. Twenty bodyguards would have suited her very well.
She sensed as much as felt something brushing the purse at her belt; clutching at the purse with one hand, she spun around, raising her own stave. The throng flowing by spread a little around her, people barely glancing her way as they elbowed one another, but there was no sign of the wouldbe cutpurse. At least she could still feel the coins inside: She had taken to wearing her Great Serpent ring and the twisted stone ter’angreal on a cord around her neck in imitation of Nynaeve after the first time she had nearly lost a purse. In their five days in Tanchico she had lost three. Twenty guards would be just about right. And a carriage. With curtains at the windows.
Resuming the slow climb up the street beside Nynaeve, she said, “Then we should not be wearing these dresses. I can remember a time when you stuffed me into a farmgirl’s dress.”
“They make a good disguise,” Nynaeve replied curtly. “We blend in.”
Elayne gave a small sniff. As if plainer dresses would not have blended even better. Nynaeve would not admit she had come to enjoy wearing silks and pretty dresses. Elayne simply wished she had not taken it so far. True, everyone took them for Taraboners — until they spoke, at least — but even with a lacetrimmed neck right up under her chin, this closedraped green silk at least felt more revealing than anything she had ever worn before. Certainly anything she had ever worn in public. Nynaeve, on the other hand, strode along the cramped street as if no one was looking at them at all. Well, maybe no one was — not because of how their dresses fit, anyway — but it surely seemed they were.
Their shifts would have been almost as decent. Cheeks heating, she tried to stop thinking of how the silk molded itself to her. Stop that! It is perfectly decent. It is!
“Didn’t this Amys tell you anything that might help us?”
“I told you what she said.” Elayne sighed. Nynaeve had kept her up until the small hours talking about the Aiel Wise One who had been with Egwene in Tel’aran’rhiod last night, and then started in again before they sat down to breakfast.
Egwene, with her hair in two braids for some reason and shooting sullen frowns at the Wise One, had said almost nothing beyond that Rand was well and Aviendha was looking after him. Whitehaired Amys had done all the talking, a stern lecture on the dangers of the World of Dreams that had nearly made Elayne feel as if she were ten again, and Lini, her old nurse, had caught her sneaking out of bed to steal candies, followed by cautions about concentration and controlling what she thought if she must enter Tel’aran’rhiod. How could you control what you thought? “I truly did think Perrin was with Rand and Mat.” That had been the biggest surprise, after Amys’s appearance. Egwene apparently had thought he was with Nynaeve and her.
“He and that girl have probably gone somewhere he can be a blacksmith in peace,” Nynaeve said, but Elayne shook her head.
“I do not think so.” She had strong suspicions about Faile, and if they were even half right, Faile would not settle for being a blacksmith’s wife. She spat out the veil once more. Idiotic thing.
“Well, wherever he is,” Nynaeve said, fumbling with her braids again, “I hope he is safe and well, but he is not here, and he cannot help us. Did you even ask Amys if she knew any way to use Tel’aran’rhiod to—?”
A bulky, balding man in a worn brown coat shoved through the crowd and tried to throw thick arms around her. She whipped the barrel stave from her shoulder and gave him a crack across his broad face that sent him staggering back, clutching a nose that had surely been broken for at least the second time.
Elayne was still gathering breath for a startled scream when a second man, just as big and with a thick mustache, pushed her aside to reach for Nynaeve. She forgot about being afraid. Her jaw tightened furiously, and just as his hands touched the other woman, she brought her own stave down on .top of his head with every bit of strength she could muster. The fellow’s legs folded, and he toppled on his face in a most satisfactory fashion.
The crowd scattered back, no one wanting to be caught up in someone else’s trouble. Certainly no one offered to help. And they needed it, Elayne realized. The man Nynaeve had hit was still on his feet, mouth twisted in a snarl, licking away the blood that ran down from his nose, flexing thick hands as if he wanted to squeeze a throat. Worse, he was not alone. Seven more men were fanning out with him to cut off any escape, all but one as large as he, with scarred faces and hands that looked as if they had been hammered on stone for years. A scrawny, narrowcheeked fellow, grinning like a nervous fox, kept panting, “Don’t let her get away. She’s gold, I tell you. Gold!”
They knew who she was. This was no try for a purse; they meant to dispose of Nynaeve and abduct the DaughterHeir of Andor. She felt Nynaeve embracing saidar
— if this had not made her angry enough to channel, nothing ever would — and opened herself to the True Source as well. The One Power rushed into her, a sweet flood filling her from toes to hair. A few woven flows of Air from either of them could deal with these ruffians.
But she did not channel, and neither did Nynaeve. Together they could drub these fellows as their mothers should have. Yet they did not dare, unless there was no other choice.
If one of the Black Ajah was close enough to see, they had already betrayed themselves with the glow of saidar. Channeling enough for those few flows of Air could betray them to a Black sister on another street a hundred paces or more away, depending on her strength and sensitivity. That was most of what they themselves had been doing the last five days, walking through the city trying to sense a woman channeling, hoping the feeling would draw them to Liandrin and the others.
The crowd itself had to be considered, too. A few people still went by to either side, brushing tight against the walls. The rest milled about, beginning to find other ways to go. Only a handful acknowledged the two women in danger with as much as shamefully averted eyes. But if they saw big men flung about by nothing visible…?
Aes Sedai and the One Power itself were not in particularly good odor in Tanchico at the moment, not with old rumors from Falme still floating about and newer tales claiming that the White Tower supported the Dragonsworn in the countryside. Those people might run if they saw the Power wielded. Or they might turn into a mob. Even if she and Nynaeve managed to avoid being torn limb from limb where they stood — which she was not certain they could — there was no way to cover it up after. The Black Ajah would hear of Aes Sedai in Tanchico before the sun set.
Setting herself backtoback with Nynaeve, Elayne gripped her stave tightly. She felt like laughing hysterically. If Nynaeve even mentioned going out alone again — walking — she would see who liked having her head dunked in a bucket of water. At least none of these louts looked eager to be the first to have his head cracked like the fellow lying still on the paving stones.
“Go on,” the narrowfaced man urged, waving his hands forward. “Go on! It’s only two women!” He made no move to rush in himself, though. “Go on, I say. We just need the one. She’s gold, I tell you.”
Suddenly there was a loud thunk, and one of the ruffians staggered to his knees, clutching groggily at a split scalp, and a darkhaired, sternfaced woman in a blue riding dress flung herself past him, twisted sharply to backhand another fellow in the mouth with her fist, knocked his legs out from under him with a staff, then kicked him in the head as he fell.
That there was help at all was startling, much less the source, but Elayne was of no mind to pick and choose. Nynaeve left her back with a wordless roar, and she dashed out shouting, “Forward the White Lion!” to belabor the nearest lout as hard and fast as she could. Flinging his arms up to defend himself, he looked shocked out of his wits. “Forward the White Lion!” she shouted again, the battle cry of Andor, and he turned tail and ran.
Laughing in spite of herself, she whirled about seeking another to drub. Only
two had not yet fled or fallen. That first brokennosed fellow turned to run, and Nynaeve gave him a final fullarmed thwack across the backside. The sternfaced woman somehow tangled the other’s arm and shoulder with her staff, pulling him close and up on his toes at the same time; he would have overtopped her by a head flatfooted and he weighed twice what she did, but she coolly slammed the heel of her free hand up into his chin three times in rapid succession. His eyes rolled up in his head, but as he sagged, Elayne saw the narrowfaced man picking himself up off the street; his nose dripped blood and his eyes looked halfglazed, yet he pulled a knife from his belt and lunged at the woman’s back.
Without thinking, Elayne channeled. A fist of Air hurled the man and his knife into a backflip. The sternfaced woman spun, but he was already scrambling away on all fours until he could get his feet under him and burrow into the crowd farther up the street. People had stopped to watch the odd battle, though none had raised a hand to help except the darkhaired woman. She herself was staring from Elayne to Nynaeve uncertainly. Elayne wondered whether she had noticed the scrawny fellow being knocked down apparently by nothing.
“I give you my thanks,” Nynaeve said a touch breathlessly as she approached the woman, straightening her veil. “I think we should leave here. I know the Civil Watch doesn’t come out in the streets much, but I’d not like to explain this if they do happen by. Our inn is not far. Will you join us? A cup of tea is the least we can offer someone who actually lifts a hand to help someone in this Lightforsaken city. My name is Nynaeve al’Meara and this is Elayne Trakand.”
The woman hesitated visibly. She had noticed. “I… I would… like that. Yes. I would.” She had a slurred way of speaking, difficult to understand, but somehow vaguely familiar. She was quite a lovely woman, really, seeming even fairer than she was because of her dark hair, worn almost to the shoulder. A bit too hard to be called a beauty. Her blue eyes had a strong look, as if she were used to giving orders. A merchant, perhaps, in that dress. “I am called Egeanin.”
Egeanin showed no hesitation in leaving with them down the nearest side street. The crowds were already gathering around the fallen men. Elayne expected those fellows would wake to find themselves stripped of anything of value, even clothes and boots. She wished she knew how they had discovered her identity, but there was no way to bring one along to find out. They were definitely going to have bodyguards from now on, no matter what Nynaeve said.
Egeanin might not have been hesitant, but she was uneasy. Elayne could see it in her eyes as they wove through the crowd. “You saw, didn’t you?” she asked. The woman missed a step, all the confirmation Elayne needed, and she added hurriedly, “We won’t harm you. Certainly not after you came to our rescue.” Again she had to spit out her veil. Nynaeve did not seem to have that problem. “You needn’t frown at me, Nynaeve. She saw what I did.”
“I know that,” Nynaeve said dryly. “And it was the right thing to do. But we are not snug in your mother’s palace tucked away from prying ears.” Her gesture took
in the people around them. Between Egeanin’s staff and their staves, most were giving them a wide berth. To Egeanin she said, “The larger part of any rumors you may have heard are not true. Few of them are. You need not be afraid of us, but you can understand there are matters we do not care to speak of here.”
“Afraid of you?” Egeanin looked startled. “I had not thought I should be. I will keep silent until you wish to speak.” She was as good as her word; they walked on in silence through the murmurs of the crowd all the way back down the peninsula to the Three Plum Court. All this walking was making Elayne’s feet ache.
A handful of men and women sat in the common room despite the early hour, nursing their wine or ale. The woman with her hammered dulcimer was being accompanied by a thin man playing a flute that sounded as reedy as he was. Juilin sat at a table near the door, smoking a shortstemmed pipe. He had not returned from his nightly foray when they left. Elayne was glad to see that for once he did not have a new bruise or cut; what he called the underside of Tanchico seemed even rougher than the face the city presented to the world. His one concession to Tanchican dress had been to replace his flat straw hat with one of those dark conical felt caps, which he wore perched on the back of his head.
“I have found them,” he said, popping up from his bench and snatching off his cap, before he saw they were not alone. He gave Egeanin a hooded look and a small bow; she returned it with an inclination of her head and a look just as guarded.
“You’ve found them?” Nynaeve exclaimed. “Are you sure? Speak, man. Have you swallowed your tongue?” And her with her warnings about talking in front of other people.
“I should have said I found where they were.” He did not look at Egeanin again, but he chose his words carefully. “The woman with the white stripe in her hair led me to a house where she was staying with a number of other women, though few were ever seen outside. The locals thought they were rich escapees from the countryside. Little remains now save a few scraps of food in the pantry — even the servants are gone — but from one thing and another I would say they left late yesterday or early last night. I doubt they have any fear of the night in Tanchico.”
Nynaeve had a fistful of her narrow braids in a whiteknuckled grip. “You went inside?” she said in a very level voice. Elayne thought she was an inch from raising the stave dangling at her side.
Juilin seemed to think so, too. Eyeing the stave, he said, “You know very well I take no risks with them. An empty house has a look about it, a feel, no matter how big. You cannot chase thieves as long as I have without learning to see as they do.”
“And if you had triggered a trap?” Nynaeve almost hissed the words. “Does your grand talent for feeling things extend to traps?” Juilin’s dark face went a little gray; he wet his lips as if to explain or defend himself, but she cut him off. “We will talk of this later, Master Sandar.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward Egeanin; finally she had remembered there were other ears there to hear. “Tell Rendra we will take tea in the Falling Blossoms Room.”
“Chamber of Falling Blossoms,” Elayne corrected softly, and Nynaeve shot her a look. Juilin’s news had left the older woman in a bad humor.
He bowed deeply with his hands spread. “As you command, Mistress al’Meara, so I obey from the heart,” he said wryly, then stuck his dark cap back on top of his head and stalked off, his back eloquently indignant. It must be uncomfortable to find yourself taking orders from someone with whom you had once tried to flirt.
“Fool man!” Nynaeve growled. “We should have left both of them on the dock in Tear.”
“He is your servant?” Egeanin said slowly.
“Yes,” Nynaeve snapped, just as Elayne said, “No.” They looked at each other, Nynaeve still frowning.
“Perhaps he is, in a way,” Elayne sighed, right on top of Nynaeve’s muttered, “I suppose he is not, at that.”
“I…see,” Egeanin said.
Rendra came bustling between the tables with a smile on her rosebud lips behind her veil. Elayne wished she did not look so much like Liandrin. “Ah. You are so pretty this morning. Your dresses, they are magnificent. Beautiful.” As if the honeyhaired woman had not had as much to do with choosing the fabric and cut as they. Her own was red enough for a Tinker and definitely not suitable for public. “But you have been foolish again, yes? That is why the fine Juilin, he wears the large scowl. You should not worry him so.” A twinkle in her big brown eyes said Juilin had found someone for his flirting. “Come. You will take your tea in the cool and the privacy, and if you must go out again, you will allow me to provide the bearers and the guards, yes? The pretty Elayne would not have lost so many purses if you were properly guarded. But we will not talk of such things now. Your tea, it is nearly prepared. Come.” It had to be a learned skill, that was how Elayne saw it; you must have to learn how to talk without eating your veil.
The Chamber of Falling Blossoms, located down a short corridor off the common room, was a small, windowless room with a low table and carved chairs with red seat cushions. Nynaeve and Elayne took their meals there with Thom or Juilin or both, when Nynaeve was not in a taking at them. The plastered brick walls, painted with a veritable grove of plum trees and a namesake shower of flowers were thick enough to preclude any eavesdropping. Elayne practically tore her veil off and tossed the filmy scrap on the table before sitting; even Taraboner women did not try to eat or drink wearing the things. Nynaeve merely unfastened hers from her hair on one side.
Rendra kept up her chatter while they were being served, her topics bouncing from a new seamstress who could sew them dresses in the newest style from the thinnest imaginable silk — she suggested Egeanin try the woman, getting a level look for reply; it did not faze her even a trifle — to why they should listen to Juilin since the city was just too dangerous for a woman to go out alone now even in daylight, to a scented soap that would put the finest sheen on their hair. Elayne
sometimes wondered how the woman ran such a successful inn when she seemed to think of nothing but her hair and her clothes. That she did was obvious; it was the how that puzzled Elayne. Of course, she did wear pretty clothes; just not entirely suitable. The servant who brought the tea and blue porcelain cups and tiny cakes on a tray was the slender, darkeyed young man who had kept filling Elayne’s winecup on that very embarrassing night. And had tried again more than once, though she had privately vowed never again to drink more than a single cup. A handsome man, but she gave him her coolest stare, so that he hurried from the room gladly.
Egeanin watched quietly until Rendra left, too. “You are not what I expected,” she said then, balancing her cup on her fingertips in an odd way. “The innkeeper babbles of frivolities as if you were her sisters and as foolish as she, and you allow it. The dark man — he is a servant of sorts, I think — mocks you. That serving boy stares with open hunger in his eyes, and you allow it. You are… Aes Sedai, are you not?” Without waiting for an answer, she shifted her sharp blue eyes to Elayne. “And you are of the… You are nobly born. Nynaeve spoke of your mother’s palace.” “Such things do not count for very much in the White Tower,” Elayne told her ruefully, hastily brushing cake crumbs from her chin. It was very spicy cake; almost sharp. “If a. queen went there to learn, she would have to scrub floors like any other
novice and jump when she was told.”
Egeanin nodded slowly. “So that is how you rule. By ruling the rulers. Do… many… queens go to be trained so?”
“None that I know of.” Elayne laughed. “Though it is our tradition in Andor for the DaughterHeir to go. A good many noblewomen go, really, though they usually do not want it known and most leave having failed to even sense the True Source. It was only an example.”
“You are also of the… a noble?” Egeanin asked, and Nynaeve snorted.
“My mother was a farmwife, and my father herded sheep and farmed tabac. Few where I come from can make do without wool and tabac both to sell. What of your parents, Egeanin?”
“My father was a soldier, my mother the… an officer on a ship.” For a moment she sipped her unsweetened tea, studying them. “You are searching for someone,” she said at last. “For these women the dark man spoke of. I do some small trade in information, among other things. I have sources who tell me things. Perhaps I can help. I would not charge, except to ask you to tell me more of Aes Sedai.”
“You have helped too much already,” Elayne said hastily, remembering Nynaeve telling almost everything to Bayle Domon. “I am grateful, but we could not accept more.” Letting this woman know about the Black Ajah and letting her become involved without knowing were equally out of the question. “Truly we could not.”
Caught with her mouth halfopen, Nynaeve glared at her. “I was about to say the same,” she said in a flat voice, then went on more brightly. “Our gratitude certainly extends to answering questions, Egeanin. As much as we can.” She surely meant
there were a good many questions for which they had no answers, but Egeanin took it differently.
“Of course. I will not pry into the secret affairs of your White Tower.”
“You seem very interested in Aes Sedai,” Elayne said. “I cannot sense the ability in you, but perhaps you can learn to channel.”
Egeanin almost dropped her porcelain cup. “It… can be learned? I did not… No.
No, I do not want to… to learn.”
Her agitation made Elayne sad. Even among people not fearful of Aes Sedai, too many still feared anything to do with the One Power. “What do you want to know, Egeanin?”
Before the woman could speak, a rap at the door was followed by Thom, in the rich brown cloak he had taken to wearing when he went out. It certainly attracted less notice than the gleeman’s patchcovered garment. In fact, it made him appear quite dignified, with that mane of white hair, though he should brush it more. Imagining him younger, Elayne thought she could see what had first attracted her mother. That did not absolve him of leaving, of course. She smoothed her face before he could see her frown.
“I was told you were not alone,” he said, giving Egeanin a guarded look almost identical to Juilin’s; men were always suspicious of anyone they did not know. “But I thought you might like to hear that the Children of the Light surrounded the Panarch’s Palace this morning. The streets are beginning to buzz over it. It seems the Lady Amathera is to be invested as Panarch tomorrow.”
“Thom,” Nynaeve said wearily, “unless this Amathera is really Liandrin, I do not care if she becomes Panarch, King, and Wisdom of the whole Two Rivers all rolled together.”
“The interesting thing,” Thom said, limping to the table, “is that rumor says the Assembly refused to choose Amathera. Refused. So why is she being invested? Things this odd are worth noting, Nynaeve.”
As he started to lower himself into a chair, she said quietly, “We are having a private conversation, Thom, I am sure you will find the common room more congenial.” She took a sip of tea, eyeing him over the cup in clear expectation of his departure.
Flushing, he levered himself back up without ever having actually sat, but he did not leave immediately. “Whether the Assembly has changed its mind or not, this will likely cause riots. The streets still believe Amathera has been rejected. If you must insist on going out, you cannot go alone.” He was looking at Nynaeve, but Elayne had the impression that he almost put a hand on her shoulder. “Bayle Domon is mired in that little room down near the docks, tying up his affairs in case he has to run, but he has agreed to provide fifty picked men, tough fellows used to a brawl and handy with knife or sword.”
Nynaeve opened her mouth, but Elayne cut her off. “We are grateful, Thom, to you and Master Domon both. Please tell him we accept his kind and generous
offer.” Meeting Nynaeve’s flat stare, she added meaningfully, “I would not want to be kidnapped on the streets in broad daylight.”
“No,” Thom said. “We would not want that.” Elayne thought she heard a halfsaid “child” at the end of that, and this time he did touch her shoulder, a swift brush of fingers. “Actually,” he went on, “the men are already waiting in the street outside. I am trying to find a carriage; those chairs are too vulnerable.” He seemed to know he had gone too far, bringing Domon’s men before they agreed, not to mention this talk of a carriage without a hint of asking first, but he faced them like an old wolf at bay, bushy eyebrows drawn down. “I would… regret. . . personally, if anything happened to you. The carriage will be here as soon as I can find a team. If there is one to be found.”
Eyes wide, Nynaeve was obviously teetering on the edge of whether or not to give him an upbraiding he would never forget, and Elayne would not have minded adding a gentler admonishment. Somewhat gentler; child, indeed!
He took advantage of their hesitation to sweep a bow that would have graced any palace and departed while he had the chance.
Egeanin had set down her cup and was staring at them in consternation. Elayne supposed they had not given a very good appearance of being Aes Sedai, letting Thom bully them. “I must go,” the woman said, rising and taking her staff from against the wall.
“But you have not asked your questions,” Elayne protested. “We owe you answers to them, at the very least.”
“Another time,” Egeanin said after a moment. “If it is permitted, I will come another time. I need to learn about you. You are not what I expected.” They assured her she could come any time they were there and tried to convince her to stay long enough to finish her tea and cakes, but she was adamant that she had to leave now.
Turning from seeing the woman to the door, Nynaeve put her fists on her hips: “Kidnap you? If you have forgotten, Elayne, it was me those men tried to grab!”
“To take you out of the way so they could seize me,” Elayne said. “If you have forgotten, I am the DaughterHeir of Andor. My mother would have made them wealthy to have me back.”
“Perhaps,” Nynaeve muttered doubtfully. “Well, at least they were nothing to do with Liandrin. That lot wouldn’t send a pack of louts to try stuffing us in a sack. Why do men always do things without asking? Does growing hair on their chests sap their brains?”
The sudden change did not confuse Elayne. “We do not have to worry about finding bodyguards, at any rate. You do agree they are necessary, even if Thom did overstep himself?”
“I suppose so.” Nynaeve had a remarkable dislike for admitting she was wrong. Thinking those men had been after her, for instance. “Elayne, do you realize we still have nothing except an empty house? If Juilin — or Thom — slips and lets himself be found out… We must find the Black sisters without them suspecting, or we will
never have a chance of following them to whatever this thing is that’s dangerous to Rand.”
“I know,” Elayne said patiently. “We have discussed it.”
The older woman frowned at nothing. “We still have not a glimmer as to what it is, or where.”
“I know.”
“Even if we could bag Liandrin and the rest right this minute, we cannot leave it floating about out there, waiting for someone else to find.”
“I know that, Nynaeve.” Reminding herself to be patient, Elayne softened her tone. “We will find them. They must make some sort of slip, and between Thom’s rumors, and Juilin’s thieves, and Bayle Domon’s sailors, we will learn of it.”
Nynaeve’s frown became thoughtful. “Did you notice Egeanin’s eyes when Thom mentioned Domon?”
“No. Do you think she knows him? Why would she not say so?”
“I do not know,” Nynaeve said vexedly. “Her face did not change, but her eyes… She was startled. She knows him. I wonder what —” Someone tapped softly on the door. “Is everyone in Tanchico going to march in on us?” she growled, jerking it open.
Rendra gave a start at the look on Nynaeve’s face, but her everpresent smile returned immediately. “Forgive me for disturbing you, but there is the woman below who asks for you. Not by name, but she describes you as you stand. She says that she believes she knows you. She is…” That rosebud mouth tightened in a slight grimace. “I forgot to ask her name. This morning I am the witless goat. She is a welldressed woman, not yet to her middle years. Not of Tarabon.” She gave a little shiver. “A stern woman, I think. When first she saw me, she looked at me as my older sister did when we were children and she was thinking of tying my braids to the bush.”
“Or have they found us first?” Nynaeve said softly.
Elayne embraced the True Source before she thought of it, and felt a shudder of relief that she could, that she had not been shielded unaware. If the woman below was Black Ajah… But if she was, why announce herself? Even so, she wished the glow of saidar surrounded Nynaeve, too. If only the woman could channel without anger.
“Send her in,” Nynaeve said, and Elayne realized she was very much aware of her lack, and afraid. As Rendra turned to go, Elayne began weaving flows of Air, thick as cables and ready to bind, flows of Spirit to shield another from the Source. If this woman so much as resembled one on their list, if she tried to channel a spark…
The woman who stepped into the Chamber of Falling Blossoms, in a shimmering black silk gown of unfamiliar cut, was no one Elayne had ever seen before, and surely not on the list of the women who had gone with Liandrin. Dark hair spilling loose to her shoulders framed a sturdily handsome face with large, dark
eyes and smooth cheeks, but not with Aes Sedai agelessness. Smiling, she closed the door behind her. “Forgive me, but I thought you were—” The glow of saidar surrounded her, and she…
Elayne released the True Source. There was something very commanding in those dark eyes, in the halo around her, the pale radiance of the One Power. She was the most regal woman Elayne had ever seen. Elayne found herself hurriedly curtsying, flushing that she had considered… What had she considered? So hard to think.
The woman studied them for a moment, then gave a satisfied nod and swept to the table, taking the carved chair at its head. “Come here where I can see you both more closely,” she said in a peremptory voice. “Come. Yes. That’s it.”
Elayne realized she was standing beside the table, looking down at the darkeyed, glowing woman. She did hope that was all right. On the other side of the table Nynaeve had a tangle of her long, thin braids gripped in her fist, but she stared at the visitor with a foolishly rapt expression. It made Elayne want to giggle.
“About what I have come to expect,” the woman said. “Little more than girls, and obviously not close to halftrained. Strong, though; strong enough to be more than troublesome. Especially you.” She fixed Nynaeve with her eyes. “You might become something one day. But you’ve blocked yourself, haven’t you? We would have had that out of you though you howled for it.”
Nynaeve still had that tight hold on her braids, but her face went from a pleased, girlish smile at praise to shamed liptrembling. “I am sorry I blocked myself,” she almost whimpered. “I’m afraid of it . . all that power… the One Power… how can I
—?”
“Be silent unless I ask a question,” the woman said firmly. “And do not start crying. You are joyful at seeing me, ecstatic. All you want is to please me and answer my questions truthfully.”
Nynaeve nodded vigorously, smiling even more rapturously than before. Elayne realized that she was, too. She was sure she could answer the questions first. Anything to please this woman.
“Now. Are you alone? Are there any other Aes Sedai with you?”
“No,” Elayne said quickly in answer to the first question, and just as fast, to the second, “There are no Aes Sedai with us.” Perhaps she should tell that they were not really Aes Sedai either. But she had not been asked that. Nynaeve glared at her, knuckles white on her braids, furious at being beaten to the answer.
“Why are you in this city?” the woman said.
“We are hunting Black sisters,” Nynaeve burst out, shooting Elayne a triumphant look.
The handsome woman laughed. “So that is why I have not felt you channel before today. Wise of you to keep low when it is eleven to two. I have always followed that policy myself. Let other fools leap about in full view. They can be brought low by a spider hiding in the cracks, a spider they never see until it is too
late. Tell me all you have discovered about these Black sisters, all you know of them.”
Elayne spilled out everything, battling with Nynaeve to be first. It was not very much. Their descriptions, the ter’angreal they had stolen, the murders in the Tower and the fear of more Black sisters still there, aiding one of the Forsaken in Tear before the Stone fell, their flight here seeking something dangerous to Rand. “They were all staying in a house together,” Elayne finished up, panting, “but they left last night.”
“It seems you came very close,” the woman said slowly. “Very close. Ter’angreal. Turn out your purses on the table, your pouches.” They did, and she fingered quickly through coins and sewing kits and handkerchiefs and the like. “Do you have any ter’angreal in your rooms? Angreal or sa’angreal?”
Elayne was conscious of the twisted stone ring hanging between her breasts, but that was not the question. “No,” she said. They had none of those things in their room.
Pushing everything away, the woman leaned back, speaking half to herself. “Rand al’Thor. So that is his name now.” Her face crumpled in a momentary grimace. “An arrogant man who stank of piety and goodness. Is he still the same? No, do not bother to answer that. An idle question. So Be’lal is dead. The other sounds like Ishamael, to me. All his pride at being only halfcaught, whatever the price — there was less human left in him than any of us when I saw him again; I think he halfbelieved he was the Great Lord of the Dark — all his three thousand years of machinations, and it comes to an untaught boy hunting him down. My way is best. Softly, softly, in the shadows. Something to control a man who can channel. Yes, it would have to be that.” Her eyes turned sharp, studying them in turn. “Now. What to do with you.”
Elayne waited patiently. Nynaeve wore a silly smile, her lips parted expectantly; it looked especially foolish with the way she was gripping her braids.
“You are too strong to waste; you may be useful one day. I would love to see Rahvin’s eyes the day he meets you unblocked,” she told Nynaeve. “I would put you off this hunt of yours, if I could. A pity compulsion is so limited. Still, with the little you have learned, you are too far behind to catch up now. I suppose I must collect you later and see to your… retraining.” She stood, and suddenly Elayne’s entire body tingled. Her brain seemed to shiver; she was conscious of nothing but the woman’s voice, roaring in her ears from a great distance. “You will pick up your things from the table, and when you have replaced them where they belong, you will remember nothing of what happened here except that I came thinking you were friends I knew from the country. I was mistaken, I had a cup of tea, and I left.”
Elayne blinked and wondered why she was tying her purse back beside her belt pouch. Nynaeve was frowning at her own hands, adjusting her pouch.
“A nice woman,” Elayne said, rubbing her forehead. She had a headache coming on. “Did she give her name? I don’t remember.”
“Nice?” Nynaeve’s hand came up and gave a sharp tug to her braids; she stared as if it had moved of its own accord. “I… do not think she did.”
“What were we talking of when she came in?” Egeanin had just gone. What had it been?
“I remember what I was about to say.” Nynaeve’s voice firmed. “We must find the Black sisters without them suspecting, or we will never have a chance of following them to whatever this thing is that’s dangerous to Rand.”
“I know,” Elayne said patiently. Had she said that already? Of course not. “We have discussed it. — ”
At the arched gates leading from the inn’s small courtyard, Egeanin paused, studying the hardfaced men who lounged, barefoot and often barechested, among the idlers on this side of the narrow street. They looked as if they could use the curved boarding swords hanging at their belts or thrust through their sashes, but none of those faces looked familiar. If any of them had been on Bayle Demon’s ship when she took him and it to Falme, she did not remember. If any had been, it was to be hoped none connected a woman in a riding dress to the woman in armor who had captured their vessel.
Suddenly she realized her palms were damp. Aes Sedai. Women who could wield the Power, and not decently leashed. She had sat at the same table with them, talked with them. They were not at all what she had expected; she could not dig that thought out of her head. They could channel, therefore they were dangerous to proper order, therefore they must be safely leashed — and yet… Not at all what she had been taught. It could be learned. Learned! As long as she could avoid Bayle Domon — he would surely recognize her — she should be able to return. She had to learn more. More than ever, she had to.
Wishing she had a hooded cloak, she took a firm grip on her staff and started up the street, threading her way into the passing throng. None of the sailors looked at her twice, and she watched them to be sure.
She did not see the palehaired man in filthy Tanchican garb huddled against the front of a whiteplastered wineshop on the other side of the street. His eyes, blue above a dingy veil and a thick mustache held in place with glue, followed her before sliding back to the Three Plum Court. Standing, he crossed the street, ignoring the disgusting way people brushed against him. Egeanin had nearly spotted him when he had forgotten himself enough to break that fool’s arm. One of the Blood, as such things were reckoned in these lands, reduced to begging and without enough honor to open his veins. Disgusting. Perhaps he could learn more of what she was up to, in this inn, once they realized he had more coin than his clothes suggested.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 47
(Flame of Tar Valon) The Truth of a Viewing
The papers scattered on Siuan Sanche’s desk held little real interest for her, but she persevered. Others handled the daytoday routine of the White Tower, of course, to leave the Amyrlin Seat free for important decisions, but her habit had always been to check one or two things at random each day, with no notice beforehand, and she would not break it now. She would not let herself be distracted by worries. Everything was sailing along according to plan. Shifting her striped stole, she dipped her pen carefully in the ink and ticked off another corrected total.
Today she was examining lists of kitchen purchases, and the mason’s report on an addition to the library. The sheer number of petty peculations people thought they could slip by always amazed her. So did the number that escaped notice by the women who oversaw these matters. For instance, Laras seemed to think watching accounts was beneath her since her title had been changed officially from simple chief cook to Mistress of the Kitchens. Danelle, on the other hand, the young Brown sister who was supposed to be watching Master Jovarin, the mason, was most likely letting herself be distracted by the books the fellow kept finding for her. That was the only way to explain her failure to question the number of workmen Jovarin claimed to have hired, with the first shipments of stone from Kandor just arriving at North harbor. He could rebuild the entire library with that many men. Danelle was simply too dreamy, even for a Brown. Perhaps a little time on a farm working penance would wake her. Laras would be more difficult to discipline; she was not Aes Sedai, so her authority with undercooks and scullions and potboys could be swamped all too easily. But perhaps she, too, could be sent for a “rest” in the country. That would…
With a snort of disgust Siuan threw her pen down, grimacing at the blot it made on a page of neatly totaled columns. “Wasting my time deciding whether to send Laras out to pull weeds,” she muttered. “The woman is too fat to bend over far enough!”
It was not Laras’s weight that had her temper jumping, and she knew it; the woman was no heavier now than she had always been, or so it seemed, and it never interfered with her running the kitchens. There was no news. That was what had her flapping like a fisherbird whose catch had been stolen. One message from Moiraine that the al’Thor boy had Callandor, then nothing in the weeks since, although rumors in the streets were already beginning to get his name right. Still nothing.
Lifting the hinged lid of the ornately carved blackwood box where she kept her most secret papers, she rummaged inside. A small warding woven around the box ensured no hand but hers could safely open it.
The first paper she pulled out was a report that the novice who had seen Min’s arrival had vanished from the farm she had been sent to, and the woman who owned
the farm, too. Hardly unheard of for a novice to ran away, but the farmer leaving too was troublesome. Sahra would have to be found, certainly — she had not progressed far enough in her training to be let loose — but there was no real reason to keep the report in the box. It mentioned neither Min’s name nor the reason the girl had been sent to hoe cabbages, but she put it back anyway. These were days to take care that might seem unreasonable at another time.
A description of a gathering in Ghealdan to listen to this man who called himself the Prophet of the Lord Dragon. Masema, it seemed his name was. Odd. That was a Shienaran name. Nearly ten thousand people had come to listen to him speak from a hillside, proclaiming the return of the Dragon, a speech followed by a battle with soldiers trying to disperse them. Aside from the fact that the soldiers apparently got the worst of it, the interesting thing was that this Masema knew Rand al’Thor’s name. That definitely went back into the box.
A report that nothing had yet been found of Mazrim Taim. No reason for that to be in there. Another on worsening conditions in Arad Doman and Tarabon. Ships vanishing along the Aryth Ocean coast. Rumors of Tairen incursions into Cairhien. She was getting into the habit of putting everything in this box; none of that needed to be kept secret. Two sisters had vanished from Illian, and another in Caemlyn. She shivered, wondering where the Forsaken were. Too many of her agents had gone silent. There were lionfish out there, and she was swimming in darkness. There it was. The silkthin slip of paper crackled as she unrolled it.
The sling has been used. The shepherd holds the sword.
The Hall of the Tower had voted as she had expected, unanimously and with no need for armtwisting, much less invoking her authority. If a man had drawn Callandor, he must be the Dragon Reborn, and that man had to be guided by the White Tower. Three Sitters for three different Ajahs had proposed holding all plans close in the Hall before she even suggested it; the surprise had been that one was Elaida, but then the Reds would surely want the tightest hawsers possible kept on a man who could channel. The sole problem had been to stop a delegation from being sent to Tear to take him in hand, and that had not really been difficult, not when she was able to say that her news came from an Aes Sedai who had already managed to put herself close to the man.
But what was he doing now? Why had Moiraine not sent further word? Impatience hung so thick in the Hall now that she almost expected the air to sparkle. She kept a tight hold oh her anger. Burn the woman! Why hasn’t she sent word?
The door crashed open, and she straightened furiously as more than a dozen women strode into her study, led by Elaida. All wore their shawls, most redfringed, but coolfaced Alviarin, a White, was at Elaida’s side, and Joline Maza, a slender Green, and plump Shemerin of the Yellow came close behind with Danelle, her big blue eyes not dreamy at all. In fact, at least one woman from every Ajah except the Blue. Some looked nervous, but most wore grim determination, and Elaida’s dark
eyes held stern confidence, even triumph.
“What is the meaning of this?” Siuan snapped, slapping the blackwood box shut with a sharp crack. She bounced to her feet and strode around the desk. First Moiraine and now this! “If this is about Tairen matters, Elaida, you know better than to bring others into it. And you know better than to walk in here as if this were your mother’s kitchen! Make your apologies and leave before I make you wish you were an ignorant novice again!”
Her cold rage should have sent them scurrying, but though a few shifted uneasily, none made a move toward the door. Little Danelle actually smirked at her. And Elaida calmly reached out and pulled the striped stole from Siuan’s shoulders. “You will not need this any longer,” she said. “You were never fit for it, Siuan.”
Shock turned Siuan’s tongue to stone. This was madness. This was impossible. In a rage she reached for saidar — and suffered her second shock. A barrier lay between her and the True Source, like a wall of thick glass. She stared at Elaida in disbelief.
As if to mock her, the radiance of saidar sprang up around Elaida. She stood helpless as the Red sister wove flows of Air around her from shoulders to waist, crushing her arms to her side. She could barely breathe. “You must be mad!” she rasped. “All of you! I’ll have your hides for this! Release me!” No one answered; they almost seemed to ignore her.
Alviarin ruffled through the papers on the table, quickly yet unhurriedly. Joline and Danelle and others began tilting up the books on the reading stands, shaking them to see if anything fell out from between the pages. The White sister gave a small hiss of vexation at not finding what she sought on the table, then flipped open the lid of the blackwood box. Instantly the box flared in a ball of flame.
Alviarin leaped back with a cry, shaking a hand where blisters were already forming. “Warded,” she muttered, as close to open anger as a White ever came. “So small that I never felt it until too late.” Nothing remained of the box and its contents but a heap of gray ash atop a square charred into the tabletop.
Elaida’s face showed no disappointment. “I promise you, Siuan, that you will tell me every word that burned, who it was meant for, and to what purpose.”
“You must be taken by the Dragon!” Siuan snapped. “I will have your hide for this, Elaida. All of your hides! You will be lucky if the Hall of the Tower doesn’t vote to still all of you!”
Elaida’s tiny smile did not touch her eyes, “The Hall convened not an hour ago
— enough Sisters to meet our laws — and by unanimous vote, as required, you are no longer Amyrlin. It is done, and we are here to see it enforced.”
Siuan’s stomach turned to ice, and a small voice in the back of her head shrieked, What do they know? Light, how much do they know? Fool! Blind, fool woman! She kept her face smooth, though. This was not the first hard corner she had ever been in. A fifteenyearold girl with nothing but her bait knife, hauled into an alley by four hardeyed louts with their bellies full of cheap wine — that had been
harder to escape than this. So she told herself.
“Enough to meet the laws?” she sneered. “A bare minimum, heavy with your friends and those you can influence or bully.” That Elaida had been able to convince even a relatively small number of Sitters was enough to dry her throat, but she would not let it show. “When the full Hall meets, with all the Sitters, you’ll learn your mistake. Too late! There has never been a rebellion inside the Tower; a thousand years from now they’ll be using your fate to teach novices what happens to rebels.” Tendrils of doubt crept onto some of those faces; it seemed Elaida did not have as tight a grip on her conspirators as she thought. “It’s time to stop trying to hack a hole in the hull, and start bailing. Even you can still mitigate your offense, Elaida.”
Elaida waited with chill calm until she was done. Then her fullarmed slap exploded across Siuan’s face; she staggered, silverblack flecks dancing in her vision.
“You are finished,” Elaida said. “Did you think I — we — would allow you to destroy the Tower? Bring her!”
Siuan stumbled as two of the Reds pushed her forward. Barely keeping her feet, she glared at them, but went as they directed. Who did she need to get word to? Whatever charges had been brought, she could counter them, given time. Even charges involving Rand; they could not fasten more than rumors to her, and she had played the Great Game too long to be beaten by rumors. Unless they had Min; Min could clothe rumors in truth. She ground her teeth. Burn my soul, I’ll use this lot for fish bait!
In the antechamber, she stumbled again, but not from pushing, this time. She had halfhoped that Leane had been away from her post, but the Keeper stood as Siuan did, arms stiffly at her sides, mouth working soundlessly, furiously, around a gag of Air. She had certainly sensed Leane being bound and never realized it; in the Tower, there was always the feel of women channeling.
Yet it was not the sight of Leane that made her miss her step, but the tall, slender grayhaired man stretched on the floor with a knife rising from his back. Alric had been her Warder for close to twenty years, never complaining when her path kept them in the Tower, never muttering when being the Amyrlin’s Warder sent him hundreds of leagues from her, a thing none of the Gaidin liked.
She cleared her throat, but her voice was still husky when she spoke. “I’ll have your hide salted and stretched in the sun for this, Elaida. I swear it!”
“Consider your own hide, Siuan,” Elaida said, moving closer to stare her in the eyes. “There is more to this than has been revealed so far. I know it. And you are going to tell me every last scrap of it. Every — last — scrap.” The sudden quiet of her voice was more frightening than all her hard stares had been. “I promise it, Siuan. Take her below!”
Clutching bolts of blue silk, Min strolled in through the North Gate near midday, her simper all ready for the guards with the Flame of Tar Valon on their
chests, the girlish swirl of her green skirts that Elmindreda would give. She had actually begun before she realized there were no guards. The heavy ironstrapped door of the starshaped guardhouse stood open; the guardhouse itself looked empty. It was impossible. No gate to the Tower grounds was ever unguarded. Halfway to the huge bonewhite shaft of the Tower itself, a plume of smoke was rising above the trees. It seemed to be near the quarters for the young men who studied under the Warders. Maybe the fire had pulled the guards away.
Still feeling a little uneasy, she started down the unpaved path through the wooded part of the grounds, shifting the bolts of silk. She did not really want another dress, but how could she refuse when Laras pressed a purse of silver into her hands and told her to use it for this silk the stout woman had seen; she claimed it was just the color to set off “Elmindreda’s” complexion. Whether or not she wanted her complexion set off was less important than keeping Laras’s goodwill.
A rattle of swords reached her ears through the trees. The Warders must have their students practicing harder than usual.
It was all very irritating. Laras and her beauty hints, Gawyn and his jokes, Galad paying her compliments and never realizing what his face and smile did to a woman’s pulse. Was this how Rand wanted her? Would he actually see her, if she wore dresses and simpered at him like a brainless chit?
He has no right to expect it, she thought furiously. It was all his fault. She would not be there now, wearing a fool dress and smiling like an idiot, if not for him. I wear coat and breeches, and that is that! Maybe I’ll wear a dress once in a while — maybe! — but not to make some man look at me! I wager he’s staring at some Tairen woman with half her bosom exposed right this minute. I can wear a dress like that. Let’s see what he thinks when he sees me in this blue silk. I’ll have a neckline down to — What was she thinking? The man had robbed her of her wits! The Amyrlin Seat was keeping her here, useless, and Rand al’Thor was addling her brain! Burn him! Burn him for doing this to me!
The clash of swords came again from the distance, and she stopped as a horde of young men burst out of the trees ahead of her carrying spears and bared blades, Gawyn at their head. She recognized others from among those who had come to study with the Warders. Shouts rose somewhere else in the grounds, a roar of angry men.
“Gawyn! What is happening?”
He whirled at the sound of her voice. Worry and fear filled his blue eyes, and his face was a mask of determination not to give in to them. “Min. What are you doing? Get out of the grounds, Min. It is dangerous.” A handful of the young men ran on, but most waited impatiently for him. It seemed to her that most of the Warders’ students were there.
“Tell me what’s happening, Gawyn!”
“The Amyrlin was deposed this morning. Leave, Min!”
The bolts of silk fell from her hands. “Deposed? It can’t be! How? Why? In the
name of the Light, why?”
“Gawyn!” one of the young men called, and others took it up, brandishing their weapons. “Gawyn! The White Boar! Gawyn!”
“I have no time,” he told her urgently. “There’s fighting everywhere. They say Hammar is trying to break Siuan Sanche free. I have to go to the Tower, Min. Leave! Please!”
He turned and set out at a run toward the Tower. The others followed, bristling with upraised weapons, some still shouting, “Gawyn! The White Boar! Gawyn! Forward the Younglings!”
Min stared after them. “You did not say what side you are on, Gawyn,” she whispered.
The sounds of fighting were louder, clearer now that she was paying attention, and the shouts and yells, the clash of steel on steel, seemed to come from every direction. The clamor made her skin crawl and her knees shake; this could not be happening, not here. Gawyn was right. It would be much the safer thing, much the smarter, to leave the Tower grounds immediately. Only there was no telling when or if she would be allowed back, and she could not think of much good she could do outside.
“What good can I do inside?” she asked herself fiercely.
But she did not turn back toward the gate. Leaving the silk where it lay, she hurried into the trees, looking for a place to hide. She did not think anyone would spit “Elmindreda” like a goose — shivering, she wished she had not thought of it that way — but there was no use in taking foolish chances. Sooner or later the fighting had to die down, and by that time she needed to decide what to do next.
In the pitch blackness of the cell, Siuan opened her eyes, stirred, winced, and was still. Was it morning yet outside? The questioning had gone on for a long time. She tried to forget pain in the luxury of knowing she was still breathing. The rough stone beneath her scraped her welts and bruises, though, those on her back. Sweat stung all of them — she felt a solid mass of pain from knees to shoulders — and made her shiver in the cold air, besides. They could have left me my shift, at least. The air smelled of old dust and dried mold, of age. One of the deep cells. No one had been confined down here since Artur Hawkwing’s time. Not since Bonwhin.
She grimaced into the dark; there was no forgetting. Clamping her teeth, she pushed up to a sitting position on the stone floor and felt around her for a wall to lean against. The stone blocks of the wall were cool against her back. Small things, she told herself. Think of small things. Heat. Cold. I wonder when they’ll bring me some water. If they will.
She could not help feeling for her Great Serpent ring. It was no longer on her finger. Not that she expected it; she thought she remembered when they had ripped it off. Things had grown hazy after a time. Thankfully, blessedly hazy. But she remembered telling them everything, eventually. Almost everything. The triumph of holding back a scrap here, a bit there. In between howling answers, eager to answer
if only they would stop, even for a little while, if only…
She wrapped her arms around herself to stop her shudders; it did not work very well. I will remain calm. I am not dead. I must remember that above everything else. I am not dead.
“Mother?” Leane’s unsteady voice came out of the darkness. “Are you awake, Mother?”
“I’m awake,” Siuan sighed. She had hoped they had released Leane, put her out of the city. Guilt stabbed her at feeling a bit of comfort from the presence of the other woman sharing her cell. “I am sorry I got you into this, daugh —” No. She had no right to call her that, now. “I am sorry, Leane.”
There was a long moment of silence. “Are you… all right, Mother?”
“Siuan, Leane. Just Siuan.” Despite herself she tried to embrace saidar. There was nothing there. Not for her. Only the emptiness inside. Never again. A lifetime of purpose, and now she was rudderless, adrift on a sea far darker than this cell. She scrubbed a tear from her cheek, angry at letting it fall. “I am not the Amyrlin Seat anymore, Leane.” Some of the anger crept into her voice. “I suppose Elaida will be raised in my place. If she hasn’t been already. I swear, one day I will feed that woman to the silverpike!”
Leane’s only answer was a long, despairing breath.
The grate of a key in the rusty iron lock brought Siuan’s head up; no one had thought to oil the works before throwing Leane and her in, and the corroded parts did not want to turn. Grimly she forced herself to her feet. “Up, Leane. Get up.” After a moment she heard the other woman complying, and muttering to herself between soft moans.
In a slightly louder voice, Leane said, “What good will it do?”
“At least they won’t find us huddling on the floor and weeping.” She tried to make her voice firm. “We can fight, Leane. As long as we are alive, we can fight.” Oh, Light, they stilled me! They stilled me!
Forcing her mind to blankness, she clenched her fists, and tried to dig her toes into the uneven stone floor. She wished the noise in her throat did not sound so much like a whimper.
Min set her bundles on the floor and tossed back her cloak so she could use both hands on the key. Twice as long as her hand, it was as rusty as the lock, just like the other keys on the big iron ring. The air was cold and damp, as though summer did not reach this far down.
“Hurry, child,” Laras muttered, holding the lantern for Min, peering both ways down the otherwise dark stone hall. It was hard to believe that the woman, with all her chins, had ever been a beauty, but Min surely thought her beautiful now.
Fighting the key, she shook her head. She had encountered Laras while sneaking back to her room for the plain gray riding dress she now wore, and for a few other things. Actually, she had found the massive woman looking for her, in a tizzy of worry about “Elmindreda,” exclaiming over how lucky Min was to be safe and
proposing to all but lock her in her room until the trouble was past to keep her so. She was still not sure how Laras had wormed her intentions out of her, and she still could not get over her shock when the woman reluctantly announced she would help. A venturesome lass after her own heart indeed. Well, I hope she can — how did she put it? — keep me out of the pickling kettle. The bloody key would not turn; she threw all of her weight into trying to twist it.
In truth, she was grateful to Laras in more ways than one. It was doubtful she could have readied everything by herself, or even found some of it, surely not this quickly. Besides which. Besides which, when she ran into Laras, she had already
begun telling herself she was a fool even to think of doing this, that she should be on a horse and off for Tear while she had the chance, before someone decided to add her head to those decorating the front of the Tower. Running away, she suspected, would have been the sort of thing she would never have been able to forget. That alone had made her grateful enough not to object in the slightest when Laras added some pretty dresses to what she herself had already packed. The rouges and powders could always be “lost” somewhere. Why won’t this bloody key turn? Maybe Laras can —
The key shifted suddenly, twisted with a snap so loud that Min feared something had broken. But when she pushed at the rough wooden door, it opened. Snatching up the bundles, she stepped into the bare stone cell — and stopped in confusion.
The lantern light revealed two women clad only in dark bruises and red welts, shielding their eyes from the sudden light, but for a moment Min was not sure they were the right two. One was tall and copperyskinned, the other shorter, sturdier, more fair. The faces looked right — almost right — and untouched by whatever had been done to them, so she should have been certain. But the agelessness that marked Aes Sedai seemed to have melted away; she would have had no hesitation at all in thinking these women were just six or seven years older than herself at most, and not Aes Sedai at all. Her face heated with embarrassment at the thought. She saw no images, no auras, around either; there were always images and auras around Aes Sedai. Stop that, she told herself.
“Where —?” one of the two began wonderingly, then paused to clear her throat. “How did you get those keys?” It was Siuan Sanche’s voice.
“It is her.” Laras sounded disbelieving. She poked Min with a thick finger. “Hurry, child! I am too old and slow to be having adventures.”
Min gave her a startled look; the woman had insisted on coming; she would not be left out, she had said. Min wanted to ask Siuan why the pair of them suddenly looked so much younger, but there was no time for frivolous questions. I’m too bloody used to being Elmindreda!
Thrusting one of her bundles at each of the naked women, she spoke rapidly. “Clothes. Dress as quickly as you can. I don’t know how much time we have. I let the guard think I’d trade a few kisses for a chance to repay you for a grudge, and while he was distracted, Laras came up behind him and cracked him over the head
with a rolling pin. I do not know how long he’ll sleep.” She leaned back through the door to peer worriedly down the hall toward the guardroom. “We had best hurry.”
Siuan had already undone her bundle and begun to put on the clothes it contained. Except for a linen shift, they were all plain woolens in shades of brown, suitable for farm women come to the White Tower to consult the Aes Sedai, though the skirts divided for riding were a little unusual. Laras had done most of the needlework; Min had mostly just stuck herself. Leane was also covering her nakedness, but she seemed more interested in the shortbladed knife hanging from her belt than in the clothes themselves.
Three plainly dressed women had a chance, at least, of leaving the Tower without attracting notice. A number of petitioners and people seeking help had been caught inside the Tower by the fighting; three more creeping out of hiding should be hustled into the street at worst. So long as they were not recognized. The other women’s faces might help, too. No one was likely to take a pair of young — youngseeming, at least — women for the Amyrlin Seat and the Keeper of the Chronicles. Former Amyrlin and former Keeper, she reminded herself.
“Only one guard?” Siuan said, wincing as she tugged on thick stockings. “Strange. They’d guard a cutpurse better than that.” Eyeing Laras, she pushed her feet into the sturdy shoes. “It is good to see some do not believe the charges against me. Whatever they are.”
The stout woman frowned and lowered her chins, giving herself a fourth. “I am loyal to the Tower,” she said sternly. “Such matters are not for me. I am only a cook. This foolish girl has had me remembering too much of being a foolish girl myself. I think — Seeing you — It is time for me to remember I am not a willowy girl any longer.” She pushed the lantern into Min’s hands.
Min caught her stout arm as she turned to go. “Laras, you won’t give us away?
Not now, after all you have done.”
The woman’s wide face split in a smile, halfreminiscent, halfrueful. “Oh, Elmindreda, you do remind me of me when I was your age. Foolish doings, and near to getting myself hanged, sometimes. I will not betray you, child, but I must live here. When Second is rung, I will send a girl with wine for the guard. If he has not wakened or been discovered by then, that will give you more than an hour.” Turning to the other two women, she suddenly wore the hard scowl Min had seen directed at undercooks and the like. “You use that hour well, hear! They mean to stick you in the scullery, I understand, so they can haul you out for examples. I’d not care one way or the other — such matters are for Aes Sedai, not cooks; one Amyrlin is the same as another, to me — but if you get this child caught, you can expect me to be striping your hides from sunup to sundown whenever you’re not headdown in greasy pots or cleaning slop jars! You will wish they had cut off your heads before I am done. And don’t think they’ll believe I helped. Everyone knows I keep to my kitchens. You mark me, and jump!” The smile popped back onto her face, and she pinched Min’s cheek. “You hurry them along, child. Oh, I am going to
miss dressing you. Such a pretty child.” With a last vigorous pinch, she waddled out of the cell at a near trot.
Min rubbed her cheek irritably; she hated it when Laras did that. The woman was as strong as a horse. Near to hanging? What kind of “lively girl” had Laras been?
Gingerly pulling her dress over her head, Leane sniffed loudly. “To think she could speak to you in that manner, Mother!” Her face popped out at the top, scowling. “I am surprised she helped at all if she feels that way.”
“But she did help,” Min told her. “Remember that. And I think she’ll keep her word not to give us away. I am sure of it.” Leane sniffed again.
Siuan swung her cloak around her shoulders. “It makes a difference, Leane, that I have no more claim to that title. It makes a difference when tomorrow you and I might be two of her scullery girls.” Leane clasped her hands to keep them from shaking and would not look at her. Siuan went on calmly, if in a dry tone. “I also suspect Laras will keep her word about… other things… so even if you don’t care whether Elaida hangs us up like a pair of netted sharks for the world to see, I suggest you move yourself. Myself, I hated greasy pots when I was a girl, and I don’t doubt I still would.”
Leane sullenly began doing up the laces of the country dress.
Siuan turned her attention to Min. “You may not be so eager to help us when I tell you we’ve both been… stilled.” Her voice did not shake, but it was stiff with the effort of saying the word, and her eyes looked pained, and lost. It was a shock to realize her calm was all on the surface. “Any one of the Accepted could tie the pair of us into a running sheepsfoot, Min. Most of the novices could.”
“I know,” Min said, careful to keep her tone clear of the smallest hint of sympathy. Sympathy now might break what selfcontrol the other women had left, and she needed them in control of themselves. “It was announced at every square in the city, and posted wherever they could nail up a notice. But you are still alive.” Leane gave a bitter laugh, which she ignored. “We had best go. That guard might wake, or somebody check on him.”
“Lead, Min,” Siuan said. “We are in your hands.” After a moment Leane gave a short nod and hurriedly donned her cloak.
In the guardroom at the end of the dark hall, the lone guard lay stretched out, facedown on the dusty floor. The helmet that would have saved him a sore head sat on the rough plank table beside the single lantern that provided the room’s light. He seemed to be breathing all right. Min did not spare him more than a glance, though she hoped he was not badly hurt; he had not tried to press the advantage of her offer.
She hurried Siuan and Leane through the far door, all thick planks and wide iron straps, up the narrow, stone stairs. They had to keep moving. Passing for petitioners would not save them from questioning if they were seen coming from the cells.
They saw no more guards, nor anyone else, as they climbed out of the bowels of
the Tower, but Min still found herself holding her breath until they reached the small door that let into the Tower proper. Cracking it just enough to poke her head through, she peeked both ways down the corridor.
Gilded lamp stands stood against friezebanded walls of white marble. To the right two women moved swiftly out of sight without looking back. The sureness of their steps marked them Aes Sedai even if she could not see their faces; in the Tower, even a queen walked hesitantly. In the other direction half a dozen men stalked away, just as clearly Warders, with their wolfish grace and cloaks that faded into the surroundings.
She waited until the Warders were gone, too, before slipping through the doorway. “It’s clear. Come on. Keep your hoods up and your heads down. Act a little frightened.” For her part, it was no pretense. From the silent way the two women followed her, she did not think they needed to pretend either.
The halls of the Tower were seldom full, yet now they seemed empty. Occasionally someone appeared for a moment ahead of them, or down a side corridor, but whether Aes Sedai or Warder or servant, all were hurrying, too intent on their own affairs to notice anyone else. The Tower was silent, too.
Then they passed a crossing hallway where dark blotches of dried blood flecked the pale green floor tiles. Two larger patches stretched off in long smears, as if bodies had been dragged away.
Siuan stopped, staring. “What has happened?” she demanded. “Tell me, Min!” Leane gripped the hilt of her belt knife and peered around as if expecting an attack.
“Fighting,” Min said reluctantly. She had hoped the two women would be out of the Tower grounds, even out of the city, before learning of this. She herded them around the dark stains, prodded them on when they tried to look back. “It began yesterday, right after you were taken, and did not stop until maybe two hours ago. Not completely.”
“You mean the Gaidin?” Leane exclaimed. “Warders, fighting each other?” “Warders, the guardsmen, everyone. It started when some men who came
claiming to be masons — two or three hundred of them — tried to seize the Tower itself right after your arrest was announced.”
Siuan scowled. “Danelle! I should have realized there was more to it than not paying attention.” Her face twisted more, until Min thought she might begin crying. “Artur Hawkwing could not do it, but we did it ourselves.” Edge of tears or not, her voice was fierce. “The Light help us, we have broken the Tower.” Her long sigh seemed to empty her of breath, and anger, too. “I suppose,” she said sadly after a moment, “I should be glad that some of the Tower supported me, but I almost wish they had not.” Min tried to keep her face expressionless, but those sharp blue eyes seemed to interpret every flicker of an eyelash. “Or did they support me, Min?”
“Some did.” She had no intention of telling her how few, not yet. But she had to prevent Siuan thinking she still had partisans inside the Tower. “Elaida didn’t wait to find out if the Blue Ajah would stand for you or not. There isn’t a Blue sister still
in the Tower, not alive, I know that.”
“Sheriam?” Leane asked anxiously. “Anaiya?”
“I don’t know. There are not many Greens left, either. Not in the Tower. The other Ajahs split, one way and another. Most of the Reds are still here. As far as I know, everybody who opposed Elaida has either fled or else they are dead. Siuan…” It seemed odd, calling her that — Leane muttered angrily under her breath — but calling her Mother would only be a mockery, now. “Siuan, the charges posted against you claim you and Leane arranged Mazrim Taim’s escape. Logain got away during the fighting, and they’ve blamed that on you, too. They don’t quite name you Darkfriends — I suppose that would be too close to Black Ajah — but they do not miss by much. I think everyone is meant to understand, though.”
“They won’t even admit the truth,” Siuan said softly, “that they mean to do exactly what they pulled me down for.”
“Darkfriends?” Leane murmured in bewilderment. “They named us…?”
“Why would they not?” Siuan breathed. “What would they not dare, when they dared so much?”
They hunched their shoulders in their cloaks and let Min lead them as she would. She just wished their faces did not look so hopeless.
As they drew nearer an outside door, she began to breathe more easily. She had horses hidden in a wooded part of the grounds, not far from one of the western gates. There was still the question of how easy it would be to actually ride out, but once they reached the horses she would feel the next thing to free. Surely the gate guards would not stop three women leaving. She kept telling herself that.
The door she sought appeared ahead — a small, plainpaneled door, letting onto a path not much used, just opposite where this hall met the broad corridor that ran all the way around the Tower — and Elaida’s face caught her eye, sweeping down the outer corridor toward her.
Min’s knees thudded onto the floor tiles, and she huddled, head down and face hidden by her hood, heart trying to pound through her ribs. A petitioner, that’s all I am. Just a simple woman, with nothing to do with what’s happened. Oh, Light, please! She raised her head just enough to peek under the edge of her hood, halfexpecting to see a gloating Elaida staring down at her.
Elaida swept by without a glance in Min’s direction, the broad, striped stole of the Amyrlin Seat around her shoulders. Alviarin followed, wearing the stole of the Keeper of the Chronicles, white for her Ajah. A dozen or more Aes Sedai passed at Alviarin’s heels, mostly Reds, though Min saw two yellowfringed shawls, a green one and a brown. Six Warders flanked the procession, hands on hilts and eyes wary. Those eyes swept across the three kneeling women and dismissed them.
They were all three kneeling, Min realized, and realized, too, that she had almost expected Siuan and Leane to launch themselves at Elaida’s throat. Both women had lifted their heads just enough to watch the procession make its way on down the corridor.
“Very few women have been stilled,” Siuan said, as if to herself, “and none have survived long, but it is said that one way to survive is to find something you want as much as you wanted to channel.” That lost look was gone from her eyes. “At first I thought I wanted to gut Elaida and hang her in the sun to dry. Now I know I want nothing — nothing! — so much as the day I can tell that leech of a woman that she’ll live a long life showing others what happens to anyone who claims I am a Darkfriend!”
“And Alviarin,” Leane said in a tight voice. “And Alviarin!”
“I was afraid they’d sense me,” Siuan went on, “but there is nothing for them to sense, now. An advantage to having been… stilled, it seems.” Leane jerked her head angrily, and Siuan said, “We must use whatever advantages we can find. And be glad for them.” The last sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.
The final Warder disappeared around the distant curve, and Min swallowed the lump in her throat. “We can talk of advantages later,” she croaked, and stopped to swallow again. “Let us just go to the horses. That has to have been the worst.”
Indeed, as they hurried out of the Tower into the noonday sun, it seemed the worst must have passed. A column of smoke rising toward a cloudless sky in the east of the Tower grounds was the only sign of old trouble. Groups of men moved in the distance, but none gave a second glance to the three women as they scurried past the library, which was built like towering waves frozen in stone. A footpath led deeper into the grounds and westward, into a wood of oaks and evergreens that could have stood far from any city. Min’s steps lightened when she found the three saddled horses still tied where she and Laras had left them, in a small clearing surrounded by leatherleaf and paperbark.
Siuan went immediately to a stout, shaggy mare two hands shorter than the others. “A suitable mount for my present circumstances. And she looks more placid than the other two; I was never a good rider.” She stroked the mare’s nose, and the mare nuzzled into her palm. “What is her name, Min? Do you know?”
“Bela. She belongs to —”
“Her horse.” Gawyn stepped from behind a widetrunked paperbark, one hand on the long hilt of his sword. The blood streaking his face made exactly the pattern Min had seen in her viewing, her first day back in Tar Valon. “I knew you must be up to something, Min, when I saw her horse.” His redgold hair was matted with blood, his blue eyes halfdazed, but he walked toward them smoothly, a tall man with a catlike grace. A cat stalking mice.
“Gawyn,” Min began, “we —”
His sword was out of its scabbard, flicking back Siuan’s hood, sharp edge laid against the side of her throat, all faster than Min could follow. Siuan’s breath caught audibly, and she was still, looking up at him, outwardly as serene as though she yet wore the stole.
“Don’t, Gawyn!” Min gasped. “You must not!” She took a step toward him, but he flung up his free hand without looking at her, and she stopped. He was as tight as
coiled steel, ready to burst out in any direction. She noticed Leane had shifted her cloak to hide one hand and prayed the woman was not fool enough to draw her belt knife.
Gawyn studied Siuan’s face, then slowly nodded. “It is you. I was not sure, but it is. This… disguise cannot —” He did not appear to move, but a sudden widening of Siuan’s eyes spoke of a keen edge pressing harder. “Where are my sister and Egwene? What have you done with them?” Most frightening to Min, with that bloodmasked face and halfglazed eyes, with his body tensed almost to quivering and his hand upflung as if he had forgotten it, he never raised his voice or put any emotion into it. He only sounded tired, more tired than she had ever heard anyone sound in her life.
Siuan’s voice was nearly as neutral. “The last I heard from them, they were safe and well. I cannot say where they are, now. Would you rather they were here, in the middle of this feeding frenzy?”
“No Aes Sedai word games,” he said softly. “Tell me where they were, straight out, so I know you speak the truth.”
“Illian,” Siuan said without hesitation. “In the city itself. They are studying with an Aes Sedai named Mara Tomanes, They should still be there.”
“Not Tear,” he murmured. For a moment he appeared to think that over. Abruptly, he said, “They say you are a Darkfriend. Black Ajah, that would be, would it not?”
“If you really believe that,” Siuan said calmly, “then strike off my head.”
Min almost screamed as his knuckles whitened on his sword hilt. Slowly she reached out and rested her fingers against his outstretched wrist, careful not to make him think she meant to do anything more than touch. It was like resting her fingers on rock. “Gawyn, you know me. You can’t think I would help the Black Ajah.” His eyes never wavered from Siuan’s face, never blinked. “Gawyn, Elayne supports her and everything she’s done. Your own sister, Gawyn.” His flesh was still stone. “Egwene believes in her, too, Gawyn.” His wrist trembled under her fingers. “I swear it, Gawyn. Egwene believes.”
His eyes flickered to her, then back to Siuan. “Why shouldn’t I drag you back by the scruff of your neck? Give me a reason.”
Siuan met his stare with a good deal more calm than Min felt. “You could do it, and I suppose my struggles wouldn’t give you much more trouble than a kitten’s. Yesterday, I was one of the most powerful women in the world. Perhaps the most powerful. Kings and queens would come if I summoned them, even if they hated the Tower and all it stood for. Today, I’m afraid that I may have nothing to eat tonight, and that I’ll have to sleep under a bush. In the space of one day I’ve been reduced from the most powerful woman in the world to one hoping to find a farm where I might earn my keep in the fields. Whatever you think I have done, isn’t that a fitting punishment?”
“Perhaps,” he said after a moment. Min took a deep breath of relief as he
resheathed his sword in a flowing motion. “But that is not why I will let you go. Elaida might take your head yet, and I cannot allow that. I want what you know to be there, if I need it.”
“Gawyn,” Min said, “come with us.” A Wardertrained swordsman might be useful in the days to come. “That way you’d have her ready to hand to answer your questions.” Siuan’s gaze flickered to her, not really leaving Gawyn’s face and not exactly indignant; she pressed on anyway. “Gawyn, Egwene and Elayne believe in her. Can’t you believe, too?”
“Do not ask more than I can give,” he said quietly. “I will take you to the nearest gate. You would never get out without me. That’s all I can do, Min, and it is more than I should. Your arrest has been ordered; did you know that?” His eyes swung back to Siuan. “If anything happens to them,” he said in that expressionless voice, “to Egwene or my sister, I will find you, wherever you hide, and I will make sure the same happens to you.” Abruptly he stalked a dozen paces away and stood with his arms folded, head down as if he could not bear to look at them any longer.
Siuan halfraised a hand to her throat; a tiny line of red on the fair skin marked where his blade had rested. “I’ve been too long with the Power,” she said, a trifle unsteadily. “I had forgotten what it is like to face someone who can pick you up and snap you like a thread.” She peered at Leane then, as if seeing her for the first time, and touched her own face as though unsure what it looked like. “From what I have read it is supposed to take longer to fade, but perhaps Elaida’s rough treatment had something to do with it. A disguise, he called it, and it may serve for one.” She clambered awkwardly onto Bela’s back, handling the reins as if the shaggy mare were a spirited stallion. “Another advantage, it seems, to being… I have to learn to say it without flinching. I have been stilled.” She said the words slowly and deliberately, then nodded. “There. If Leane is any guide, I’ve lost a good fifteen years, maybe more. I’ve known women who would pay any price for that. A third advantage.” She glanced at Gawyn. He still had his back turned, but she lowered her voice anyway. “Along with a certain loosening of the tongue, shall we say? I had not thought of Mara in years. A friend of my girlhood.”
“Will you age like the rest of us, now?” Min asked as she climbed into her saddle. Better than commenting on the lie. Better just to remember that she could lie now. Leane mounted the third mare with smooth skill and walked her in a circle, testing her step; she had surely been on a horse before.
Siuan shook her head. “I really don’t know. No stilled woman has ever lived long enough to find out. I intend to.”
“Do you mean to go,” Gawyn asked harshly, “or sit there talking?” Without waiting for an answer, he strode off through the trees.
They heeled their mares after him, Siuan pulling her hood well forward to hide her face. Disguise or no, it seemed she was taking no chances. Leane was already shrouded as deeply in hers as she could be. After a moment, Min imitated them. Elaida wanted her arrested? That had to mean that she knew “Elmindreda” was
Min. How long had the woman known? How long had Min been walking around thinking herself hidden while Elaida watched and smirked at her for a fool? It was a shivery thought.
As they caught up to Gawyn at a graveled path, twenty or more young men appeared, striding toward them, some perhaps a few years older than he, others little more than boys. Min suspected some of those last did not have to shave yet, at least not regularly. All carried swords at their belts or on their backs, though, and three or four had breastplates. More than one sported a bloody bandage, and most wore clothes spotted with blood. Each had the same unblinking stare as Gawyn. At the sight of him they stopped, clapping right fists to chests. Without slowing, Gawyn acknowledged the salute with a nod, and the young men fell in behind the women’s horses.
“The students?” Siuan murmured. “They also took part in the fighting?”
Min nodded, keeping her face expressionless. “They call themselves the Younglings.”
“A fitting name.” Siuan sighed.
“Some are no more than children,” Leane muttered.
Min was not about to tell them that Warders from the Blue and Green Ajahs had planned to free them before they were stilled, and might have succeeded if Gawyn had not roused the students, “children” too, and led them into the Tower to stop it. The fighting had been among the deadliest, student against teacher and no mercy, no quarter.
The tall, bronzestudded Alindrelle Gates stood open, but guarded heavily. Some guards wore the Flame of Tar Valon on their chests; others had workmen’s coats, and mismatched breastplates and helmets. Guardsmen and fellows who had come disguised as masons. Both sorts looked hard and resourceful, used to their weapons, but they kept apart, eyeing each other distrustfully. A grizzled officer stood out from the Tower guardsmen with his arms folded and watched Gawyn and the others approach.
“Writing materials!” Gawyn snapped. “Quickly!”
“Well, you must be these Younglings I’ve heard of,” the grizzled man said. “A fine bunch of bloody young cockerels, but I’ve had orders to let no one leave the Tower grounds. Signed by the Amyrlin Seat herself. Who do you think you are to countermand that?”
Gawyn raised his head slowly. “I am Gawyn Trakand of Andor,” he said softly. “And I mean to see these women leave, or you dead.” The other Younglings moved up behind him, spreading out to face the guards with hands on swords, unblinking, perhaps not caring that they were outnumbered.
The grizzled man shifted uneasily, and one of the others muttered, “He’s the one they say killed Hammar and Coulin.”
After a moment, the officer jerked his head toward the guardhouse, and one of the guardsmen ran inside, returning with a lapdesk, a small red stick of sealing wax
burning in a brass holder at one corner. Gawyn let the man hold the desk while he scribbled furiously.
“This will let you past the bridge guards,” he said, letting a pool of red wax drip beneath his signature. He pressed his signet ring into it firmly.
“You killed Coulin?” Siuan said in a cold tone fitting her former office. “And Hammar?”
Min’s heart sank. Be quiet, Siuan! Remember who you are now, and be quiet! Gawyn spun to face the three women, his eyes like blue fire. “Yes,” he grated.
“They were my friends, and I respected them, but they sided with… with Siuan Sanche, and I had to —” Abruptly he shoved the paper he had sealed into Min’s hand. “Go! Go, before I change my mind!” He slapped her mare, then darted to slap the other two as Min’s horse leaped through the open gates. “Go!”
Min let her horse cross the great plaza surrounding the Tower grounds at a quick trot, Siuan and Leane right behind her. The plaza was empty, and so were the streets beyond. The ring of their horses’ hooves on the paving stones echoed hollowly. Whoever had not already fled the city was hiding.
She studied Gawyn’s paper as they rode. The blob of red wax bore the imprint of a charging boar. “This just says we have permission to leave. We could use it to board a ship as well as at the bridges.” It seemed smart to be going a way no one knew, not even Gawyn. She did not really think he would change his mind, but he was brittle, ready to shatter at the wrong blow.
“That might be a good idea,” Leane said. “I always thought Galad was the more dangerous of those two, but I am no longer sure. Hammar, and Coulin…” She shivered. “A ship would take us farther, faster than these horses can.”
Siuan shook her head. “Most of the Aes Sedai who fled will have crossed the bridges, for sure. That is the quickest way out of the city if someone might be chasing you, quicker than waiting while a ship’s crew casts off. I must stay close to Tar Valon if I’m to gather them in.”
“They won’t follow you,” Leane said in a monotone freighted with meaning. “You have no right to the stole any longer. Not even to the shawl or the ring.”
“I may no longer wear the stole,” Siuan replied just as flatly, “but I still know how to ready a crew for a storm. And since I cannot wear the stole, I must see they choose the right woman in my place. I’ll not let Elaida get away with calling herself the Amyrlin. It has to be someone strong in the Power, someone who sees things the right way.”
“Then you mean to go on aiding this… this Dragon!” Leane snapped. “What else would you have me do? Curl up and die?”
Leane shuddered as if she had been struck in the face, and they rode in silence for a time. All of those fabulous buildings around them, like windsculpted cliffs and waves and great flights of birds, loomed frighteningly with no people in the streets save themselves, and one lone fellow who came darting around a corner up ahead, scuttling from doorway to doorway as if scouting their way for them. He did not
lessen the emptiness, only emphasized it.
“What else can we do?” Leane said eventually. She rode slumped in her saddle now like a sack of grain. “I feel so — empty. Empty.”
“Find something to fill it up,” Siuan told her firmly. “Anything. Cook for the hungry, tend the sick, find a husband and raise a houseful of children. Me, I mean to see Elaida does not get away with this. I could almost forgive her, if she truly believed I had endangered the Tower. Almost, I could. Almost. But she has been filled with envy since the day I was raised Amyrlin instead of her. That drives her as much as anything else, and for that I mean to pull her down. That is what fills me, Leane. That, and the fact that Rand al’Thor must not fall into her hands.”
“Perhaps that will be enough.” The copperyskinned woman sounded doubtful, but she straightened. The contrast between her obvious experience and Siuan’s precarious seat on the shorter mare made her look as if she must be the leader. “But how can we even begin? We have three horses, the clothes on our backs, and whatever Min has in her purse. Hardly enough to challenge the Tower.”
“I am glad you did not decide on a husband and home. We will find other —” Siuan grimaced. “We will find Aes Sedai who fled, find what we need. We may have more than you think, Leane. Min, what does that pass Gawyn gave us say? Does it mention three women? What? Quickly, girl.”
Min glared at her back. Siuan had been peering at the darting man ahead, a large, darkhaired fellow, dressed well but plainly in somber browns. The woman sounded as if she were still Amyrlin. Well, I wanted her to find her backbone, didn’t I?
Siuan turned to stare at her with those sharp blue eyes; somehow they seemed no less intimidating than before. “ ‘The bearers are authorized to depart Tar Valon on my authority,’ ” Min quoted hastily from memory. “ ‘Who impedes them will answer to me.’ Signed —”
“I know his name,” Siuan snapped. “Follow me.” She heeled Bela’s flanks, nearly losing her seat when the shaggy mare lumbered to a slow gallop. She hung on, though, bouncing awkwardly and drumming her heels for more speed.
Min exchanged one startled look with Leane, and they were both galloping after her. The man looked back at the sound of running hooves and began to run himself, but Siuan cut Bela in front of him; he bounced off the mare with a grunt. Min reached them just in time to hear Siuan say, “I did not think to meet you here, Logain.”
Min gaped. It was him. Those despairing eyes and that once handsome face framed by dark hair curling to his broad shoulders were unmistakable. Just who they needed to find. A man the Tower wanted very likely as much as Siuan.
Logain slumped to his knees as though his fatigued legs would not hold him any longer. “I cannot harm anyone now,” he said tiredly, staring at the paving stones beneath Bela’s hooves. “I just wanted to get away, to die somewhere in peace. If you only knew what it was like to have lost…” Leane sawed her reins angrily as he
trailed off; he began again without noticing. “The bridges are all guarded. They will let no one across. They did not know me, but they would not let me cross. I have tried them all.” Abruptly he laughed, wearily, but as if it were very funny indeed. “I have tried them all.”
“I think,” Min said carefully, “we should be going. He probably wants to avoid those who must be looking for him.” Siuan shot her a look that almost made her rein her horse back, all icy eyes and hard chin. It would not have been dreadful if the woman had retained a little of the uncertainty she displayed previously.
Raising his head, the big man looked from one of them to the next, a slow frown forming. “You are not Aes Sedai. Who are you? What do you want of me?”
“I am the woman who can take you out of Tar Valon,” Siuan told him. “And perhaps give you a chance to strike back at the Red Ajah. You would like a chance to get back at those who captured you, wouldn’t you?”
A shudder passed through him. “What must I do?” he said slowly.
“Follow me,” she replied. “Follow me, and remember that I am the only one in the entire world who will give you your chance of revenge.”
From his knees he studied them with his head tilted, examining each face, then pushed himself to his feet, his eyes fixed on Siuan. “I am your man,” he said simply. Leane’s face looked as incredulous as Min felt. What use under the Light could Siuan possibly have for a man of doubtful sanity who had once falsely proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn? At the least he might turn on them to steal one of their horses! Eyeing the height of him, the breadth of his shoulders, Min thought they had better keep their belt knives handy. Suddenly, for a moment, that flaring halo of gold and blue shone about his head, speaking of glory to come as surely as it had
the first time she had seen it. She shivered. Viewings. Images.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the Tower, the thick white shaft dominating the city, whole and straight, yet broken as surely as if it lay in ruins. For a moment she let herself think of the images she had glimpsed, just for a moment, flickering around Gawyn’s head. Gawyn kneeling at Egwene’s feet with his head bowed, and Gawyn breaking Egwene’s neck, first one then the other, as if either could be the future.
The things she saw were very rarely as clear in meaning as those two, and she had never before seen that fluttering back and forth, as though not even the viewing could tell which would be the true future. Worse, she had a feeling near to certainty that it was what she had done this day that had turned Gawyn toward those two possibilities.
Despite the sun, she shivered again. What’s done is done. She glanced at the two Aes Sedai — former Aes Sedai — both now studying Logain as though he were a trained hound, ferocious, possibly dangerous, but useful. Siuan and Leane turned their horses toward the river, Logain striding between. Min followed more slowly. Light, I hope it was worth it.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 48
(Spears and Shield)
An Offer Refused
“Is that the kind of woman you like?” Aviendha said contemptuously.
Rand looked down at her, striding along at Jeade’en’s stirrup in her heavy skirts, brown shawl doubled over her head. Big bluegreen eyes flashed up at him from beneath her wide headscarf as if she wished she still had the spear the Wise Ones had scolded her for taking up during the Trolloc attack.
Sometimes it made him uncomfortable, her walking while he rode, but he had tried walking with her, and his feet were grateful for a horse. Occasionally — very occasionally — he had managed to get her to ride behind his saddle, by complaining that he was getting a crick in his neck talking to her. Riding a horse did not exactly violate custom, it turned out, yet contempt for not using your own legs to carry you kept her afoot most of the time. One laugh from any of the Aiel, especially a Maiden, even one looking the other way, was enough to have her off Jeade’en in a flash.
“She is soft, Rand al’Thor. Weak.”
He glanced back over at the boxlike white wagon leading the peddlers’ train in a crooked, lurching snake across the dusty, broken landscape, escorted by Jindo Maidens again today. Isendre was up with Kadere and the driver, seated on the heavyset peddler’s lap, her chin on his shoulder while he held a small, blue silk parasol to shade her — and himself, too — from the harsh sun. Even in a white coat, Kadere continually mopped his dark face with a large handkerchief, more affected by the heat than she, in her sleek, clinging gown that matched the parasol. Rand was not close enough to be sure, but he thought her dark eyes were on him above the misty scarf wrapped about her face and head. She usually seemed to be watching him. Kadere did not appear to mind.
“I do not think Isendre is soft,” he said quietly, adjusting the shoufa around his head; it did keep the broiling sun off after a fashion. He had resisted donning any more Aiel garb, no matter how much more suited to the climate than his red wool coat. Whatever his blood, whatever the marks on his forearms, he was not Aiel, and he would not pretend. Whatever he had to do, he could hang on to that scrap of decency. “No, I would not say that.”
On the driver’s seat of the second wagon, fat Keille and the gleeman, Natael, were arguing again. Natael had the reins, though he did not drive as well as the man who usually did the job. Sometimes they looked at Rand, too, quick glances before diving back into their quarrel. But then, everyone did. The long column of Jindo on the other side of him, the Wise Ones beyond them, with Moiraine and Egwene and Lan. Among the more distant, thicker line of Shaido he thought heads turned toward him, too. It did not surprise him now any more than it ever had. He was He Who Comes With the Dawn. Everyone wanted to know what he would do. They
would find out soon enough.
“Soft,” Aviendha grunted. “Elayne is not soft. You belong to Elayne; you should not be caressing eyes with this milkskinned wench.” She shook her head fiercely, muttering half to herself, “Our ways shock her. She could not accept them. Why should I care if she can? I want no part of this! It cannot be! If I could, I would take you gai’shain and give you to Elayne!”
“Why should Isendre accept Aiel ways?”
The wideeyed look she gave him was so startled he almost laughed. Immediately she scowled as if he had done something infuriating. Aiel women were surely no easier to understand than any others.
“You are certainly not soft, Aviendha.” She should take it for a compliment; the woman was as rough as a honing stone sometimes. “Explain to me about the roofmistress again. If Rhuarc is clan chief of the Taardad and chief of Cold Rocks Hold, how is it that the hold belongs to his wife and not him?”
She glowered at him a moment longer, lips working as she muttered under her breath, before answering. “Because she is roofmistress, you stoneheaded wetlander. A man cannot own a roof any more than he can own land! Sometimes you wetlanders sound like savages.”
“But if Lian is roofmistress of Cold Rocks because she is Rhuarc’s wife —” “That is different! Will you never understand? A child understands!” Taking a
deep breath, she adjusted the shawl around her face. She was a pretty woman, except for looking at him most of the time as if he had committed some crime against her. What it might be, he did not know. Whitehaired Bair, leatheryfaced and as reluctant to speak of Rhuidean as ever, had finally, unwillingly told him that Aviendha had not visited the glass columns: she would not do that until she was ready to become a Wise One. So why did she hate him? It was a mystery he would have liked an answer to.
“I will attack it from another direction,” she grumbled at him. “When a woman is to marry, if she does not already own a roof, her family builds one for her. On her wedding day her new husband carries her away from her family across his shoulder, with his brothers holding off her sisters, but at the door he puts her down and asks her permission to enter. The roof is hers. She can…”
These lectures had been the most pleasant thing in the eleven days and nights since the Trolloc attack. Not that she had been willing to talk at first, beyond one more tirade on his supposed illtreatment of Elayne and later another embarrassing lecture meant to convince him Elayne was the perfect woman. Not until he mentioned to Egwene in passing that if Aviendha would not even speak to him, he wished she would at least stop staring at him. Within the hour a whiterobed gai’shain man came for Aviendha.
Whatever the Wise Ones had to say to her, she returned in a quivering fury to demand — demand! — that he let her teach him about Aiel ways and customs. No doubt in hope he would reveal something of his plans by the questions he asked.
After the viperish subtleties of Tear, the openness of the Wise Ones’ spying was refreshing. Still, it was doubtless wise to learn what he could, and talking with Aviendha could actually be enjoyable, especially on those occasions when she seemed to forget she despised him for whatever reason. Of course, whenever she realized they had begun to talk like two people instead of captor and captive, she did have a tendency to throw one of her whitehot outbursts, as though he had lured her into a trap.
Yet even with that their conversations were pleasurable, certainly by comparison with the rest of the journey. He was even beginning to find her tantrums amusing, though he was wise enough not to let her know. If she saw a man she hated, at least she was too wrapped up in that to see He Who Comes With the Dawn, or the Dragon Reborn. Just Rand al’Thor. At any rate, she knew what she thought of him. Not like Elayne, with one letter that made his ears grow hot and another written the same day that made him wonder if he had grown fangs and horns like a Trolloc.
Min was just about the only woman he had ever met who had not tangled his wits into a ball. But she was off in the Tower — safe there, at least — and that was one place he meant to avoid. Sometimes he thought life would be simpler if he could just forget women altogether. Now Aviendha had started creeping into his dreams, as if Min and Elayne were not bad enough. Women tied his emotions in knots, and he had to be clearheaded now. Clearheaded and cold.
He realized he was looking at Isendre again. She wriggled slender fingers at him past Kadere’s ear; he was sure those full lips curved into a smile. Oh, yes. Dangerous. I have to be cold and hard as steel. Sharp steel.
Eleven days and nights into the twelfth, and nothing else had changed. Days and nights of odd rock formations and flattopped stone spires and buttes thrusting up from a broken, blistered land crisscrossed by mountains seemingly stuck in at random. Days of baking sun and searing winds, nights of boneshaking cold. Whatever grew seemed to have thorns or spines, or else a touch itched like fury. Some Aviendha said were poisonous; that list seemed longer than the one of those edible. The only water was in hidden springs and tanks, though she pointed out plants that meant a deep hole would fill with slow seepage, enough to keep one or two men alive, and others that could be chewed for a sour, watery pulp.
One night lions killed two of the Shaido packhorses, roaring in the darkness as they were driven from their prey to vanish into the gullies. A wagon driver disturbed a small brown snake as they were making camp the fourth evening. A twostep, Aviendha called it later, and it proved its name. The fellow screamed and tried to run for the wagons despite seeing Moiraine hurrying toward him; he fell on his face at his second stride, dead before the Aes Sedai could dismount from her white mare. Aviendha listed venomous snakes, spiders and lizards. Poisonous lizards! Once she found one for him, two feet long and thick, with yellow stripes running down its bronze scales. Casually pinning it under a softbooted foot, she
drove hey knife into the thing’s wide head, then held it up where he could see the clear, oily fluid oozing over sharp bony ridges in its mouth. A gara, she explained, could bite through a boot; it could also kill a bull. Others were worse, of course. The gara was slow, and not really dangerous unless you were stupid enough to step on it. When she flung the huge lizard off of her blade, the yellow and bronze faded right into the cracked clay. Oh, yes. Just do not be stupid enough to step on it.
Moiraine divided her time between the Wise Ones and Rand, usually attempting, in that Aes Sedai way, to bully him into revealing his plans. “The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,” she had told him just that morning, voice coolly calm, ageless face serene, but dark eyes hot as she stared at him over Aviendha’s head, “but a fool can strangle himself in the Pattern. Have a care you do not weave a noose for your neck.” She had acquired a pale cloak, almost gai’shain white, that shimmered in the sun and beneath the wide hood she wore a damp, snowy scarf folded around her forehead.
“I make no nooses for my neck.” He laughed, and she wheeled Aldieb so quickly the mare nearly knocked Aviendha down, galloping back to the Wise Ones’ party, cloak streaming behind her.
“It is stupid to anger Aes Sedai,” Aviendha muttered, rubbing her shoulder. “I did not think you were a stupid man.”
“We will just have to see whether I am or not,” he told her, not feeling like laughing anymore. Stupid? There were some risks you had to take. “We will just have to see.”
Egwene rarely left the Wise Ones, walking with them as often as she rode Mist, sometimes taking one of them up behind her on the gray mare for a time. He had finally figured out that she was passing for full Aes Sedai again. Amys and Bair, Seana and Melaine, seemed to accept it as readily as the Tairens had, though not at all in the same way. At times one or another of them argued with her so loudly he could almost make out what they were shouting more than a hundred paces away. It was almost the manner they used with Aviendha, though her they seemed to bully rather than argue with, but then, sometimes they held what appeared to be rather heated discussions with Moiraine, too. Especially sunhaired Melaine.
The tenth morning Egwene had finally stopped wearing her hair in those two braids, though it was the oddest thing. The Wise Ones talked to her for the longest time, off by themselves, while the gai’shain were folding their tents and Rand was saddling Jeade’en. Had he not known her better, he might have thought Egwene’s headdown stance was an attempt at meekness, but that word could only be applied to her in comparison with Nynaeve. And maybe Moiraine. Suddenly Egwene clapped, her hands, laughing and hugging each of the Wise Ones in turn before hurriedly unraveling the plaits.
When he asked Aviendha what was going on — she had been sitting outside his tent when he woke — she muttered sourly, “They have decided she has grown —” Cutting off abruptly, she gave him a level look, folding her arms, and went on in a
cool voice, “It is Wise Ones’ business, Rand al’Thor. Ask them, if you wish, but be prepared to hear that it is no concern of yours.”
Egwene had grown what? Her hair? It made no sense. Aviendha would not say another word on the matter; instead she scraped a bit of grayish lichen from a rock and began describing how to poultice a wound with it. The woman was learning a Wise One’s ways too quickly to suit him. The Wise Ones themselves paid him little apparent attention; of course, they did not need to, with Aviendha perched on his shoulder in a manner of speaking.
The rest of the Aiel, the Jindo at any rate, became a bit less standoffish each day, perhaps a little less uneasy about what He Who Comes With the Dawn meant for them, but Aviendha was the only one who spoke to him at any length. Each evening Lan came to practice the sword, and Rhuarc to teach him the spears and the Aiel’s odd way of fighting with both hands and feet. The Warder knew something of that, and joined the practice sessions. Most others avoided Rand, especially the wagon drivers, who had learned he was the Dragon Reborn, a man who could channel; when he caught one of those roughfaced men looking at him, the fellow might as well have been staring at the Dark One. Not Kadere, though, or the gleeman.
Almost every morning as they started out, the peddler rode over on one of the mules from the wagons the Trollocs had burned, his face seeming even darker for the long white scarf tied about his head and hanging down his neck. With Rand he was all diffidence, but his cold, unchanging eyes made his hooked nose look an eagle’s beak in truth.
“My Lord Dragon,” he had begun the morning after the attack, then wiped sweat from his face with his everpresent handkerchief and shifted uncomfortably on the battered old saddle he had found somewhere for the mule. “If I may call you that?”
The charred wreckage of the three wagons was dwindling in the distance to the south, and with them the graves of two of Kadere’s men and a good many more Aiel. The Trollocs had been dragged from the camps and left for the scavengers, yipping, bigeared creatures — Rand did not know whether they were large foxes or small dogs; they looked like bits of each — and vultures with redtipped wings, some still circling in the sky as if fearful of landing in the melee among their fellows.
“Call me as you will,” Rand told him.
“My Lord Dragon. I have been thinking of what you said yesterday.” Kadere looked around as if he feared being overheard, though Aviendha was with the Wise Ones, and his own train of wagons, fifty paces or more away, held the nearest ears. He dropped his voice near a whisper anyway, and wiped his face nervously. His eyes never altered, though. “What you said about knowledge being valuable, paving the way to greatness. It is true.”
Rand looked at him for a long moment, not blinking, keeping his face blank. “You said that, not I,” he said finally.
“Well, perhaps I did. But it is true, is it not, my Lord Dragon?” Rand nodded, and the peddler went on, still whispering, eyes still shifting for eavesdroppers. “Yet there can be danger in knowledge. In giving more than receiving. A man who sells knowledge must have not only his price, but safeguards. Assurances and sureties against… repercussions. Would you not agree?”
“Do you have knowledge you want to… sell, Kadere?”
The heavyset man frowned at his train. Keille had dropped down to walk awhile despite the growing heat, her bulk sheathed in white and a white lace shawl on the ivory combs in her coarse dark hair. Every so often she glanced at the two men riding together, her expression unreadable at this distance. It still seemed odd, someone so large moving so lightly. Isendre had climbed out onto the driver’s seat of the first wagon and was watching more openly, hanging on to lean around the corner of the whitepainted wagon as it swayed and lurched.
“That woman may be the death of me yet,” Kadere muttered. “Perhaps we can talk again later, my Lord Dragon, if it please you.” Booting the mule hard, he trotted to the lead wagon and swung himself onto the driver’s seat with surprising nimbleness, tying the mule’s reins to an iron ring at the corner of the big wagonbox. He and Isendre disappeared inside and did not emerge again until they stopped for the night.
He returned the next day, and other days when he saw that Rand was alone, always hinting at knowledge he might sell for the proper price, if the proper safeguards were set. Once he went so far as to say that anything — murder, treason, anything at all — could be forgiven in return for knowledge, and seemed increasingly nervous when Rand would not agree with him. Whatever he wanted to sell, he apparently wanted Rand’s blanket protection for every misdeed he might ever have done.
“I don’t know that I want to buy knowledge,” Rand told him more than once. “There’s always the question of price, isn’t there? Some prices I might not want to pay.”
Natael drew Rand aside that first evening, after the fires were lit and cooking smells began to drift among the low tents. The gleeman seemed almost as nervous as Kadere. “I have thought a good deal about you,” he said, peering at Rand sideways, head tilted to one side. “You should have a grand epic to tell your tale. The Dragon Reborn. He Who Comes With the Dawn. Man of who knows how many prophecies, in this Age and others.” He drew his cloak around him, the colorful patches fluttering in the breeze. Twilight was short in the Waste; night and cold came on quickly and together. “How do you feel about your prophesied destiny? I must know, if I am to compose this epic.”
“Feel?” Rand looked around the camp, at the Jindo moving among the tents.
How many of them would be dead before he was done? “Tired. I feel tired.” “Hardly a heroic emotion,” Natael murmured. “But to be expected, given your
destiny. The world riding on your shoulders, most people willing to kill you given
the chance, the rest fools who think to use you, ride you to power and glory.” “Which are you, Natael?”
“I? I am a simple gleeman.” The man lifted an edge of his patchcovered cloak as if for proof. “I would not take your place for all the world, not with the fate that accompanies it. Death or madness, or both. ‘His blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul…’ That is what The Karaethon Cycle, the Prophecies of the Dragon, says, is it not? That you must die to save fools who will heave a sigh of relief at your death. No, I would not accept that for all your power and more.”
“Rand,” Egwene said, stepping out of the deepening darkness with her pale cloak wrapped around her, the hood well up, “we have come to see how you have held up after your Healing, and a day in that heat.” Moiraine was with her, face shrouded in the deep cowl of her white cloak, and Bair and Amys, Melaine and Seana, heads swathed in dark shawls, all watching him, calm and cold as the night. Even Egwene. She did not have the Aes Sedai agelessness yet, but she had Aes Sedai eyes.
He did not notice Aviendha at first, trailing behind the others. For a moment he thought he saw compassion on her face, but if it was there, it vanished as soon as she saw him looking. Imagination. He was tired.
“Another time,” Natael said, speaking to Rand but looking at the women in that peculiar sidelong manner. “We will talk another time.” With the slightest of bows he strode away.
“Does the future chafe you, Rand?” Moiraine said quietly when the gleeman was gone. “Prophecies speak in flowery, hidden language. They do not always mean what they seem to say.”
“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,” he told her. “I will do what I must. Remember that, Moiraine. I will do what I must.” She seemed satisfied; with Aes Sedai, it was hard to tell. She would not be satisfied when she learned everything.
Natael returned the next evening, and the next, and the next, always talking about the epic he would compose, but he displayed a morbid streak, digging for how Rand meant to face madness and death. His tale was meant to be a tragedy, it appeared. Rand certainly had no desire to root his fears out into the open; what was in his heart and head could remain buried there. Finally the gleeman seemed to tire of hearing him say “I will do what I must,” and stopped coming. It seemed that he did not want to compose his epic unless it could be full of pained emotion. The man looked frustrated when he stalked off for the last time, cloak fluttering furiously behind him.
The fellow was odd, but going by Thom Merrilin, so were all gleemen. Natael certainly demonstrated other gleeman’s traits. For instance, he certainly had a fine opinion of himself. Rand did not care whether the man called him by titles, but Natael addressed Rhuarc, and Moiraine, the few times he was around her, as if he was plainly their equal. That was Thom to perfection. And he gave up performing for the Jindo at all, beginning to spend most of every night at the Shaido camp.
There were more of the Shaido, he explained to Rhuarc as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. A larger audience. None of the Jindo liked it, but there was nothing even Rhuarc could do. In the Threefold Land, a gleeman was allowed anything short of murder without being called down for it.
Aviendha spent her nights among the Wise Ones, and sometimes walked with them for an hour or so during the day, all of them gathered around her, even Moiraine and Egwene. At first Rand thought they must be advising her on how to handle him, how to pull what they wanted to know out of his head. Then one day, with the sun molten overhead, a ball of fire as big as a horse suddenly burst into being ahead of the Wise Ones’ party and went spinning and tumbling away, blazing a furrow across the sere land, until it finally dwindled and winked out.
Some of the wagon drivers pulled their startled, snorting teams to a halt and stood to watch, calling to each other in a blend of fear, confusion and coarse curses. Murmurs rippled through the Jindo, and they stared, as did the Shaido, but the two columns of Aiel kept moving with barely a pause. It was among the Wise Ones that real excitement was evident. The four of them clustered around Aviendha, all apparently talking at once, with considerable armwaving. Moiraine and Egwene, leading their horses, tried to get in a word; even without hearing, Rand knew that Amys told them in no uncertain terms, shaking a furiously admonishing finger, to stay out of it.
Staring at the blackened gouge stretching arrowstraight for half a mile, Rand sat back down in his saddle. Teaching Aviendha to channel. Of course. That was what they were doing. He scrubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand; the sun had nothing to do with it. When that fireball leaped out into existence, he had instinctively reached for the True Source. It had been like trying to dip water with a torn sieve. All his clawing at saidin might as well have been clawing at air. One day that could happen when he needed the Power desperately. He had to learn, too, and he had no teacher. He had to learn not just because the Power would kill him before he had to worry about going mad if he did not; he had to learn because he had to use it. Learn to use it; use it to learn. He began laughing so hard that some of the Jindo looked at him uneasily.
He would have enjoyed Mat’s company any time during those eleven days and nights, but Mat never came near for more than a minute or two, the broad brim of his flatcrowned hat pulled down to shade his eyes, the blackhafted spear lying across the pommel of Pips’s saddle, with its odd ravenmarked, Powerwrought point, like a short, curving sword blade.
“If your face darkens from the sun any more, you will turn into an Aielman,” he might say, laughing or, “Do you mean to spend the rest of your life here? There’s a whole world the other side of the Dragonwall. Wine? Women? You remember these things?”
But Mat looked plainly uneasy, and he was even more reluctant than the Wise Ones to speak of Rhuidean, or what had happened to them there. His hand tightened
on that black haft at the very mention of the fogdomed city, and he claimed not to remember anything of his journey through the ter’angreal — then proceeded to contradict himself by saying, “You stay out of that thing, Rand. It isn’t like the one in the Stone at all. They cheat. Burn me, I wish I’d never seen it!”
The one time Rand mentioned the Old Tongue, he snapped, “Burn you, I don’t know anything about the bloody Old Tongue!” and galloped straight back to the peddlers’ wagons.
That was where Mat spent most of his time, dicing with the drivers — until they realized he won a very great deal more often than he lost, no matter whose dice he used — engaging Kadere or Natael in long talks at every opportunity, pursuing Isendre. It was clear what was on his mind from the first time he grinned at her and straightened his hat, the morning after the Trolloc attack. He spoke to her nearly every evening for as long as he could, and pricked himself so badly plucking white blossoms from a spikythorned bush that he could barely handle his reins for two days, though he refused to allow Moiraine to Heal him. Isendre did not precisely encourage him, but her slow, sultry smile was hardly calculated to drive him away, either. Kadere saw — and said not a word, though sometimes his eyes followed Mat like a vulture’s. Others did comment.
Late one afternoon as the mules were being unhitched and the tents going up, and Rand was unsaddling Jeade’en, Mat was standing with Isendre in the meager shade of one of the canvastopped wagons. Standing very close. Shaking his head, Rand watched as he wiped the dapple down. The sun burned low on the horizon, and tall spires stretched long shadows across the camp.
Isendre fiddled with her diaphanous scarf as if idly thinking of removing it, smiling, full lips half pouting, ready for a kiss. Encouraged, Mat grinned confidently and moved closer still. She dropped her hand, and slowly shook her head, but that inviting smile never faded. Neither of them heard Keille approach, so light on her feet despite her size.
“Is that what you want, good sir? Her?” The pair jumped apart at the sound of her mellifluous voice, and she laughed just as musically, just as oddly out of that face. “A bargain for you, Matrim Cauthon. A Tar Valon mark, and she is yours. A chit like that cannot be worth more than two, so it is a clear bargain.”
Mat grimaced, looking as though he wished he were anywhere else but there. Isendre, however, turned slowly to face Keille, a mountain cat facing a bear.
“You go too far, old woman,” she said softly, eyes hard above the veiling scarf. “I will put up with your tongue no longer. Have a care. Or perhaps you would like to remain here in the Waste.”
Keille smiled broadly, yet mirth never touched the obsidian eyes glittering behind her fat cheeks. “Would you?”
Nodding decisively, Isendre said, “A Tar Valon mark.” Her voice was iron. “I will see you have a Tar Valon mark when we leave you. I only wish I could see you trying to drink it.” Turning her back, she strode to the lead wagon, not swaying
seductively at all, and vanished inside.
Keille watched, round face unreadable, until the white door closed, then suddenly rounded on Mat, who was on the point of slipping away. “Few men have ever refused an offer from me once, much less twice. You should have a care I do not take it in mind to do something about it.” Laughing, she reached up and pinched his cheek with thick fingers, hard enough to make him wince, then turned in Rand’s direction. “Tell him, my Lord Dragon. I have a feeling you know something of the dangers of scorning a woman. That Aiel girl who follows you about, glaring. I hear you belong to another. Perhaps she feels scorned.”
“I doubt it, Mistress,” he said dryly. “Aviendha would plant a knife in my ribs if she believed I had thought of her that way.”
The immense woman laughed uproariously. Mat flinched as she reached for him again, but all she did was pat the cheek she had pinched before. “You see, good sir? Scorn a woman’s offer, and perhaps she thinks nothing of it, but perhaps” — she made a skewering motion —“the knife. A lesson any man can learn. Eh, my Lord Dragon?” Wheezing with laughter, she hurried off to check on the men tending the mules.
Rubbing his cheek, Mat muttered, “They’re all crazy,” before he, too, left. He did not abandon his pursuit of Isendre, though.
So it went, for eleven days and into the twelfth, across a barren, hardbaked land. Twice they saw other stands, small, rough stone buildings much like Imre Stand, sited for easy defense against the sheer side of spire or butte. One had three hundred sheep or more, and men who were as startled to learn of Rand as they were of Trollocs in the Threefold Land. The other was empty; not raided, only not in use. Several times Rand spotted goats, or sheep, or pale, longhorned cattle in the distance. Aviendha said the herds belonged to nearby sept holds, but he saw no people, surely no structure that deserved the name hold.
The twelfth day, with the thick columns of Jindo and Shaido flanking the Wise Ones’ party, and the peddlers’ wagons lurching along with Keille and Natael arguing, and Isendre eyeing Rand from Kadere’s lap.
“…and that is how it is,” Aviendha said, nodding to herself. “Surely you must understand about a roofmistress, now.”
“Not really,” Rand admitted. He realized that for some time he had just been listening to the sound of her voice, not to the words. “I’m sure it works just fine, though.”
She growled at him. “When you marry,” she said in a tight voice, “with the Dragons on your arms proving your blood, will you follow that blood, or will you demand to own everything but the dress your wife stands in, like some wetland savage?”
“That’s not at all the way it is,” he protested, “and any woman where I come from would brain a man who thought it was. Anyway, don’t you think that ought to be settled between me and whoever I do decide to marry?” If anything, she scowled
harder than before.
To his relief, Rhuarc came trotting back from the head of the Jindo. “We are there,” the Aielman announced with a smile. “Cold Rocks Hold.”
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 49
(Spears and Shield) Cold Rocks Hold
Frowning, Rand looked around. A mile ahead stood a tight cluster of tall, sheersided buttes, or perhaps one huge butte broken by fissures. To his left the land ran off in patches of tough grass and leafless spiny plants, scattered thorny bushes and low trees, across arid hills and jagged gullies, past huge, rough stone columns to jagged mountains in the distance. To the right the land was the same, except the cracked yellowish clay lay flatter, the mountains closer. It could have been any piece of the Waste he had seen since leaving Chaendaer.
“Where?” he said.
Rhuarc glanced at Aviendha, who was looking at Rand as though he had lost his wits. “Come. Let your own eyes show you Cold Rocks.” Dropping his shoufa to his shoulders, the clan chief turned and loped bareheaded toward the fissured rock wall ahead.
The Shaido had already halted, milling about and beginning to set up their tents. Heirn and the Jindo fell in behind Rhuarc at a trot with their pack mules, uncovering their heads and shouting wordlessly, and the Maidens escorting the peddlers cried for the drivers to hasten their teams and follow the Jindo. One of the Wise Ones lifted her skirts to her knees and ran to join Rhuarc — Rand thought it was Amys, from the pale hair; surely Bair could not move that nimbly — but the rest of the Wise Ones’ party maintained its original pace. For a moment Moiraine looked as if she would break away, toward Rand, then hesitated, arguing with one of the other Wise Ones, hair still hidden by her shawl. Finally the Aes Sedai reined her white mare back beside Egwene’s gray and Lan’s black stallion, just ahead of the whiterobed gai’shain who were tugging the pack animals along. They were heading the same way as Rhuarc and the others, though.
Rand leaned down to offer a hand to Aviendha. When she shook her head, he said, “If they are going to be making all that noise, I won’t be able to hear you down there. What if I make a woolheaded mistake because I can’t hear what you say?”
Muttering under her breath, she glanced at the Maidens around the peddlers’ wagons, then sighed and clasped his arm. He hoisted her up, ignoring her indignant squawk, and swung her onto Jeade’en behind the saddle. Whenever she tried to mount by herself, she came close to pulling him out of the saddle. He gave her a moment to settle her heavy skirts, though at best they bared her legs well above her soft, kneehigh boots, then heeled the dapple to a canter. It was the first time Aviendha had ridden faster than a walk; she flung her arms around his waist and hung on.
“If you make me look the fool before my sisters, wetlander,” she snarled warningly against his back.
“Why would they think you a fool? I’ve seen Bair and Amys and the others ride
behind Moiraine or Egwene sometimes to talk.”
After a moment, she said, “You accept changes more easily than I, Rand al’Thor.” He was not sure what to make of that.
When he brought Jeade’en up with Rhuarc and Heirn and Amys, a little ahead of the still shouting Jindo, he was surprised to see Couladin running easily alongside, flamecolored hair bare. Aviendha tugged Rand’s own shoufa down to his shoulders. “You must enter a hold with your face clear to be seen. I told you that. And make noise. We have been seen long since, and they will know who we are, but it is customary, to show you are not trying to take the hold by surprise.”
He nodded, but held his tongue. Neither Rhuarc nor any of the three with him were making a sound, and neither was Aviendha. Besides, the Jindo made enough clamor to be heard for miles.
Couladin’s head swung toward him. Contempt flashed across that sundark face, and something else. Hate and disdain Rand had come to expect, but amusement? What did Couladin find amusing?
“Fool Shaido,” Aviendha muttered at his back. Maybe she was right; maybe the amusement was for her riding. But Rand did not think so.
Mat galloped up trailing a cloud of yellowish brown dust, hat pulled low and spear resting upright on his stirrup iron like a lance. “What is this place, Rand?” he asked loudly, to be heard over the shouts. “All those women would say was ‘Move faster. Move faster.’ ” Rand told him, and he frowned at the towering rock face of the butte. “You could hold that thing for years, I suppose, with supplies, but it isn’t a patch on the Stone, or the Tora Harad.”
“The Tora what?” Rand said. .
Mat rolled his shoulders before answering. “Just something I heard of, once.” He stood in his stirrups to peer back over the heads of the Jindo toward the peddlers’ train. “At least they’re still with us. I wonder how long before they finish trading and go.”
“Not before Alcair Dal. Rhuarc says there’s a sort of fair whenever clan chiefs meet, even if it’s only two or three. With all twelve coming, I don’t think Kadere and Keille will want to miss it.”
Mat did not look pleased at the news.
Rhuarc led the way straight to the widest fissure in the sheer stone wall, ten or twelve paces across at the broadest, and shadowed by the height of its sheer sides as it wove deeper and deeper, dark and even cool beneath a ribbon of sky. It felt odd to be in so much shade. The Aiels’ wordless shouts swelled, magnified between the graybrown walls; when they suddenly ceased, the silence, broken only by the clatter of mules’ hooves and the creak of wagon wheels far behind, seemed very loud.
They rounded another curve, and the fissure opened abruptly into a wide canyon, long and almost straight. From every side, shrill ululating cries broke from hundreds of women’s mouths. A thick crowd lined the way, women in bulky skirts, shawls wrapped about their heads, and men wearing grayish brown coats and
breeches, the cadin’sor, and Maidens of the Spear, too, waving their arms in welcome, beating on pots or whatever could make a noise.
Rand gaped, and not just for the pandemonium. The canyon walls were green, in narrow terraces climbing halfway up both sides. Not all were really terraces, he realized. Small, flatroofed houses of gray stone or yellow clay seemed to be stacked practically atop one another, in clusters with paths winding between, and every roof a garden of beans and squashes, peppers and melons and plants he did not know. Chickens ran loose, redder than those he knew, and some strange sort of fowl, larger and speckled gray. Children, most garbed like their elders, and whiterobed gai’shain moved among the rows with big clay pitchers, apparently watering individual plants. The Aiel did not have cities, he had always been told, but this was certainly a fairsized town at least, if as odd a one as he had ever seen. The din was too great for him to ask any of the questions that popped into his head — such as, what were those round fruits, too red and shiny for apples, growing on low, paleleafed bushes, or those straight, broadleafed stalks lined with long, fat, yellowtasseled sprouts? He had been too long a farmer not to wonder.
Rhuarc and Heirn slowed, and so did Couladin, but only to a quick walk, thrusting their spears through the bowcase harnesses on their backs. Amys ran on ahead, laughing like a girl, while the men continued their steady advance along the crowdlined canyon floor, the cries of the hold’s women vibrating in the air and nearly overshadowing the clanging of pots. Rand followed, as Aviendha had told him to. Mat looked as if he wanted to turn around and ride right back out again.
At the far end of the canyon, the wall leaned inward, making a deep, dark pocket. The sun never reached to the back of it, so Aviendha had said, and the rocks there, always cool, gave the hold its name. In front of the shadows, Amys stood with another woman atop a wide gray boulder, its top smoothed for a platform.
The second woman, slender in her bulky skirts, scarfbound yellow hair spilling below her waist and touched with white from her temples, appeared older than Amys though certainly more than handsome, with a few fine wrinkles at the corners of her gray eyes. She was dressed the same as Amys, a plain brown shawl over her shoulders, her necklaces and bracelets of gold and carved ivory no finer or richer, but this was Lian, the roofmistress of Cold Rocks Hold.
The wavering, highpitched cries dwindled away to nothing as Rhuarc halted before the boulder, a step closer than Heirn and Couladin. “I ask leave enter your hold, roofmistress,” he announced in a loud, carrying tone.
“You have my leave, clan chief,” the yellowhaired woman replied formally, and just as loudly. Smiling, she added in a much warmer voice, “Shade of my heart, you will always have my leave.”
“I give thanks, roofmistress of my heart.” That did not sound particularly formal, either.
Heirn stepped forward. “Roofmistress, I ask leave to come beneath your roof.” “You have my leave, Heirn,” Lian told the stocky man. “Beneath my roof, there
is water and shade for you. The Jindo sept is always welcome here.”
“I give thanks, roofmistress.” Heirn clapped Rhuarc on the shoulder and left to rejoin his people; Aiel ceremony was short, it seemed, and to the point.
Swaggering, Couladin joined Rhuarc, “I ask leave to enter your hold, roofmistress.”
Lian blinked, frowning at him. A murmur rose behind Rand, an astonished buzz from hundreds of throats. A sudden feel of danger hung in the air. Mat certainly felt it, too, fingering his spear and halfturning to see what the mass of Aiel was doing.
“What is the matter?” Rand asked quietly over his shoulder. “Why doesn’t she say something?”
“He asked as if he were a clan chief,” Aviendha whispered disbelievingly. “The man is a fool. He must be mad! If she refuses him, it will mean trouble with the Shaido, and she may, for such an insult. Not blood feud — he is not their clan chief, however swollen his head — but trouble.” Between one breath and the next her voice sharpened. “You did not listen, did you? You did not listen! She could have refused permission even to Rhuarc, and he would have had to leave. It would break the clan, but it is in her power. She can refuse even He Who Comes With the Dawn, Rand al’Thor. Women are not powerless among us, not like your wetlander women who must be queens or nobles or else dance for a man if they wish to eat!”
He shook his head slightly. Every time he was on the point of berating himself for how little he had learned about the Aiel, Aviendha reminded him how little she knew about anyone not Aiel. “Someday I would like to introduce you to the Women’s Circle in Emond’s Field. It will be… interesting… to hear you explain to them how powerless they are.” He felt her shifting against his back, trying to get a good look at his face, and carefully kept his expression smooth. “Maybe they’ll explain a few things to you, too.”
“You have my leave,” Lian began — Couladin smiled, swelling up where he stood —“to step beneath my roof. Water and shade will be found for you.” Soft gasps from hundreds of mouths made quite a loud sound.
The firehaired man quivered as if struck, face red with rage. He did not seem to know what to do. He took a challenging step forward, staring up at Lian and Amys, clutching his own forearms as though to keep his hands from his spears, then whirled and strode back toward the gathering, glaring this way and that, daring anyone to speak. Finally he stopped not far from where he had begun, staring at Rand. Coals could not have been hotter than his blue eyes.
“As one friendless and alone,” Aviendha whispered. “She has welcomed him as a beggar. The gravest insult to him, and none to the Shaido.” Suddenly she fisted Rand so hard in the ribs that he grunted. “Move, wetlander. You hold such honor as I have left in your hands; all will know I have taught you! Move!”
Swinging a leg over, he slid from Jeade’en’s back and strode up beside Rhuarc. I am not Aiel, he thought. I do not understand them, and I cannot let myself come to like them too much. I cannot.
None of the other men had done so, but he bowed to Lian; that was how he had been brought up. “Roofmistress, I ask leave to come beneath your roof.” He heard Aviendha’s breath catch. He had been supposed to say the other thing, what Rhuarc had. The clan chief’s eyes narrowed worriedly, watching his wife, and Couladin’s flushed face twisted in a scornful smile. The soft murmurs from the crowd sounded puzzled.
The roofmistress stared at Rand even harder than she had at Couladin, taking him in from hair to boots and back again, the shoufa lying on the shoulders of a red coat that would surely never be worn by an Aiel. She looked questioningly at Amys, who nodded.
“Such modesty,” Lian said slowly, “is becoming in a man. Men seldom know where to find it.” Spreading her dark skirts, she curtsied, awkwardly — it was not a thing Aiel women did — but still a curtsy, in return of his bow. “The Car’a’carn has leave to enter my hold. For the chief of chiefs, there is ever water and shade at Cold Rocks.”
Another great ululation rose from the women in the crowd, but whether for him or for the ceremony, Rand did not know. Couladin paused to stare implacable hatred at him, then stalked off, brushing roughly past Aviendha as she slid ungracefully from the dapple stallion. He melded quickly into the dispersing crowd.
Mat slowed in the act of dismounting to stare after the man. “Watch your back with that one, Rand,” he said quietly. “I mean it.”
“Everybody tells me that,” Rand said. The peddlers were already setting up to trade in the center of the canyon, and at the entrance, Moiraine and the rest of the Wise Ones’ company were arriving to a few shouts and the drumming of pots, but nothing like the cries that had welcomed Rhuarc. “He isn’t who I have to worry about.” His dangers were not Aiel. Moiraine to one side and Lanfear to the other. How could I have more danger than that? It was nearly enough to make him laugh.
Amys and Lian had climbed down, and to Rand’s surprise, Rhuarc put an arm around each of them. They were both tall, as most Aiel women seemed to be, but neither came higher than the clan chief’s shoulder. “You have met my wife Amys,” he said to Rand. “Now you must meet my wife Lian.”
Rand realized his mouth was hanging open and closed it quickly. After Aviendha had told him the roofmistress of Cold Rocks was Rhuarc’s wife and named Lian, he was sure he had misunderstood back at Chaendaer, all that “shade of my heart” between the man and Amys. He had had other things on his mind then anyway. But this…
“Both of them?” Mat spluttered. “Light! Two! Oh, burn me! He’s the luckiest man in the world or the biggest fool since creation!”
“I had thought,” Rhuarc said, frowning, “that Aviendha was teaching you our customs. She leaves out much, it appears.”
Leaning to look around her husband — their husband — Lian raised an eyebrow at Amys, who said dryly, “She seemed ideal to tell him what he needs to
know. Something to keep her from trying to run back to the Maidens whenever our backs were turned, too. Now it seems I must have a long talk with her in a quiet place. No doubt she has been teaching him Maiden hand talk, or how to milk a gara.”
Flushing slightly, Aviendha tossed her head irritably; her dark reddish hair had grown over her ears, long enough to sway in a fringe below her head scarf. “There were more important matters to speak of than marriages. Anyway, the man does not listen.”
“She has been a good teacher,” Rand put in quickly. “I have learned a great deal about your customs, and the Threefold Land, from her.” Hand talk? “Any mistakes I make are mine, not hers.” How did you milk a venomous twofoot lizard? Why? “She has been a good teacher, and I’d like to keep her as such, if that is all right.” Why in the Light did I say that? The woman could be pleasant enough sometimes, when she forget herself, anyway; the rest of the time she was a burr under his coat. Yet at least he knew who the Wise Ones had set to watch him as long as she was there.
Amys studied him, those clear blue eyes as sharp as an Aes Sedai’s. But then, she could channel; her face merely looked younger than it should, not ageless, but maybe she was as much Aes Sedai as an Aes Sedai. “That sounds a fine arrangement to me,” she said. Aviendha opened her mouth, all bristling indignation
— and closed it again, sullenly, when the Wise One shifted that stare to her. Perhaps the woman had thought her time with him was done, now they had reached Cold Rocks.
“You must be tired after your journey,” Lian said to Rand, her gray eyes motherly, “and hungry as well. Come.” Her warm smile included Mat, who was hanging back and beginning to look to the peddlers’ wagons. “Come beneath my roof.”
Fetching his saddlebags, Rand left Jeade’en to the care of a gai’shain woman, who took Pips as well. Mat gave the wagons a final stare before tossing his saddlebags over his shoulder and following.
Lian’s roof, her house, sat on the highest level on the west side, with the steep canyon wall rising a good hundred paces above. Dwelling of the clan chief and roofmistress or no, from the outside it appeared to be a modest rectangle of large yellowclay bricks with narrow, glassless windows covered by plain white curtains, a vegetable garden on its flat roof and another in front on a small terrace separated from the house by a narrow path paved with flat gray stones. Big enough for two rooms, maybe. Except perhaps for the square bronze gong hanging beside the door, it looked much like the other structures Rand could see, and from that vantage point the entire length of the valley was laid out below him. A small, simple house. Inside, it was something else.
The brick part was one large room, floored with reddish brown tiles, but it was only part. Carved into the stone behind were more rooms, highceilinged and
surprisingly cool, with wide, arched doorways and silver lamps giving off a scent that hinted of green places. Rand saw only one chair, tallbacked and lacquered red and gold, with a look of not much use; the chief’s chair, Aviendha called it. There was little more wood to be seen, beyond a few polished or lacquered boxes and chests, and low reading stands holding open books; the reader would need to lie on the floor. Intricately woven carpets covered the floors, and bright rugs in layers; he recognized some patterns from Tear and Cairhien and Andor, even Illian and Tarabon, while other designs were unfamiliar, broad jagged stripes and no two colors alike, or linked hollow squares in grays and browns and blacks. In sharp contrast to the harsh sameness outside this valley, there was vivid color everywhere, wall hangings he was sure had come from the other side of the Spine of the World
— perhaps in the same way wall hangings had left the Stone of Tear — and cushions of all sizes and hues, often tasseled or fringed or both in silk of red or gold. Here and there, in niches carved into the walls, stood a thin porcelain vase or a silver bowl or an ivory carving, often of some strange animal or other. So these were the “caves” the Tairens spoke of. It could have had the garishness of Tear — or the Tinkers — but instead it seemed dignified, formal and informal at the same time.
With a small grin for Aviendha to show her he had listened, Rand pulled a guest gift for Lian from his saddlebags, a finely worked golden lion. It had been looted from Tear and bought from a Jindo Water Seeker, but if he was ruler of Tear, maybe it was like stealing from himself. After a moment of hesitation, Mat produced a gift, too, a Tairen necklace of silver flowers, no doubt from the same source originally, and no doubt intended for Isendre.
“Exquisite,” Lian smiled, holding up the lion. “I have always had a taste for Tairen craftwork. Rhuarc brought me two pieces many years ago.” In a voice suitable for a goodwife reminiscing over some particularly fine sugarberries, she said to her husband, “You took them from the tent of a High Lord just before Laman was beheaded, did you not? A pity you did not reach Andor. I have always wanted a piece of Andoran silver. This necklace is beautiful, too, Mat Cauthon.”
Listening to her heap praise on both gifts, Rand masked his shock. For all her skirts and motherly eyes, she was as Aiel as any Maiden of the Spear.
By the time Lian finished, Moiraine and the other Wise Ones arrived with Lan and Egwene. The Warder’s sword drew a single disapproving glance, but the roofmistress welcomed him warmly after Bair called him Aan’allein. Yet that was nothing to her greeting for Egwene and Moiraine.
“You honor my roof, Aes Sedai.” The roof mistress’s tone made it sound an understatement; she came very close to bowing to them. “It is said that we served Aes Sedai before the Breaking of the World and failed them, and for that failure were sent here to the Threefold Land. Your presence says that perhaps our sin was not beyond forgiving.” Of course. She had not been to Rhuidean; apparently the prohibition against speaking of what happened in Rhuidean with anyone who had
not been there applied even between husband and wife. And between sisterwives, or whatever the relationship was between Amys and Lian.
Moiraine tried to give Lian a guest gift, too, tiny crystalandsilver flasks of scent all the way from Arad Doman, but Lian spread her hands. “Your very presence is guest gift beyond value, Aes Sedai. To accept more would dishonor my roof, and me. I could not bear the shame.” She sounded entirely serious, and troubled that Moiraine might press the scent on her. It was an indication of the relative importance of the Car’a’carn and an Aes Sedai.
“As you wish,” Moiraine said, returning the flasks to her belt pouch. She was icily serene in blue silk, her pale cloak thrown back. “Your Threefold Land will surely see more Aes Sedai. We have never had reason to come, before.”
Amys did not look best pleased over that at all, and flamehaired Melaine stared at Moiraine like a greeneyed cat wondering if she should do something about a large dog that had wandered into her barnyard. Bair and Seana exchanged troubled glances, but nothing like the two who could channel.
A flurry of gai’shain — men and women alike graceful in cowled white robes, their downcast eyes seeming so strangely submissive in Aiel faces — took Moiraine and Egwene’s cloaks, brought damp towels for hands and faces, and tiny silver cups of water to be drunk formally, and finally a meal, served with silver bowls and trays fit for a palace yet eaten from pottery with a bluestriped glaze. Everyone ate lying on the floor, where white tiles had been set into the stone for a table, heads together, cushions under their chests, radiating out like spokes in a wheel while gai’shain slipped between to place dishes.
Mat struggled, shifting this way and that on his cushions, but Lan lounged as if he had always eaten that way, and Moiraine and Egwene looked almost as comfortable. No doubt they had had practice in the Wise Ones’ tents. Rand found it awkward, yet the food itself was peculiar enough to take most of his attention.
A dark, spicy stew of goat with chopped peppers was unfamiliar but hardly strange, and peas were peas anywhere, or squash. The same could not be said of the crumbly, coarse yellow bread, or long, bright red beans mixed in with the green, or a dish of bright yellow kernels and bits of pulpy red that Aviendha called zemai and t’mat, or a sweet, bulbous fruit with a tough greenish skin she said came from one of those leafless, spiny plants called kardon. It was all tasty, though.
He might have enjoyed the meal more if she had not lectured him on everything. Not sisterwives. That was left to Amys and Lian, lying on either side of Rhuarc and smiling at each other almost as much as at their husband. If they had both married him so as not to break up their friendship, it was plain they both loved him. Rand could not see Elayne and Min agreeing to such an agreement; he wondered why he had even thought of it. The sun must have cooked his brains.
But if Aviendha left that one explanation to others, she explained everything else in toothgrinding detail. Maybe she thought him an idiot for not knowing about sisterwives. Turned on her right side to face him, she smiled almost sweetly as she
told him the spoon could be used for eating the stew or the zemai and t’mat, but her eyes shone with a light that said it was the Wise Ones being there that kept her from hurling a bowl of something at his head.
“I do not know what I’ve done to you,” he said quietly. He was very conscious of Melaine on his other side, seeming engrossed in her own low conversation with Seana. Bair put in a word now and then, but he thought she was bending an ear his way, too. “But if you hate being my teacher so much, you do not have to be. It just popped out. I’m sure Rhuarc or the Wise Ones will find someone else.” The Wise Ones certainly would, if he rid himself of this spy.
“You have done nothing to me…” She bared teeth at him; if it was meant to be a smile, it fell considerably short. “. . . and you never will. You may lie however is most comfortable for eating, and talk to those around you. Except for those of us who must instruct instead of sharing the meal, of course. It is considered polite to talk with those on both sides.” From behind her, Mat looked at Rand and rolled his eyes, clearly relieved to be spared that. “Unless you are forced to face one in particular, as to teach him. Take food with your right hand — unless you must lean on that elbow — and…”
It was torture, and she seemed to enjoy it. The Aiel seemed to set great store by the giving of gifts. Maybe if he gave her a gift…
“…all talk for a time when the meal is done, unless one of us must teach instead, and…”
A bribe. It did not seem fair to have to bribe someone who was spying on him, but if she meant to go on even half like this, it would be worth it for a little peace.
When the meal was cleared away by gai’shain, and silver cups of dark wine brought, Bair fixed Aviendha with a grim eye across the white tiles, and she subsided sulkily. Egwene knelt up to reach over Mat and pat her, but it did not appear to help. At least she was quiet. Egwene gave him a tight look; either she knew what he was thinking or she considered Aviendha’s sulks his fault.
Rhuarc dug out his shortstemmed pipe and tabac pouch, thumbing the bowl full then passing the leather pouch to Mat, who had produced his own silvermounted pipe. “Some have taken news of you to heart, Rand al’Thor, and quickly it seems. Lian tells me word has come that Jheran, who is clan chief of the Shaarad Aiel, and Bael, of the Goshien, have already reached Alcair Dal. Erim, of the Chareen, is on his way.” He allowed a slender young gai’shain woman to light his pipe with a burning twig. From the way she moved, with a different sort of grace than the other whiterobed men and women, Rand suspected she had been a Maiden of the Spear not too long ago. He wondered how long she had to continue in her year and a day of service, meek and humble.
Mat grinned at the woman as she knelt to light his pipe; the greeneyed stare she gave him from the depths of her cowl was not meek at all, and wiped the grin right off his face. Irritably, he rolled onto his belly, a thin blue streamer rising from his pipe. It was too bad he did not see the satisfaction on her face, or see it wiped away
in a blush by one glance from Amys; the greeneyed young woman scurried away looking shamed beyond belief. And Aviendha, who so hated having had to give up the spear, who still saw herself as spearsister to a Maiden of whatever clan…? She frowned at the departing gai’shain as Mistress al’Vere would have glared at someone who had spit on the floor. A strange people. Egwene was the only one Rand saw with any sympathy in her eyes at all.
“The Goshien and the Shaarad,” he muttered at his wine. Rhuarc had told him each clan chief would bring a few warriors to the Golden Bowl, for honor, and each sept chief, as well. Added together, it meant perhaps a thousand from each clan. Twelve clans. Twelve thousand men and Maidens, eventually, all tied up in their strange honor and ready to dance the spears if a cat sneezed. Maybe more, because of the fair. He looked up. “They have a feud, don’t they?” Rhuarc and Lan both nodded. “I know you said that something like the Peace of Rhuidean holds at Alcair Dal, Rhuarc, but I saw how far that Peace held Couladin and the Shaido. Maybe I had better go right away. If the Goshien and the Shaarad start fighting… A thing like that could spread. I want all the Aiel behind me, Rhuarc.”
“The Goshien are not Shaido,” Melaine said sharply, shaking her redgold mane like a lioness.
“Nor are the Shaarad.” Bair’s reedy voice was thinner than that of the younger woman, but no less definite. “Jheran and Bael may try to kill one another, before they return to their holds, but not at Alcair Dal.”
“None of which answers Rand al’Thor’s question,” Rhuarc said. “If you go to Alcair Dal before all of the chiefs arrive, those who have not come yet will lose honor. It is not a good way to announce that you are Car’a’carn, dishonoring men you will call to follow you. The Nakai have furthest to come. A month, and all will be at Alcair Dal.”
“Less,” Seana said with a brisk shake of her head. “I have walked Alsera’s dreams twice, and she says Bruan means to run all the way from Shiagi Hold. Less than a month.”
“A month before you leave, to be sure,” Rhuarc told Rand. “Then three days to Alcair Dal. Perhaps four. All will be there then.”
A month. He rubbed his chin. Too long. Too long, and no choice. In stories, things always happened as the hero planned, seemingly when he wanted them to happen. In real life it rarely occurred that way, even for a ta’veren with prophecy supposedly working for him. In real life it was scratch and hope, and luck if you found more than half a loaf where you needed a whole. Yet a part of his plan was following the path he had hoped for. The most dangerous part.
Moiraine, stretched out between Lan and Amys, sipped her wine lazily, eyes lidded as if sleepy. He did not believe it. She saw everything, heard everything. But he had nothing to say now that she should not hear. “How many will resist, Rhuarc? Or oppose me? You have hinted, but you’ve never said for sure.”
“I cannot be sure in it,” the clan chief replied around his pipestem. “When you
show the Dragons, they will know you. There is no way to imitate the Dragons of Rhuidean.” Had Moiraine’s eyes flickered? “You are the one prophesied. I will support you, and Bruan certainly, and Dhearic, of the Reyn Aiel. The others…? Sevanna, Suladric’s wife, will bring the Shaido since the clan has no chief. She is young to be roofmistress of a hold, doubtless displeased she will have only one roof and not an entire hold when someone is chosen to replace Suladric. And Sevanna is as wily and untrustworthy as any Shaido ever born. But even if she makes no trouble, you know that Couladin will; he acts the clan chief, and some Shaido may follow him without his entering Rhuidean. Shaido are fools enough for that. Han, of the Tomanelle, may move in any direction. He is a prickly man, hard to know and difficult to deal with, and —”
He cut off as Lian murmured softly, “Is there any other kind?” Rand did not think the clan chief had been meant to hear. Amys hid a smile behind her hand; her sisterwife buried her face innocently in her winecup.
“As I was saying,” Rhuarc said, frowning resignedly from one of his wives to the other, “it is not a thing I can be sure of. Most will follow you. Perhaps all. Perhaps even the Shaido. We have waited three thousand years for the man who bears two Dragons. When you show your arms, none will doubt you are the one sent to unite us.” And break them; but he did not mention that. “The question is how they will decide to react.” He tapped his teeth with his pipestem for a moment. “You will not change your mind and don the cadin’sor?”
“And show them what, Rhuarc? A pretend Aiel? As well dress Mat for Aiel.” Mat choked on his pipe. “I will not pretend. I am what I am; they must take me as I am.” Rand raised his fists, coatsleeves falling enough to uncover the goldenmaned heads on the backs of his wrists. “These prove me. If they aren’t enough, then nothing is.”
“Where do you mean to ‘lead the spears to war once more’?” Moiraine asked suddenly, and Mat choked again, snatching the pipe out of his mouth and staring at her. Her dark eyes were not lidded any longer.
Rand’s fists tightened convulsively, till his knuckles cracked. Trying to be clever with her was dangerous; he should have learned that long since. She remembered every word that she heard, filed it away, sorted and examined until she knew just what it meant.
He got to his feet slowly. They were all watching him. Egwene frowned even more worriedly than Mat, but the Aiel just watched. Talk of war did not upset them. Rhuarc looked — ready. And Moiraine’s face was all frozen calm.
“If you will excuse me,” he said, “I am going to walk around awhile.” Aviendha rose to her knees, and Egwene stood, but neither followed him.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 50
(Crescent Moon and Stars) Traps
Outside, on the stonepaved path between the yellowbrick house and the terraced vegetable garden, Rand stood staring down the canyon, not seeing much beyond afternoon shadows creeping across the canyon floor. If only he could trust Moiraine not to hand him to the Tower on a leash; he had no doubt she could do it, without using the Power once, if he gave her an inch. The woman could manipulate a bull through a mouse hole without ever letting it know. He could use her. Light, I’m as bad as she is. Use the Aiel. Use Moiraine. If only I could trust her.
He headed toward the mouth of the canyon, slanting down whenever he found a footpath leading that way. They were all narrow, paved with small stones, some of the steeper carved in steps. Hammers ringing in several smithies echoed faintly. Not all of the buildings were houses. Through one open door he saw several women working looms, arid another showed a silversmith putting up her small hammers and gouges, a third a man at a potter’s wheel, his hands in the clay and the brick kilns hot behind him. Men and boys, except the youngest, all wore the cadin’sor, the coat and breeches in grays and browns, but there were often subtle differences between warriors and craftsmen, a smaller belt knife or none at all, perhaps a shoufa with no black veil attached. Yet watching a blacksmith heft a spear he had just given a footlong point, Rand had no doubt the man could use the weapon as readily as make it.
The paths were not crowded, but there were plenty of people about. Children laughed, running and playing, the smaller girls almost as likely to be carrying pretend spears as dolls. Gai’shain carried tall clay jars of water on their heads, or weeded in the gardens, often under the direction of a child of ten or twelve. Men and women going about the tasks of their lives, not really that different from the things they might have done in Emond’s Field, whether sweeping in front of a door or mending a wall. The children hardly gave him a glance, for all his red coat and thicksoled boots, and the gai’shain were so selfeffacing it was difficult to say whether they noticed him or not. But craftsmen or fighters, men or women, the adults looked at him with an air of speculation, an edge of uncertain anticipation.
Very young boys ran barefoot in robes much like those of the gai’shain, but in the grayishbrown of the cadin’sor, not white. The youngest girls darted about on bare feet, too, in short dresses that sometimes failed to cover their knees. One thing about the girls caught his eye; up to perhaps twelve or so, they wore their hair in two braids, one over each ear, plaited with brightly colored ribbons. Just the way Egwene had worn hers. It had to be coincidence. Likely the reason she had stopped was that one of the Aiel woman had told her that was how young Aiel girls wore their hair. A foolish thing to be thinking about anyway. Right now he had one woman to deal with. Aviendha.
On the canyon floor, the peddlers were doing a brisk trade with the Aiel crowding around the canvastopped wagons. At least the drivers were, and Keille, a blue lace shawl on her ivory combs today, was bargaining hard in a loud voice. Kadere sat on an upturned barrel in the shade of his white wagon in a creamcolored coat, mopping his face, making no effort to sell anything. He eyed Rand and made as if to rise before sinking back. Isendre was nowhere to be seen, but to Rand’s surprise, Natael was, his patchcovered cloak attracting a flock of following children, and some adults. Apparently the attraction of a new and larger audience had pulled him away from the Shaido. Or maybe Keille just did not want him out of her sight. Engrossed in her trading as she was, she found time to frown at the gleeman often.
Rand avoided the wagons. Questions asked of Aiel told him where the Jindo had gone, each to the roof of his or her society here at Cold Rocks. The Roof of the Maidens lay halfway up the still brightly lit east wall of the canyon, a gardentopped rectangle of grayish stone doubtless larger inside than it looked. Not that he saw the inside. A pair of Maidens squatting beside the door with spears and bucklers refused him entrance, amused and scandalized that a man wanted to enter, but one agreed to carry his request in.
A few minutes later the Jindo and Nine Valleys Maidens who had gone to the Stone came out. And all the other Maidens of Nine Valleys sept in Cold Rocks, too, crowding the path to either side and climbing up on the roof among the rows of vegetables to watch, grinning as if they expected entertainment. Gai’shain, male as well as female, followed to serve them small cups of darkbrewed tea; whatever rule kept men outside the Roof of the Maidens apparently did not apply to gai’shain.
After he had examined several offerings, Adelin, the yellowhaired Jindo woman with the thin scar on her cheek, produced a wide bracelet of ivory heavily carved with roses. He thought it should suit Aviendha; whoever made it had carefully shown thorns among the blossoms.
Adelin was tall even for an Aiel woman, only a hand too short to look him the eyes. When she heard why he wanted it — almost why; he just said it was a present for Aviendha’s teachings, not a sop to soothe the woman’s temper so he could stand to be near her — Adelin looked around at the other Maidens. They had all stopped grinning, their faces expressionless. “I will take no price for this, Rand al’Thor,” she said, putting the bracelet in his hand.
“Is this wrong?” he asked. How would Aiel see it? “I don’t want to dishonor Aviendha in any way.”
“It will not dishonor her.” She beckoned a gai’shain woman carrying pottery cups and pitcher on a silver tray. Pouring two cups, she handed one to him. “Remember honor,” she said, sipping from his cup.
Aviendha had never mentioned anything like this. Uncertain, he took a sip of bitter tea and repeated, “Remember honor.” It seemed the safest thing to say. To his surprise, she kissed him lightly on each cheek.
An older Maiden, grayhaired but still hardfaced, appeared in front of him.
“Remember honor,” she said, and sipped.
He had to repeat the ritual with every Maiden there, finally just touching the cup to his lips. Aiel ceremonies might be short and to the point, but when you had to repeat one with seventyodd women, even sips could fill you up. Shadows were climbing the east side of the canyon by the time he escaped.
He found Aviendha near Lian’s house, vigorously beating a bluestriped carpet hung on a line, more piled beside her in a heap of colors. Brushing sweatdamp strands of hair from her forehead, she stared at him expressionlessly when he handed her the bracelet and told her it was a gift in return for her teaching.
“I have given bracelets and necklaces to friends who did not carry the spear, Rand al’Thor, but I have never worn one.” Her voice was perfectly flat. “Such things rattle and make noise to give you away when you must be silent. They catch when you must move quickly.”
“But you can wear it now that you are going to be a Wise One.”
“Yes.” She turned the ivory circle over as if unsure what to do with it, then abruptly thrust her hand through it and held her wrist up to stare at it. She could have been looking at an manacle.
“If you do not like it… Aviendha, Adelin said it would not touch your honor. She even seemed to approve.” He mentioned the teasipping ceremony, and she squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered. “What is wrong?”
“They think you are trying to attract my interest.” He would not have believed her voice could be so flat. Her eyes held no emotion at all. “They have approved of you, as if I still carried the spear.”
“Light! Simple enough to set them straight. I don’t —” He cut off as her eyes blazed up.
“No! You accepted their approval, and now you would reject it? That would dishonor me! Do you think you are the first man to try to catch my eye? They must think as they think, now. It means nothing.” Grimacing, she gripped the woven carpet beater with both hands. “Go away.” With a glance at the bracelet, she added, “You truly know nothing, do you? You know nothing. It is not your fault.” She seemed to be repeating something she had been told, or trying to convince herself. “I am sorry if I ruined your meal, Rand al’Thor. Please go. Amys says I must clean all of these rugs and carpets no matter how long it takes. It will take all night, if you stand here talking.” Turning her back to him, she thwacked the striped carpet violently, the ivory bracelet jumping on her wrist.
He did not know whether the apology sprang from his gift or an order from Amys — he suspected the latter — yet she actually sounded as if she meant it. She was certainly not pleased — judging by the sharp grunt of effort that accompanied every fullarmed swing of the beater — but she had not looked hateful once. Upset, appalled, even furious, but not hateful. That was better than nothing. She might become civil eventually.
As he stepped into the browntiled entry chamber of Lian’s house, the Wise Ones
were talking together, all four with shawls draped loosely over their elbows. They fell silent at his appearance.
“I will have you shown to your sleeping room,” Amys said. “The others have seen theirs.”
“Thank you.” He glanced “back at the door, frowning slightly. ”Amys, did you tell Aviendha to apologize to me for dinner?”
“No. Did she?” Her blue eyes looked thoughtful for a moment; he thought Bair almost smiled. “I would not have ordered her to, Rand al’Thor. A forced apology is no apology.”
“The girl was told only to dust carpets until she had sweated out some of her temper,” Bair said. “Anything more came from her.”
“And not in hopes of escaping her labors,” Seana added. “She must learn to control her anger. A Wise One must be in control of her emotions, not they in control of her.” With a slight smile, she glanced sideways at Melaine. The sunhaired woman compressed her lips and sniffed.
They were trying to convince him Aviendha was going to be wonderful company from now on. Did they really think he was blind? “You must know that I know. About her. That you set her to spy on me.”
“You do not know as much as you think,” Amys said, for all the world like an Aes Sedai with hidden meanings she did not intend to let him see.
Melaine shifted her shawl, eyeing him up and down in a considering manner. He knew a little about Aes Sedai; if she were Aes Sedai, she would be Green Ajah. “I admit,” she said, “that at first we thought you would not see beyond a pretty young woman, and you are handsome enough that she should have found your company more amusing than ours. We did not reckon with her tongue. Or other things.”
“Then why are you so eager for her to stay with me?” There was more heat in his voice than he wanted. “You can’t think I will reveal anything to her now that I don’t want you to know.”
“Why do you allow her to remain?” Amys asked calmly. “If you refused to accept her, how could we force her on you?”
“At least this way I know who the spy is.” Having Aviendha under his eye had to be better than wondering which of the Aiel were watching him. Without her, he would probably suspect that every casual comment from Rhuarc was an attempt to pry. Of course, there was no way to say it was not. Rhuarc was married to one of these women. Suddenly he was glad he had not confided more in the clan chief. And sad that he had thought of it. Why had he ever believed the Aiel would be simpler than Tairen High Lords? “I’m satisfied to leave her right where she is.”
“Then we are all satisfied,” Bair said.
He eyed the leatheryfaced woman leerily. There had been a note of something in her voice, as if she knew more than he did. “She will not find out what you want.”
“What we want?” Melaine snapped; her long hair swung as she tossed her head.
“The prophecy says ‘a remnant of a remnant shall be saved.’ What we want, Rand al’Thor, Car’a’carn, is to save as many of our people as we can. Whatever your blood, and your face, you have no feeling for us. I will make you know our blood for yours if I have to lay the —”
“I think,” Amys cut her off smoothly, “that he would like to see his sleeping room now. He looks tired.” She clapped her hands sharply, and a willowy gai’shain woman appeared. “Show this man to the room that has been prepared for him. Bring him whatever he needs.”
Leaving him standing there, the Wise Ones headed for the door, Bair and Seana looking daggers at Melaine, like members of the Women’s Circle eyeing someone they meant to call to account sharply. Melaine ignored them; as the door closed behind them she was muttering something that sounded like “talk sense into that fool girl.”
What girl? Aviendha? She was already doing what they wanted. Egwene maybe? He knew she was studying something with the Wise Ones. And what was Melaine willing to “lay” in order to make him “know their blood for his”? How could laying something make him decide he was Aiel? Lay a trap, maybe? Fool! She wouldn’t say right out she means to lay a trap. What sorts of things do you lay? Hens lay eggs, he thought, laughing softly. He was tired. Too tired for questions now, after twelve days in the saddle and part of a thirteenth, all of them ovenhot and dry; he did not want to think of how he would feel if he had walked that distance at the same pace. Aviendha must have steel legs. He wanted a bed.
The gai’shain was pretty, despite a thin scar slanting just above one pale blue eye into hair so light as to look almost silver. Another Maiden; only not for the moment. “If it pleases you to follow me?” she murmured, lowering her eyes.
The sleeping room was not a bedchamber, of course. Unsurprisingly, the “bed” consisted of a thick pallet unfolded atop layered, brightly colored rugs. The gai’shain — her name was Chion — looked shocked when he asked for wash water, but he was tired of sweat baths. He was willing to bet Moiraine and Egwene had not had to sit in a tent full of steam to get clean. Chion brought the water, though, hot in a large brown pitcher meant for watering the garden, and a big white bowl for a washbasin. He chased her out when she offered to wash him. Strange people, all of them!
The room was windowless, lit by silver lamps hanging from brackets on the walls, but he knew it could not yet be full dark outside when he finished washing. He did not care. Only two blankets lay on the pallet, neither particularly thick. No doubt a sign of Aiel hardiness. Remembering the cold nights in the tents, he dressed again except for his coat and boots before blowing out the lamps and crawling beneath the blankets in pitch darkness.
Tired as he was, he could not stop tossing and thinking. What did Melaine mean to lay? Why did the Wise Ones not care that he knew Aviendha was their spy? Aviendha. A pretty woman, if surlier than a mule with four stonebruised hooves.
His breathing slowed, his thoughts became misty. A month.
Too long. No choice. Sooner. Isendre smiling. Kadere watching. Trap. Lay a trap. Whose trap? Which trap? Traps. If only he could trust Moiraine. Perrin. Home. Perrin was probably swimming in…
Eyes closed, Rand stroked through the water. Nicely cool. And so wet. It seemed that he had never before realized how good wet felt. Lifting his head, he looked around at the willows lining one end of the pond, the big oak at the other, stretching thick, shading limbs over the water. The Waterwood. It was good to be home. He had the feeling he had been away; where was not exactly clear, but not important, either. Up to Watch Hill. Yes. He had never been farther than that. Cool and wet. And alone.
Suddenly two bodies hurtled through the air, knees clutched to chest, landing with great splashes that blinded him. Shaking the water out of his eyes, he found Elayne and Min smiling at him from either side, just their heads showing above the pale green surface. Two strokes would take him to either woman. Away from the other. He could not love both of them. Love? Why had that popped into his head?
“You do not know who you love.”
He spun about in a swirl of water. Aviendha stood on the bank, in cadin’sor rather than skirt and blouse. Not glaring, though, just looking. “Come into the water,” he said. “I’ll teach you how to swim.”
Musical laughter pulled his head around to the opposite bank. The woman who stood there, palely naked, was the most beautiful he had ever seen, with big, dark eyes that made his head whirl. He thought he knew her.
“Should I allow you to be unfaithful to me, even in your dreams?” she said. Somehow he was aware without looking that Elayne and Min and Aviendha were not there anymore., This was beginning to feel very odd.
For a long moment she considered him, completely unconscious of her nudity. Slowly she posed on toe tips, arms swept back, then dove cleanly into the pond. When her head popped above the surface, her shining black hair was not wet. That seemed surprising, for a moment. Then she had reached him — had she swum, or was she just there? — tangling arms and legs around him. The water was cool, her flesh hot.
“You cannot escape me,” she murmured. Those dark eyes seemed far deeper than the pond. “I will make you enjoy this so you never forget, asleep or awake.”
Asleep or… ? Everything shifted, blurred. She wrapped herself around him tighter, and the blur went away. Everything was as it had been. Rushes filled one end of the pond; leatherleaf and pine grew almost to the water’s edge at the other.
“I know you,” he said slowly. He thought he must, or why would he be letting her do this? “But I don’t… This is not right.” He tried to pull her loose, but as fast as he pried an arm away, she had it back again.
“I ought to mark you.” There was a fierce edge in her voice. “First that milkhearted Ilyena and now… How many women do you hold in your thoughts?”
Suddenly her small white teeth burrowed at his neck.
Bellowing, he hurled her away and slapped a hand to his neck. She had broken the skin; he was bleeding.
“Is this how you amuse yourself when I wonder where you have gone?” a man’s voice said contemptuously. “Why should I hold to anything when you risk our plan this way?”
Abruptly the woman was on the bank, clothed in white, narrow waist belted in wide woven silver, silver stars and crescents in her midnight hair. The land rose slightly behind her to an ash grove on a mound. He did not remember seeing ash before. She was facing — a blur. A thick, gray, mansized fuzzing of the air. This was all… wrong, somehow.
“Risk,” she sneered. “You fear risk as much as Moghedien, don’t you? You would creep about like the Spider herself. Had I not hauled you out of your hole, you’d still be hiding, and waiting to snatch a few scraps.”
“If you cannot control your… appetites,” the blur said in the man’s voice, “why should I associate with you at all? If I must take risks, I want a greater reward than pulling strings on a puppet.”
“What do you mean?” she said dangerously.
The blur shimmered; somehow Rand knew it for hesitation, uncertainty over having said too much. And then suddenly the blur was gone. The woman looked at him, still neckdeep in the pond; her mouth tightened with irritation, and she vanished.
He started awake and lay still, peering up into blackness. A dream. But an ordinary dream, or something else? Fumbling a hand from under the blankets, he felt the side of his neck, felt the tooth marks and the thin trickle of blood. Whatever kind of dream, she had been in it. Lanfear. He had not dreamed her. And that other; a man. A cold smile crept onto his face. Traps all around. Traps for unwary feet. Have to watch where I step, now. So many traps. Everybody was laying them.
Laughing softly, he twisted around to go back to sleep — and froze, holding his breath. He was not alone in the room. Lanfear.
Frantically he reached for the True Source. For an instant he feared fear itself might defeat him. Then he floated in the cold calm of the Void, filled with a raging river of the Power. He sprang to his feet, lashing out. The lamps burst alight.
Aviendha sat crosslegged by the door, mouth hanging open and green eyes bulging by turns at the lamps and the bonds, invisible to her, that wrapped her completely. Not even her head could move; he had expected someone standing, and the weave extended well above her. He released the flows of Air immediately.
She scrambled to her feet, nearly losing her shawl in her haste. “I… I do not believe I will ever become used to. ” She gestured at the lamps. “From a man.”
“You have seen me wield the Power before.” Anger oozed across the surface of the Void surrounding him. Sneaking into his room in the dark. Frightening him half to death. She was lucky he had not hurt her, killed her by accident. “You had best
grow used to it. I am He Who Comes With the Dawn whether you want to admit it or not.”
“That is not part —”
“Why are you here?” he demanded coldly.
“The Wise Ones are taking turns watching over you from outside. They meant to continue watching from…” She trailed off, her face reddening.
“From where?” She only stared at him, her face growing more and more crimson. “Aviendha, from wh —?” Dreamwalkers. Why had it never occurred to him? “From inside my dreams,” he said harshly. “How long have they been spying inside my head?”
She let out a long, heavy breath. “I was not supposed to let you know. If Bair finds out — Seana said it was too dangerous tonight. I do not understand it: I cannot enter the dream without one of them to help me. Something dangerous tonight is all I know. That is why they are taking turns at the door to this roof. They are all worried.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
“I do not know why I am here,” she muttered. “If you need protection…” She glanced at her short belt knife, touched the hilt. The ivory bracelet seemed to irritate her; she folded her arms so it was tucked into her armpit. “I could not protect you very well with a knife this small, and Bair says if I pick up a spear again without someone actually attacking me, she will have my hide for a waterskin. I do not know why I should give up sleep to protect you at all. Because of you, I was beating rugs until less than a hour ago. By moonlight!”
“That wasn’t the question. How long —?” He cut off suddenly. There was a feel in the air, a sense of wrongness. Of evil. It could be imagination, residue from his dream. It could be.
Aviendha gasped as the flamered sword appeared in his hands, its slightly curved blade marked with the heron. Lanfear had accused him of using only the tenth part of what he was capable of, yet most of that tenth came by guess and fumbling. He did not know even the tenth part of what he could do. But he knew the sword.
“Stay behind me.” He was just aware of her unsheathing her belt knife as he padded from the room in his stocking feet, soundless on the carpets. Oddly, the air was no cooler than when he had lain down. Perhaps those stone walls held what heat there was, for the farther out he went, the colder it grew.
Even the gai’shain must have sought their pallets by now. The halls and chambers stood silent and empty, most dimly illuminated by the scattered lamps still burning. Here where extinguished lamps meant pitch dark at noon, some lamps were always left lit. The feeling was still vague, but it would not go away. Evil.
He stopped suddenly, in the wide archway leading to the browntiled entry chamber. One silver lamp at each end of the room gave a pale light. In the middle of the floor a tall man stood with his head bowed over the woman wrapped in his
blackcloaked arms, her head flung back and her white cowl fallen while he nuzzled at her throat. Chion’s eyes were nearly closed, and she wore an ecstatic smile. A flush of embarrassment slid across the surface of the Void. Then the man raised his head.
Black eyes regarded Rand, too big in a pale, gauntcheeked face; a puckered, redlipped mouth opened in a parody of a smile, showing sharp teeth. Chion crumpled to the floor as the cloak unfolded, spread into wide, batlike wings. The Draghkar stepped over her, white, white hands reaching for Rand, the long, slender fingers tipped with claws. Claws and teeth were not the danger, though. It was the Draghkar’s kiss that killed, and worse.
Its crooning, hypnotic song clung tight around the Void. Those dark, leathery wings moved to enfold him as he stepped forward. One moment of startlement flashed in the huge black eyes before the Powermade sword clove the Draghkar’s skull to the bridge of its nose.
A steel blade would have bound, but the blade woven of fire pulled free easily as the creature fell. For a moment, deep in the heart of the Void, Rand examined the thing at his feet. That song. Had he not been shielded from emotion by emptiness, kept dispassionate and distant, that song would have snared his mind. The Draghkar surely believed it had when he came to it so willingly.
Aviendha ran past him to halfkneel beside Chion and feel the gai’shain’s throat. “Dead,” she said, thumbing the woman’s eyelids the rest of the way shut. “Perhaps better for it. Draghkar eat the soul before they consume life. A Draghkar! Here!” She glared at him from her crouch. “Trollocs at Imre Stand, and now a Draghkar here. You bring ill times to the Threefold —” With a cry, she threw herself flat across Chion as he leveled the sword.
A bar of solid fire shot over her from his blade to strike the chest of the Draghkar just filling the outer doorway. Bursting into flame, the Shadowspawn staggered back screaming, stumbling across the path, beating wings that dripped fire.
“Rouse everyone,” Rand said calmly. Had Chion fought? How far had her honor held her? It would have made no difference. Draghkar died more easily than Myrddraal, but they were more dangerous in their own way. “If you know how to sound the alarm, do it.”
“The gong by the door —”
“I will do it. Wake them. There may be more than two.”
Nodding, she dashed back the way they had come, shouting, “Up spears! Wake and up spears!”
Rand stepped outside warily, sword ready, the Power filling him, thrilling him. Sickening him. He wanted to laugh, to vomit. The night was freezing, but he was barely aware of the cold.
The burning Draghkar was sprawled in the terrace garden, stinking of burning meat, adding the light of its low fire to the moon. A little way down the path Seana
lay, long graying hair spread in a fan, staring at the sky with wide, unblinking eyes. Her belt knife lay beside her, but she had had no chance against a Draghkar.
Even as Rand snatched the leatherpadded mallet hanging beside the square bronze gong, pandemonium erupted from the canyon mouth, human shouts and Trolloc howls, the clash of steel, screams. He sounded the gong hard, a sonorous toll that echoed down the canyon; almost immediately another gong sounded, then more, and from dozens of mouths the cry, “Up spears!”
Confused yells rose around the peddlers’ wagons below. Rectangles of light appeared, doors flung open on the two boxlike wagons, gleaming white in the moonlight. Someone was shouting angrily down there — a woman; he could not tell who.
Wings beat in the air above him. Snarling, Rand raised the fiery sword; the One Power burned in him, and fire roared from the blade. The stooping Draghkar exploded in a rain of burning chunks that fell into the darkness below.
“Here,” Rhuarc said. The clan chief’s eyes were hard above his black veil; fully dressed, he carried buckler and spears. Mat stood behind him, coatless and bareheaded, shirt half tucked in, blinking uncertainly and gripping his blackhafted spear with both hands.
Rand took the shoufa from Rhuarc, then let it drop. A batwinged shape wheeled across the moon, then swooped low on the far side of the canyon, vanishing in the shadows. “They hunt for me. Let them see my face.” The Power surged in him; the sword in his hand flared till it seemed a small sun illumined him. “They can’t find me if they do not know where I am.” Laughing, because they could not see the joke, he ran down toward the sound of battle.
Pulling his spear free of a boarsnouted Trolloc’s chest, Mat crouched, eyes searching the moonlit darkness near the canyon mouth for another. Burn Rand! None of the shapes he saw moving were big enough to be a Trolloc. Always dumping me into these bloody things! Low moans came from the wounded. A shadowy form he thought was Moiraine knelt beside a downed Aiel. Those balls of fire she tossed about were impressive, almost as much as that sword of Rand’s, spurting bars of flame. The thing still shone so a circle of light surrounded the man. I should have stayed in my blankets is what I should have done. It’s bloody cold, and this is nothing to do with me! More Aiel were beginning to appear, women in skirts come to help with the injured. Some of those women carried spears; they might not do the fighting normally, but once the battle had reached into the hold they had not stood by and watched.
A Maiden stopped beside him, unveiling. He could not make out her face, all moonshadows. “You dance your spear well, gambler. Strange days when Trollocs come to Cold Rocks.” She glanced at the shadowy shape he thought was Moiraine. “They might have forced a way in without the Aes Sedai.”
“There weren’t enough for that,” he said without thinking. “They were meant to pull attention here.” So those Draghkar would have a free hand to reach Rand?
“I think you are right,” she said slowly. “Are you a battle leader among the wetlanders?”
He wished he had kept his mouth shut. “I read a book once,” he muttered, turning away. Bloody pieces of other men’s bloody memories. Maybe the peddlers would be ready to leave after this.
When he stopped by the wagons, though, neither Keille nor Kadere was anywhere to be seen. The drivers were all clumped together, hastily passing around jars of something that smelled like the good brandy they had been selling, muttering and as agitated as if the Trollocs had actually come within smelling distance of them. Isendre stood at the top of the steps to Kadere’s wagon, frowning at nothing. Even with her brows furrowed she was beautiful behind that misty scarf. He was glad that at least his memories of women were his own.
“The Trollocs are done,” he told her, leaning on his spear so she would be sure to notice it. No point risking having my skull split without getting a little good out of it. No effort at all was needed to sound tired. “A hard fight, but you’re safe, now.” She stared down at him, face expressionless, eyes glittering in the moonlight like dark, polished stone. Without a word she turned and went inside, slamming the
door. Hard.
Mat expelled a long, disgusted breath and stalked away from the wagons. What did it take to impress the woman? Bed was what he wanted. Back in his blankets, and let Rand deal with Trollocs and bloody Draghkar. The man seemed to enjoy it. Laughing like that.
Rand was coming up the canyon now, the glow of that sword like lamplight around him in the night. Aviendha appeared, running to meet him with her skirts pulled up above her knees, then stopped. Letting her skirts fall, she smoothed them and fell in beside Rand, lifting her shawl around her head. He seemed not to see her, and her face was blank as stone. They deserved each other.
“Rand,” a hurrying shadow called with Moiraine’s voice, nearly as melodious as Keille’s, but a cool music. Rand turned, waiting, and she slowed before she could be seen clearly, entering the light regally enough for any palace. “Matters grow more dangerous, Rand. The attack at Imre Stand could have been aimed at the Aiel — not likely, yet it could have been — but tonight the Draghkar were surely aimed at you.”
“I know.” Just like that. As calm as she and even colder.
Moiraine’s lips compressed, and her hands were too still on her skirts; she was not best pleased. “Prophecy is most dangerous when you try to make it happen. Did you not learn that in Tear? The Pattern weaves itself around you, but when you try to weave it, even you cannot hold it. Force the Pattern too tight, and pressure builds. It can explode wildly in every direction. Who can say how long before it settles to focus on you again, or what will happen before it does?”
“As clear as most of your explanations,” Rand said dryly. “What do you want, Moiraine? It is late, and I am tired.”
“I want you to confide in me. Do you think you have already learned all there is to know, little more than a year out of your village?”
“No, I haven’t learned everything yet.” Now he sounded amused; sometimes Mat was not sure he was still as sane as he looked. “You want me to confide in you, Moiraine? All right. Your Three Oaths won’t let you lie. Say plainly that whatever I tell you, you won’t try to stop me, won’t hinder me in any way. Say you won’t try to use me for the Tower’s ends. Say it plain and straight so I know it’s true.”
“I will do nothing to hinder you fulfilling your destiny. I have devoted my life to that. But I will not promise to watch while you lay your head on a chopping block.” “Not good enough, Moiraine. Not good enough. But if I could confide in you,
I’d still not do it here. The night has ears.” There were people moving all around in the darkness, but none close enough to hear. “Even dreams have ears.” Aviendha tugged her shawl forward to shadow her face; even an Aiel could feel the cold, apparently.
Rhuarc stepped into the light, black veil hanging loose. “The Trollocs were only a diversion for the Draghkar, Rand al’Thor. Too few to be else. Draghkar meant for you, I think. Leafblighter does not want you to live.”
“The danger grows,” Moiraine said quietly.
The clan chief glanced at her before going on. “Moiraine Sedai is right. Since the Draghkar failed, I fear we can expect the Soulless next; what you call Gray Men. I want to put spears around you at all times. For some reason, the Maidens have volunteered for this task.”
The cold was getting to Aviendha. Shoulders hunched, she had her hands shoved into her armpits as far they would go.
“If they wish it,” Rand said. He sounded a touch uncomfortable under all that ice. Mat did not blame him; he would not have put himself in the Maidens’ hands again for all the silk on Sea Folk ships.
“They will watch better than anyone else,” Rhuarc said, “having asked for the task. I do not mean to leave it to them alone, however. I will have everyone on guard. I believe it will be the Soulless next time, but that does not mean it cannot be something else. Ten thousand Trollocs instead of a few hundred.”
“What about the Shaido?” Mat wished he had not cracked his teeth when they all looked at him. Maybe they had not even realized he was there until then. Still, he might as well say it. “I know you don’t like them, but if you think there’s really any chance of a bigger attack, wouldn’t it be better to have them in here than outside?”
Rhuarc grunted; from him, that equaled a curse from most men. “I would not bring near a thousand Shaido inside Cold Rocks if Grassburner were coming. I could not in any case. Couladin and the Shaido folded their tents at nightfall. We are well rid of them. I sent runners to make sure they leave Taardad land without taking a few goats or sheep with them.”
That sword vanished from Rand’s hand, the abrupt absence of its light like blindness. Mat squeezed his eyes shut to help them adapt, but when he opened them
again, the moonlight still seemed dark. “Which way did they go?” Rand asked.
“North,” Rhuarc told him. “No doubt Couladin means to meet Sevanna on her way to Alcair Dal, to influence her against you. He may succeed. The only reason she laid her bridal wreath at Suladric’s feet instead of his was that she meant to wed a clan chief. But I told you to expect trouble from her. Sevanna delights in causing trouble. It should not matter. If the Shaido will not follow you, they are small loss.”
“I mean to go to Alcair Dal,” Rand said firmly. “Now. I will apologize to any chief who feels dishonored by coming late, but I’ll not let Couladin be there any longer before me than I can manage. He won’t stop at turning Sevanna against me, Rhuarc. I cannot afford to hand him a month for it.”
After a moment, Rhuarc said, “Perhaps you are right. You bring change, Rand al’Thor. At sunrise, then. I will choose out ten Red Shields for my honor, and the Maidens will provide yours.”
“I mean to be leaving when first light hits the sky, Rhuarc. With every hand that can carry a spear or draw a bow.”
“Custom —”
“There are no customs to cover me, Rhuarc.” You could have cracked rocks with Rand’s voice, or put a skim of ice on wine. “I have to make new customs.” He laughed roughly. Aviendha looked shocked, and even Rhuarc blinked, taken aback. Only Moiraine was unaffected, with those considering eyes. “ Someone had best let the peddlers know,” Rand continued. “They won’t want to miss the fair, but if they don’t stop those fellows drinking they will be too drunk to handle reins. What of you. Mat? Are you coming?”
He certainly did not intend to let the peddlers get away from him, not his way out of the Waste. “Oh, I am right behind you, Rand.” The worst of it was, it felt right saying that. Bloody ta’veren tugging at me! How had Perrin pulled free? Light, I wish I was with him right now. “I guess I am.”
Shouldering his spear, he strode off up the canyon. There was still time to get a little sleep at least. Behind him he could hear Rand chuckling.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 51
(InsectLike Horned Helmet) Revelations in Tanchico
Elayne fumbled with the two slim redlacquered sticks, trying to set them properly in her fingers. Sursa, she reminded herself. Not sticks; sursa. A fool way to eat, whatever they’re called.
On the other side of the table in the Chamber of Falling Blossoms, Egeanin frowned at her own sursa, one upright in each hand as if they really were sticks. Nynaeve held hers nestled in her hand the way Rendra had showed them, but so far she had managed to lift one sliver of meat and a few sliced peppers as far as her mouth; her eyes were tight with determination. A great many small white bowls covered the table, each filled with slices and tiny slivers of meat and vegetables, some in sauces dark or pale. Elayne thought it might take the rest of the day to finish this meal. She gave the honeyhaired innkeeper a grateful smile when the woman leaned over her shoulder to position the sursa properly.
“Your land is at war with Arad Doman,” Egeanin said, sounding almost angry. “Why do you serve the dishes of your enemy?”
Rendra shrugged, making a moue behind her veil; she wore the palest possible red today, and beads of the same color woven into her narrow braids made soft clicks when she moved her head. “It is the fashion, now. Four days ago the Garden of Silver Breezes began it, and now almost every patron asks for the Domani food. I think maybe it is that if we cannot conquer the Domani, at least we can conquer their food. Maybe in Bandar Eban they eat the lamb with the honey sauce and the glazed apples, yes? In four days more, perhaps it is something else. The fashion, it changes quickly now, and if someone whips up the mob against this…” She shrugged again.
“Do you think there will be more riots?” Elayne asked. “Over what sort of food inns are serving?”
“The streets, they are restive,” Rendra said, spreading her hands fatalistically. “Who can say what will spark them again? The uproar the day before yesterday, it came from a rumor Maracru had declared for the Dragon Reborn, or maybe fallen to the Dragonsworn, or the rebels perhaps — how seems to have made little difference — but does the mob turn on the people from Maracru? No. They rampage through the streets, pulling people from the carriages, and then burn the Grand Hall of the Assembly. Perhaps the word comes that the army, it has won a battle — or lost one — and the mob rises against those who serve Domani food. Or maybe it burns warehouses on the Calpene docks. Who can say?”
“No proper order,” Egeanin muttered, thrusting the sursa firmly between the fingers of her right hand. From the expression on her face, they might have been daggers she was going to use to stab what was in the bowls. A bit of meat dropped out of Nynaeve’s sursa short of her lips; growling, she snatched it from her lap,
dabbing at the creamcolored silk with her napkin.
“Aah, order.” Rendra laughed. “I remember order. Maybe it will come again one day, yes? Some thought the Panarch Amathera would put the Civil Watch back at their duties, but were I she, with the memory of the mob brawling outside my investiture… The Children of the Light, they killed very many of the rioters. Perhaps this means there will not be another riot, but perhaps it means the next riot, it will be twice so big, or ten times. I think that I, too, would keep the Watch and the Children close around me. But this is no talk to disturb the meal.” Examining the table, she nodded to herself in approval, the beads in her thin plaits clicking. As she turned toward the door, she paused with a small smile. “It is the fashion to eat the Domani food with the sursa, and of course one does what is the fashion. But… there are none here to see save yourselves, yes? Should you perhaps wish the spoons and the forks, they are under the napkin.” She indicated the tray on the end of the table. “Enjoy.”
Nynaeve and Egeanin waited until the door closed behind the innkeeper, then grinned at each other and reached for the tray with decidedly unseemly haste. Elayne still managed to get her spoon and fork first; neither of the others had ever had to eat in the few minutes between a novice’s chores and lessons.
“It is tasty enough,” Egeanin said after her first mouthful, “when you can put any on your tongue.” Nynaeve laughed with her.
In the seven days since meeting the darkhaired woman with her sharp blue eyes and slow drawl, they had both come to like her. She was a refreshing change from Rendra’s chatter about hair and clothes and complexions, or stares in the street from people who looked as if they would slit a throat for a copper. This was her fourth visit since that first meeting, and Elayne had enjoyed every one. Egeanin had a directness and an air of independence she admired. The woman might be only a small trader in whatever came her way, but she could challenge Gareth Bryne for saying what she meant and bowing to no one.
Still, Elayne wished the visits had not been so frequent. Or rather that she and Nynaeve had not been at the Three Plum Court so often for Egeanin to find. Almost constant riots since Amathera’s investiture made moving about the city all but impossible, however, despite their coterie of Domon’s tough sailors. Even Nynaeve had admitted as much after they had had to flee a shower of fistsized stones. Thom still promised to find them a carriage and team, but she was not too certain how hard he was looking. He and Juilin both seemed insufferably pleased that she and Nynaeve were mired inside the inn. They come back bruised or bleeding and don’t want us to even stub a toe, she thought wryly. Why did men always think it was right to keep you safer than they kept themselves? Why did they think their injuries mattered less than yours?
From the taste of the meat, she suspected Thom should look in the kitchens here if he wanted to find horses. The thought of eating horse made her stomach queasy. She chose a bowl containing only vegetables, bits of dark mushroom, red peppers
and some sort of feathery green sprouts in a pale, tangy sauce. “What shall we discuss today?” Nynaeve asked Egeanin. “You have asked almost every question I can think of.” Nearly every one they knew how to answer at any rate. “If you want to learn any more about Aes Sedai, you’ll have to go to the Tower as a novice.”
Egeanin flinched unconsciously, as she did at any words linking the Power to her. For a moment she stirred the contents of one of the small bowls, frowning at it. “You have not made any real effort,” she said slowly, “to keep secret from me that you are looking for someone. Women. If it does not intrude on your secrets, I would ask —” She cut off at a knock on the door.
Bayle Domon strode in without waiting, grim satisfaction warring with uneasiness on his round face. “I have found them,” he began, then gave a start at the sight of Egeanin. “You!”
Shockingly, Egeanin knocked over her chair leaping up, and threw a fist at Domon’s thick middle almost too fast to see. Somehow Domon caught her wrist in a big hand, twisted — there was a flurried instant where they seemed to be trying to hook each other’s ankle with a foot; Egeanin attempted to strike him in the throat — then somehow, she was facedown on the floor, Domon’s boot on her shoulder and her arm levered up hard against his knee. Despite that she snatched her belt knife free.
Elayne wove flows of Air around the pair before she even knew she had embraced saidar, freezing them where they were. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded in her best icy tone.
“How dare you, Master Domon?” Nynaeve’s voice was equally cold. “Unhand her!” More warmly, worriedly, she added, “Egeanin, why did you try to hit him? I told you to release her, Domon!”
“He cannot, Nynaeve.” Elayne did wish the other woman could at least see flows clearly without being angry. She did try to hit him first. “Egeanin, why?”
The darkhaired woman lay there with eyes shut and mouth tight; her knuckles stood out bloodless from her grip on the knife hilt.
Domon glared from Elayne to Nynaeve, his odd Illianer beard nearly bristling. His head was all that Elayne had left free to move. “The woman do be Seanchan!” he growled.
Elayne exchanged startled looks with Nynaeve. Egeanin? Seanchan? It was impossible. It must be impossible.
“Are you certain?” Nynaeve asked slowly, quietly. She sounded as stunned as Elayne felt.
“I will never forget her face,” Domon replied firmly. “A ship captain. It did be she who did take me to Falme, me and my ship, captives to the Seanchan.”
Egeanin made no effort to deny it, only lay there gripping her knife. Seanchan.
But I like her!
Carefully, Elayne shifted the weave of flows until Egeanin’s knife hand lay uncovered to the wrist. “Let go of it, Egeanin,” she said, kneeling beside the
woman. “Please.” After a moment, Egeanin’s hand fell open. Elayne picked up the knife and backed away, loosing the flows completely. “Let her up, Master Domon.”
“She be Seanchan, Mistress,” he protested, “and hard as iron spikes.” “Let her up.”
Muttering under his breath, he released Egeanin’s wrist, moving, away from her quickly as if he expected she might come at him again. The darkhaired woman — the Seanchan woman — merely stood, though. She worked the shoulder he had wrenched, eyeing him thoughtfully, glanced at the door, then raised her head and waited with every outward appearance of calm. It was hard not to keep on admiring her.
“Seanchan,” Nynaeve growled. She clutched a fistful of her long braids, then gave her hand an odd stare and let go, but her brows were still furrowed and her eyes hard. “Seanchan! Worming your way into our friendship. I thought you had all gone back where you came from. Why are you here, Egeanin? Was our meeting really an accident? Why did you seek us out? Did you mean to lure us somewhere your filthy sul’dam could lock their leashes around our throats?” Egeanin’s blue eyes widened fractionally. “Oh, yes,” Nynaeve told her sharply. “We know about you Seanchan and your sul’dam and damane. We know more than you. You chain women who channel, but those you use to control them can channel too, Egeanin. For every woman who can channel that you’ve leashed like an animal, you walk by another ten or twenty every day without realizing it.”
“I know,” Egeanin said simply, and Nynaeve’s mouth fell open.
Elayne thought her own eyes were going to pop out of her head. “You know?” She took a breath and went on in something less like an incredulous squeal. “Egeanin, I think you are lying. I’ve not met many Seanchan before, and never for more than a few minutes, but I know someone who has. Seanchan don’t even hate women who channel. They think they are animals. You’d not take it so easily if you knew, or even believed.”
“Women who can wear the bracelet are women who can learn to channel,” Egeanin said. “I did not know it could be learned — I was taught a woman either could or could not — but when you told me that girls must be guided if they are not born with it, I reasoned it out: May I sit down?” So cool.
Elayne nodded, and Domon set Egeanin’s chair upright, standing behind it while she sat. Looking over her shoulder at him, the darkhaired woman said, “You were not so — difficult… an opponent the last time we met.”
“You did have twenty armored soldiers on my deck then, and a damane ready to break my ship apart with the Power. Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.” Surprisingly, he grinned at her, rubbing his side where she must have gotten in a blow Elayne had not seen. “You are no so easy an opponent yourself as I did think you would be without your armor and sword.”
The woman’s world had to have been turned upside down by her own reasoning, but she was taking it matteroffactly. Elayne could not imagine what would spin her
own world topsyturvy that way, but she hoped that if she ever found out she could face it with Egeanin’s calm reserve. I have to stop liking her. She is Seanchan. They’d have collared me far a pet if they could. Light, how do you stop liking someone?
Nynaeve appeared to be having no such difficulty. Planting her fists on the table, she leaned toward Egeanin so fiercely her braids dangled among the small bowls. “Why are you here in Tanchico? I thought you had all fled after Falme. And why have you tried to wriggle your way into our trust like some eggeating snake? If you think you can collar us, think again!”
“That was never my intention,” Egeanin said stiffly. “All I ever wanted from you was to learn about Aes Sedai. I…” For the first time she seemed hesitant, unsure of herself. Compressing her lips, she looked from Nynaeve to Elayne and shook her head. “You are not as I was taught. The Light be upon me, I… like you.”
“You like us.” Nynaeve made it sound a crime. “That answers none of my questions.”
Egeanin hesitated again, then held her head up, defying them to do their worst. “Sul’dam were left behind at Falme. Some deserted after the disaster. A few of us were sent to bring them back. I only found one, but I discovered that an a’dam would hold her.” Seeing Nynaeve’s fists tighten, she quickly added, “I let her go last night. I will pay dearly if that is ever discovered, but after talking with you, I could not…” Grimacing, she shook her head. “That is why I stayed with you after Elayne revealed herself. I knew Bethamin was a sul’dam. To discover the a’dam held her, that she could… I had to know, to understand, about women who could channel.” She took a deep breath. “What do you mean to do with me?” Her hands, folded on the table, did not tremble.
Nynaeve opened her mouth angrily, and closed it again slowly. Elayne knew her difficulty. Nynaeve might hate Egeanin now, but what were they to do with her? It was not clear she had committed any crime in Tanchico, and in any event the Civil Watch seemed interested in nothing beyond saving its own collective skin. She was Seanchan, she had used sul’dam and damane, but on the other hand, she claimed to have let this Bethamin go free. For what crime could they punish her? Asking questions they had answered freely? Making them like her?
“I’d like to stripe your hide till you glow like a sunset,” Nynaeve growled. Abruptly her head swung toward Domon. “You found them? You said you found them. Where?” He shifted his feet, shooting a meaning look at the back of Egeanin’s head, eyebrows rising in a question.
“I do not believe she is a Darkfriend,” Elayne said when Nynaeve hesitated. “I certainly am not!” Egeanin’s stare was fierceeyed and offended.
Folding her arms as if to keep from tugging her braids, Nynaeve glared at the woman, then shifted an accusatory frown to Domon, as though this entire mess were his fault. “There isn’t anywhere to lock her,” she said finally, “and Rendra would surely demand reasons. Go ahead, Master Domon.”
He gave a last, doubtful look at Egeanin. “At the Panarch’s Palace, one of my men did see two of the women on your list. The one with the cats, and the Saldaean woman.”
“Are you certain?” Nynaeve said. “At the Panarch’s Palace? I wish you had seen for yourself. More women than Marillin Gemalphin like cats. And Asne Zeramene is not the only woman from Saldaea, even in Tanchico.”
“A narrowfaced blueeyed woman with a wide nose feeding a dozen cats in this city where people do eat cats? In the company of another with that Saldaean nose and tilted eyes? That is no so common a pair, Mistress al’Meara.”
“It is not,” she agreed. “But the Panarch’s Palace? Master Domon, in case you have forgotten, five hundred Whitecloaks guard that place, commanded by an Inquisitor of the Hand of the Light! Jaichim Carridin and his officers at least must know Aes Sedai on sight. Would they remain if they saw the Panarch sheltering Aes Sedai?” He opened his mouth, but Nynaeve’s point was telling, and nothing came out.
“Master Domon,” Elayne said, “what was one of your men doing at the Panarch’s Palace?”
He tugged at his beard in an embarrassed way, and rubbed his bare upper lip with a wide finger. “You see, the Panarch Amathera do be known to like ice peppers, the white kind that be very hot, and whether or no she be amenable to gifts herself, the customs men will know who did give her one and be more amenable themselves.”
“Gifts?” Elayne said in her best reproving voice. “You were more honest on the docks, and called them bribes.” Surprisingly, Egeanin had twisted around in her chair to give him a disapproving look, too.
“Fortune prick me,” he muttered, “you did no ask me to give up my trade. And I would no if you did, no if you did bring my aged mother to ask. A man do have a right to his trade.” Egeanin snorted and righted herself.
“His bribes are not our problem, Elayne.” Nynaeve sounded exasperated. “I don’t care if he bribes the entire city and smuggles —” A rap at the door cut her off. With a cautioning look at the others, she snapped “You sit quiet” to Egeanin, and raised her voice. “Come.”
Juilin stuck his head into the room with that silly cylindrical cap on, frowning as usual at Domon. The gash on his dark cheek, the blood already dried, was not unusual either; the streets were rougher now by daylight than they had been by dark in the beginning. “May I speak to you alone, Mistress al’Meara?” he said when he saw Egeanin sitting at the table.
“Oh, come in,” Nynaeve told him sharply. “After what she’s heard already, it won’t matter if she hears a little more. Have you found them in the Panarch’s Palace, too?”
In the act of shutting the door, he shot an unreadable, tightmouthed glance at Domon. The smuggler smiled, showing too many teeth. For a moment it seemed
they might come to blows.
“So the Illianer is ahead of me,” Juilin muttered ruefully. Ignoring Domon, he addressed Nynaeve. “I told you the woman with the white stripe would lead me to them. That is a very distinctive thing. And I saw the Domani woman there, too. From a distance — I am not fool enough to wade into a school of silverpike — but I cannot believe there is another Domani woman besides Jeaine Caide in all of Tarabon.”
“You mean they are in the Panarch’s Palace?” Nynaeve exclaimed.
Juilin’s face did not change, but his dark eyes widened slightly, flickered toward Domon. “So he had no proof,” he murmured in a satisfied tone.
“I did have proof,” Domon avoided looking at the Tairen. “If you did no accept it before this fisherman did come, Mistress al’Meara, it be no fault of mine.”
Juilin drew himself up, but Elayne cut in before the thiefcatcher could speak. “You both found them, and you both brought proof. Very likely neither would have been sufficient without the other. Now we know where they are because of you both.” If anything, they looked more disgruntled than before. Men could be absolutely silly at times.
“The Panarch’s Palace.” Nynaeve jerked a fistful of braids, then flung the long plaits over her shoulder with a toss of her head. “What they are after must be there. But if they have it, why are they still in Tanchico? The palace is huge. Maybe they haven’t found it yet. Not that that helps if we are out here while they are inside!”
Thom, as usual, entered without knocking, taking in everyone at one glance. “Mistress Egeanin,” he murmured, with an elegant bow his limp did nothing to diminish. “Nynaeve, if I could speak with you alone, I have important news.”
The fresh bruise on his leathery cheek made Elayne even angrier than the new tear in his good brown cloak. The man was too old to be braving the streets of Tanchico. Or any rough streets, for that matter. It was time she arranged a pension for him, and somewhere safe and comfortable to live. No more gleeman wanderings from village to village for him. She would see to it.
Nynaeve gave Thom a sharp look. “I’ve no time for that now. The Black sisters are in the Panarch’s Palace, and for all I know, Amathera is helping them search it from cellar to attic.”
“I found out less than an hour ago,” he said disbelievingly. “How did you…?” He looked at Domon and Juilin, both still glowering like boys who had each wanted the whole cake.
It was obvious that he dismissed either as Nynaeve’s source of information. Elayne felt like grinning. He did so pride himself on knowing all the undercurrents, all the hidden doings. “The Tower has its ways, Thom,” she told him, cool and mysterious. “It is best not to inquire too closely into the methods of Aes Sedai.” He frowned, bushy white eyebrows drawing down uncertainly. Most satisfactory. She became aware of Juilin and Domon frowning at her, too, and suddenly it was all she could do not to blush. If they talked, she would look a fool. They would, eventually;
men did. Best to bury it quickly and hope. “Thom, have you heard anything that might indicate whether Amathera is a Darkfriend?”
“Nothing.” He tugged one long mustache irritably. “Apparently she has not seen Andric since donning the Crown of the Tree. Maybe the troubles in the streets make travel between the King’s Palace and the Panarch’s too dangerous. Maybe she has simply realized that her power equals his now, and is no longer as compliant as before. Nothing to say what her allegiances are.” With a glance at the darkhaired woman in the chair, he added, “I am grateful for the aid Mistress Egeanin gave you with those robbers, but to now I have thought she was a casually met friend. May I ask who she is to be brought into this? I seem to recall you threatening to tie a knot in any careless tongues, Nynaeve.”
“She’s Seanchan,” Nynaeve told him. “Close your mouth before you swallow a moth, Thom, and sit down. We can eat while we try to figure out what to do.”
“In front of her?” Thom said. “Seanchan?” He had heard some of the story of Falme from Elayne — some of it — and he had certainly heard the rumors here; he studied Egeanin as if wondering where she hid her horns. Juilin seemed to be strangling, if his bulging eyes were any indication; he must have heard the Tanchican rumors, too.
“Do you suggest I ask Rendra to lock her in a storeroom?” Nynaeve asked calmly. “That would cause comment, wouldn’t it? I’m fairly certain three big, hairy men can protect Elayne and me if she pulls a Seanchan army out of her pouch. Sit, Thom, or else eat standing up, but stop staring. All of you, sit. I mean to eat before it grows cold.”
They did, Thom looking as illcontented as Juilin and Domon. Sometimes Nynaeve’s bullying manner did seem to work. Perhaps Rand would respond to occasional bullying.
Putting Rand out of her mind, Elayne decided it was time to add something of worth. “I cannot see how the Black sisters can be in the Panarch’s Palace without Amathera’s knowledge,” she said, pulling her chair under her. “As I see it, that makes for three possibilities. One, Amathera is a Darkfriend. Two, she thinks they are Aes Sedai. And three, she is their prisoner.” For some reason, Thom’s approving nod made her feel warm inside. Silly. Even if he did know the Game of Houses, he was just a foolish bard who had thrown it all away to become a gleeman. “In any case, she will help them look for what they seek, but it seems to me that if she thinks they are Aes Sedai, we might be able to gain her help with the truth. And if she is a prisoner, we could gain it by freeing her. Even Liandrin and her companions could not hold on to the palace if the Panarch ordered it cleared, and that would give us a free hand to search.”
“The problem is discovering whether she is ally, dupe or captive,” Thom said, gesturing with his pair of sursa. He knew how to use the things perfectly!
Juilin shook his head. “The real problem is to reach her, whatever her situation. Jaichim Carridin has five hundred Whitecloaks around the palace like fisherbirds
around the docks. The Panarch’s Legion has nearly twice that, and the Civil Watch almost as many. Few of the ring forts are held half so well.”
“We are not going to fight them,” Nynaeve said dryly. “Stop thinking with the hair on your chest. This is a time for wits, not muscle. As I see it…”
The discussion went on through the meal, continuing after the last small bowl was emptied. Egeanin even offered a few cogent comments after a while spent silently, not eating and not seeming to listen. She had a sharp mind and Thom readily accepted any of her suggestions he agreed with, though he stubbornly rejected out of hand those he did not, just the way he treated everyone else. Even Domon, rather surprisingly, supported Egeanin when Nynaeve wanted her to keep quiet. “She do make sense, Mistress al’Meara. Only a fool do reject sense, wherever it do come from.”
Unfortunately, knowing where the Black sisters were did little good without knowing whether or not Amathera was with them; that, or what they were after. In the end, almost two hours of discussion came to not much more than that and a few suggestions as to how to find out about Amathera. All of which, it seemed, were to be used by the men with their spiderweb of contacts crisscrossing Tanchico.
None of the fool men wanted to leave them alone with one of the Seanchan — until Nynaeve became angry enough to wrap them all three in flows of Air while they dithered before the door. “Do you not think,” she said icily, surrounded by the glow of saidar, “that one of us might be able to do the same to her if she says boo?” She would not release any of them until they all nodded their heads, the only bits they could move.
“You keep a taut crew,” Egeanin said as soon as the door closed behind them. “Be quiet, Seanchan!” Nynaeve folded her arms tightly; she seemed to have
given up trying to pull at those braids when she was angry. “Sit down, and—be— quiet!”
It was frustrating waiting there, staring at the plum trees and falling blossoms painted on the windowless walls, pacing the floor or watching Nynaeve pace, while Thom and Juilin and Domon were out actually doing something. Yet it was worse when each man came back at intervals, to report another trail faded away to nothing, another thread snapped, hear what the others had learned, and hurry out again.
The first time Thom returned — with a second purple bruise, on the other cheek
— Elayne said, “Wouldn’t you do better here, Thom, where you could hear whatever Juilin and Master Domon report? You could evaluate much better than Nynaeve or I.”
He shook his foolish shaggy white head while Nynaeve sniffed loudly enough to be heard in the hallway. “I’ve a lead to a house on the Verana, where Amathera supposedly went sneaking some nights before she was raised Panarch.” And he was gone before she could say another word.
When he next returned — limping distinctly more, reporting that the house was
the home of Amathera’s old nurse — Elayne spoke in her firmest voice. “Thom, I want you to sit down. You will stay here. I will not have you getting yourself hurt.”
“Hurt?” he said. “Child, I never felt better in my life. Tell Juilin and Bayle there is supposedly a woman named Cerindra somewhere in this city who claims to know all sorts of dark secrets about Amathera.” And off he hobbled, cloak swirling behind him. He had another tear in that, too. Stubborn, stubborn, foolish old man.
Once a clamor penetrated the thick walls, brutal shouts and cries from the street. Rendra bustled into the room just when Elayne had decided to go down and see for herself what it was. “Some little trouble outside. Do not disturb yourself. Bayle Domon’s men, they keep it away from us, yes. I did not want you to worry.”
“A riot here?” Nynaeve said sharply. The immediate neighborhood of the inn had been one of the few calm areas in the city.
“Not to worry,” Rendra said soothingly. “Perhaps they want food. I will tell them where Bayle Domon’s soup kitchen is, and they will go away.”
The noise did die down after a while, and Rendra sent up some wine. Not until the serving man was leaving, with a sulky look on his face, did Elayne realize it was the young man with the beautiful brown eyes. The man had begun reacting to her coldest stares as if they were smiles. Did the fool think she had time to notice him now?
Waiting and pacing, pacing and waiting. Cerindra turned out to be a tirewoman dismissed for theft; not at all grateful for not being imprisoned, she would make any accusation against Amathera that was suggested to her. A fellow who claimed to have proof that Amathera was Aes Sedai and Black Ajah also claimed that the same documents proved King Andric the Dragon Reborn. The group of women whom Amathera used to meet in secret were friends Andric despised, and the shocking discovery that she financed several smuggling craft led nowhere. Almost every noble but the King himself had a finger in smuggling. Every trail ended that way. The worst Thom could discover was that Amathera had convinced two handsome young lords that each was the true love of her life and Andric only a means to an end. On the other hand, she had given audiences in the Panarch’s Palace to various lords, both alone and in company with various women recognizable as Liandrin and others on the list, and reportedly asked and accepted their advice for her decisions. Ally, or captive?
When Juilin came back, a good three hours after sunset, spinning a thumbthick staff of ridged wood and muttering about some palehaired fellow who had tried to rob him, Thom and Domon were already slumped disconsolately at the table with Egeanin.
“This will be Falme again,” Domon growled at the air. The stout cudgel he had acquired somewhere lay in front of him, and he wore a short sword at his belt now. “Aes Sedai. The Black Ajah. Meddling with the Panarch. If we do no find something tomorrow, I do mean to take myself out of Tanchico. The next day for certain, if my own sister do ask me to stay!”
“Tomorrow,” Thom said wearily, elbows on the table and chin on fists. “I am too tired to think straight any longer. I found myself listening to a laundryman from the Panarch’s Palace who claims he has heard Amathera singing bawdy songs, the sort you hear in the roughest taverns on the docks. I actually listened to him.”
“For me,” Juilin said, reversing a chair to straddle it, “I mean to look on tonight. I found a roofman who says the woman he keeps company with was another of Amathera’s tirewomen. According to him, Amathera discharged all of her tirewomen without warning the same evening she was invested Panarch. He will take me to talk with her after he finishes some business of his own at a merchant’s house.”
Nynaeve moved to the end of the table, fists on hips. “You will not be going anywhere tonight, Juilin. The three of you will be taking turns guarding our door.” The men protested volubly, of course, all together.
“I do have my own trade to keep up, and if I must spend my days asking questions for you…”
“Mistress al’Meara, this woman is the first person I have found who’s actually seen Amathera since she was raised…”
“Nynaeve, I’ll hardly be able to find a rumor tomorrow, much less trace it, if I spend the night playing at…”
She let them argue themselves out. When they began to trail off, obviously thinking her convinced, she said, “Since we have nowhere else to keep the Seanchan woman, she will have to sleep with us. Elayne, will you ask Rendra to have a pallet made Up? On the floor will do nicely.” Egeanin glanced at her, but said nothing.
The men were neatly boxed; either they refused flatly, and openly broke their word to do as Nynaeve said, or else argued on, sounding as if they were whining. They glowered and spluttered — and acquiesced.
Rendra was clearly surprised they requested only a pallet, but accepted the tale that Egeanin feared to risk the streets at night. She did look miffed when Thom seated himself in the hall beside their door. “Those fellows, they did not get inside however hard they tried. I told you the soup kitchen would take them away, yes? Guests at the Three Plum Court have no need for the bodyguards on their rooms.”
“I am sure not,” Elayne told her, gently trying to push her out with the door. “It’s just that Thom and the others do worry so. You know how men are.” Thom shot her a hawkish stare beneath those thick white eyebrows, but Rendra sniffed, agreeing that she did indeed know, and let Elayne shut the door.
Nynaeve immediately turned to Egeanin, who Was spreading her pallet on the far side of the bed. “Take off your clothes, Seanchan. I want to be sure you don’t have another knife hidden away.”
Egeanin calmly stood and undressed down to her linen shift. Nynaeve searched through her dress thoroughly, then insisted on searching Egeanin as well, and none too gently. Finding nothing did not seem to soothe her.
“Hands behind your back, Seanchan. Elayne, bind her.” “Nynaeve, I don’t think she —”
“Bind her with the Power, Elayne,” Nynaeve said roughly, “or I’ll cut strips from her dress and bind her hands and heels. You remember how she handled those fellows in the street. Probably her own hirelings. She could probably kill us in our sleep with her bare hands.”
“Really, Nynaeve, with Thom outside —”
“She’s Seanchan! Seanchan, Elayne!” She sounded as if she hated the darkhaired woman for a personal wrong, which made no sense. Egwene had been in their hands, but not Nynaeve. The set of her jaw said she meant to have her way, with the Power or with ropes if she could find them.
Egeanin had already placed her wrists together in the small of her back, compliant if not meek. Elayne wove a flow of Air around them and tied it off; at least it would be more comfortable than bindings cut out of her dress. Egeanin flexed her arms slightly, testing the bonds she could not see, and shivered. She could as easily have broken steel chains. Shrugging, she laid herself down awkwardly on the pallet and turned her back to them.
Nynaeve began undoing her own dress. “Let me have the ring, Elayne.”
“Are you sure, Nynaeve?” She looked at Egeanin in a significant manner. The woman seemed to be paying no attention to them.
“She’ll not go running to betray us tonight.” Pausing to pull the dress over her head, Nynaeve sat on the edge of the bed in her thin silk Taraboner shift to roll down her stockings. “Tonight is the agreed night. Egwene will expect one of us, and it is my turn. She will be worried if neither of us appears.”
Elayne fished the leather cord around her neck out of the bosom of her dress. The stone ring, all flecks and stripes in blue and brown and red, lay snuggled against the golden serpent eating its own tail. Unknotting the string long enough to hand the ter’angreal to Nynaeve, she retied and replaced it. Nynaeve strung the stone ter’angreal with her own Great Serpent ring and Lan’s heavy gold ring, let them hang between her breasts.
“Give me an hour after you are certain I’m asleep,” she said, stretching out atop the blue coverlet. “It should take no longer than that. And keep an eye on her.”
“What can she do bound, Nynaeve?” Elayne hesitated before adding, “I don’t think she would try to harm us if she were loose.”
“Don’t you dare!” Nynaeve raised her head to glare at Egeanin’s back, then lay back on the pillows again. “An hour, Elayne.” Closing her eyes, she wriggled to make herself more comfortable. “That should be more than enough,” she murmured.
Hiding a yawn behind her hand, Elayne brought the low stool to the foot of the bed, where she could watch Nynaeve, and Egeanin, too, though that hardly seemed necessary. The woman lay huddled on her pallet with her knees up, hands securely fastened. It had been a strangely tiring day considering that they had never left the
inn. Nynaeve was already muttering softly in her sleep. With her elbows jutting out.
Egeanin lifted her head and looked over her shoulder. “She hates me, I think.” “Go to sleep.” Elayne stifled another yawn.
“You do not.”
“Don’t be too sure of yourself,” she said firmly. “You are taking this very calmly. How can you be so calm?”
“Calm?” The other woman’s hands moved involuntarily, twisting at her Airwoven bonds. “I am so terrified I could weep.” She did not sound it. Yet it sounded the simple truth.
“We won’t harm you, Egeanin.” Whatever Nynaeve wanted, she would see to that. “Go to sleep.” After a moment Egeanin’s head lowered.
An hour. It was right not to worry Egwene needlessly, but she wished that hour could be spent on their problem instead of wandering uselessly in Tel’aran’rhiod. If they could not find out whether Amathera was prisoner or captive… Set that aside; I won’t puzzle it out here. Once they did find out, how could they get inside the palace with all those soldiers about, and the Civil Watch, not to mention Liandrin and the others?
Nynaeve had started snoring softly, a habit she denied even more heatedly than she did flinging her elbows about. Egeanin appeared to be taking the long, slow breaths of deep sleep. Yawning into the back of her hand, Elayne shifted on the hard wooden seat and began planning how to sneak into the Panarch’s Palace.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 52
(Dream Ring) Need
For a moment Nynaeve stood in the Heart of the Stone not seeing it, not thinking of Tel’aran’rhiod at all. Egeanin was Seanchan. One of those vile people who had put a collar on Egwene’s neck and tried to put one on hers. Knowing it still made her feel hollow. Seanchan, and she had snaked her way into Nynaeve’s affections. True friends had seemed so few and far between since leaving Emond’s Field. To find a new one, then lose her in this way…
“I hate her for that worst of all,” she growled, folding her arms tightly. “She made me like her, and I cannot stop, and I hate her for it!” Said aloud, it made no sense at all. “I do not have to make sense.” She laughed quietly, with a rueful shake of her head. “I am supposed to be Aes Sedai.” But not to be woolgathering like a fool girl.
Callandor sparkled, the crystal sword rising out of the floorstones beneath the great dome, and the massive redstone columns ran off in shadowed rows through that odd, dim light that came from everywhere. Easy to remember the feel of being watched, to imagine it again. If it had been imagination before. If it was now. Anything might be hiding back in there. A good stout stick appeared in her hands as she peered among the columns. Where was Egwene? Just like the girl to keep her waiting. All that murkiness. For all she knew, something could be about to jump out at—“That is an odd dress, Nynaeve.”
Just stifling a yelp, she spun around heavily, rattling metallically, heart thumping in her throat. Egwene stood on the other side of Callandor with two women in bulky skirts and dark shawls over white blouses, snowy hair held by folded scarves falling to their waists. Nynaeve swallowed, hoping none of them noticed, tried to make herself breathe normally again. Sneaking up on her that way!
One of the Aiel women she knew from Elayne’s description; Amys’s face was much too young for such hair, but apparently it had been almost silver even as a child. The other, thin and bony, had pale blue eyes in a leathery, wrinkled face. That must be Bair. The tougher of the two, in Nynaeve’s opinion now that she saw them, not that this Amys looked very — Odd dress? I rattled?
Staring down at herself, she gasped. Her dress looked vaguely like a Two Rivers garment; if Two Rivers women wore dresses fashioned from steel mail, with pieces of plate armor like those she had seen in Shienar. How did men run about and jump into saddles in these things? It dragged at her shoulders as if it weighed a hundred pounds. The good stick was metal now, and spiked at the end like a shiny steel sandburr. Without touching her head she knew she had on some sort of helmet. Blushing furiously, she concentrated, changed it all to good Two Rivers woolens and a walking staff. It felt good to have her hair back in one proper braid, hanging over her shoulder.
“Uncontrolled thoughts are troublesome when you walk the dream,” Bair said in a thin, strong voice. “You must learn to control them if you mean to continue.”
“I can control my thoughts very well, thank you,” Nynaeve said crisply. “I —” Bair’s voice was not all that was thin. The Two Wise Ones seemed… misty, almost, and Egwene, in a pale blue riding dress, was very nearly transparent. “What’s the matter with you? Why do you look that way?”
“You try entering Tel’aran’rhiod while halfasleep in a saddle,” Egwene said dryly. She seemed to flicker. “It is morning in the Threefold Land, and we are on the move. I had to talk Amys into letting me come at all, but I was afraid you would be worried.”
“It is a difficult enough task without the horse,” Amys said, “sleeping shallowly when you wish to be awake. Egwene has not learned it entirely yet.”
“I will,” Egwene said with an irritated determination. She was always too hasty and stubborn in her desire to learn; if these Wise Ones did not hold on to the scruff of her neck she would very likely jump into all sorts of trouble.
Nynaeve stopped worrying about Egwene and trouble as the younger woman began to speak of Trollocs and Draghkar attacking Cold Rocks Hold. Seana, a Wise One dreamwalker, among the dead. Rand hurrying the Taardad Aiel toward this Alcair Dal, apparently in violation of all custom, sending out runners to bring more septs. The boy was confiding his intentions to no one, the Aiel were jumpy, and Moiraine was ready to bite the heads off nails. Moiraine’s frustration would have been some relief — she had hoped he could escape that woman’s influence somehow — if Egwene had not frowned so worriedly.
“I don’t know whether it is madness or design,” Egwene finished. “I could almost bear it either way if I knew. Nynaeve, I’ll admit it isn’t prophecy, or Tarmon Gai’don, that makes me anxious right now. Maybe it is foolish, but I promised Elayne to look after him, and I do not know how.”
Nynaeve walked around the crystal sword to put an arm around her. At least she felt solid, even if she did look a reflection in a foggy mirror. Rand’s sanity. There was nothing she could do about that, no comfort she could offer. Egwene was the one there to see him. “The best you can do for Elayne is to tell him to read what she wrote. She worries about it sometimes; she won’t talk, but I think she’s afraid she said more than she should have. If he believes she is totally besotted, he’s more likely to feel the same, which will not hurt her in the least. At least we have some good news in Tanchico. Some.” When she explained, though, it barely seemed to justify “some.”
“So you still don’t know what it is they’re after,” Egwene said after she finished, “but even if you did, they are on top of it and still might find it first.”
“Not if I can help it.” Nynaeve fixed the two Wise Ones with a firm, level look. From what Elayne said of Amys’s reluctance to give anything but warnings, she would need firmness to deal with them. The pair was so hazy a strong puff might blow them away like fog. “Elayne thinks you know all sorts of tricks with dreams.
Is there any way I could get into Amathera’s dreams to see if she is a Darkfriend?” “Foolish girl.” Bair’s long hair swung as she shook her head. “If Aes Sedai, a
foolish girl still. To step into another’s dream is very dangerous unless she knows you and expects you. It is her dream, not as here. There, this Amathera will control all. Even you.”
She had been sure that was the way. It was irritating to learn differently. And “foolish girl”?
“I am not a girl,” she snapped. She wanted to yank her braid, but clenched a fist at her side instead; for some reason, pulling at her hair felt strangely uncomfortable of late. “I was Wisdom of Emond’s Field before I… became Aes Sedai…” She hardly stumbled over the lie at all now. “…and I told women as old as you when to sit down and be quiet. If you know how to help me, say so instead of giving me foolish maunderings about what is dangerous. I know danger when I see it.”
Abruptly she realized her single braid had split in two, one over each ear, red ribbons woven through to make tassels on the ends. Her skirt was so short it showed her knees, she wore a loose white blouse like the Wise Ones, and her shoes and stockings were gone. Where had this come from? She had surely never thought of wearing anything like it. Egwene put a hasty hand over her mouth. Was she aghast? Surely not smiling.
“Uncontrolled thoughts,” Amys said, “can be very troublesome indeed, Nynaeve Sedai, until you learn.” Despite her bland tone, her lips quirked in barely masked amusement.
Nynaeve kept her face smooth with an effort. They could not have had anything to do with it. They can’t have! She struggled to change back, and it was a struggle, as though something held her as she was. Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter. Suddenly, just at the point when she was ready to break down and ask advice, or even help, her clothes and hair were as they had been. She wriggled her toes gratefully in good stout shoes. It had just been some odd, stray thought. In any case, she was not about to voice any suspicions; they looked far too amused as it was, even Egwene. I am not here for some fool contest. I just won’t dignify them.
“If I cannot enter her dream, can I bring her into the World of Dreams? I need some way to talk to her.”
“We would not teach you that if we knew how,” Amys said, hitching her shawl angrily. “It is an evil thing you ask, Nynaeve Sedai.”
“She would be as helpless here as you in her dream.” Bair’s thin voice sounded like an iron rod. “It has been handed down among dreamwalkers since the first that no one must ever be brought into the dream. It is said that that was the way of the Shadow in the last days of the Age of Legends.”
Nynaeve shifted her feet under those hard stares; realizing she had an arm around Egwene, she held still. She was not about to let Egwene think they had made her uneasy. Not that they had. If she thought of being hauled before the Women’s Circle before she was chosen Wisdom, it was nothing at all to do with the
Wise Ones. Firmness was what was… They stared at her. Hazy or not, these women could duel Siuan Sanche stare for stare. Especially Bair. Not that they intimidated her, but she could see the point of being reasonable. “Elayne and I need help. The Black Ajah is sitting on top of something that can harm Rand. If they find it before we do, they may be able to control him. We need to find it first. If there is anything you can do to help, anything you can tell me… Anything at all.”
“Aes Sedai,” Amys said, “you can make a request for help sound a demand.” Nynaeve’s mouth tightened — demand? She had all but begged. Demand, indeed!
— but the Aiel woman did not seem to notice. Or chose to ignore it. “Yet a danger to Rand al’Thor… We cannot allow the Shadow to have that. There is a way.”
“Dangerous.” Bair shook her head vigorously. “This young woman knows less than Egwene did when she came to us. It is too dangerous for her.”
“Then maybe I could —” Egwene began, and the two cut her off as one.
“You are going to complete your training; you are too eager to go beyond what you know,” Bair said sharply at the same time Amys said, not the slightest bit softer, “You are not there in Tanchico, you do not know the place, and you cannot have Nynaeve’s need. She is the hunter.”
Under those iron eyes, Egwene subsided sulkily, and the two Wise Ones looked at each other. Finally Bair shrugged and lifted her shawl up around her face; clearly she washed her hands of the entire matter.
“It is dangerous,” Amys said. They made it sound as if breathing was dangerous in Tel’aran’rhiod.
“I —!” Nynaeve cut off as Amys’s eyes actually grew harder; she would not have thought it possible. Keeping a firm image of her clothes as they were — of course they had had nothing to do with that; it simply seemed wise to make sure her dress remained as it was — she changed what she had been going to say. “I will be careful.”
“It is not possible,” Amys told her flatly, “but I do not know another way. Need is the key. When there are too many people for the hold, the sept must divide, and the need is for water at the new hold. If no location with water is known, one of us may be called to find one. The key then is the need for a proper valley or canyon, not too far from the first, with water. Concentrating on that need will bring you near to what you want. Concentrating on the need again will bring you closer. Each step brings you nearer, until at last you are not only in the valley, but standing beside where water is to be found. It may be harder for you, because you do not know exactly what you are seeking, though the depth of need may make up for it. And you know already in a rough fashion where it lies, in this palace.
“The danger is this, and you must be aware of it.” The Wise One leaned toward her intently, driving her words home with a tone as sharp as her gaze. “Each step is made blind, with eyes closed. You cannot know where you will be when you open your eyes. And finding the water does no good if you are standing in a den of vipers. The fangs of a mountain king kill as quickly in the dream as waking. I think
these women Egwene speaks of will kill more quickly than the snake.”
“I did that,” Egwene exclaimed. Nynaeve felt her jump as the Aiel women’s eyes went to her. “Before I met you,” she said hastily. “Before we went to Tear.”
Need. Nynaeve felt warmer toward the Aiel women now that one of them had given her something she could use. “You must keep a close eye on Egwene,” she told them, hugging the younger woman to show she meant it fondly. “You are right, Bair. She will try to do more than she knows how. She has always been that way.” For some reason Bair arched a white eyebrow at her.
“I do not find her so,” Amys said in a dry voice. “She is a biddable student, now. Is that not so, Egwene?”
Egwene’s mouth set in a stubborn line. These Wise Ones did not know her well if they believed a Two Rivers woman would call herself biddable. On the other hand, she did not say anything. That was unexpected. As hard a lot as Aes Sedai, it appeared, these Aiel women.
Her hour was slipping away, and impatience bubbled to try this method now; if Elayne woke her, it might take hours to get back to sleep. “In seven days,” she said, “one of us will meet you here again.”
Egwene nodded. “In seven days, Rand will have shown himself to the clan chiefs as He Who Comes With the Dawn, and the Aiel will all be behind him.” The Wise Ones’ eyes shifted slightly, and Amys adjusted her shawl; Egwene did not see it. “The Light knows what he means to do then.”
“In seven days,” Nynaeve said, “Elayne and I will have taken whatever Liandrin is hunting away from the lot of them.” Or else, very likely, the Black Ajah would have it. So the Wise Ones were not more certain the Aiel would follow Rand than Egwene was of his plans. No certainty anywhere. But no point in burdening Egwene with more doubts, either. “When one of us sees you next, we’ll have laid them by the heels and stuffed them all in sacks to cart to the Tower for trial.”
“Try to be careful, Nynaeve. I know you don’t know how to, but try anyway. Tell Elayne I said so, too. She isn’t as… bold… as you are, but she can come close.” Amys and Bair each laid a hand on Egwene’s shoulder, and they were gone. Try to be careful? Fool girl. She was always careful. What had Egwene been about to say rather than bold? Nynaeve folded her arms tightly in lieu of pulling her braid. Maybe better she did not know.
She realized she had not told Egwene about Egeanin. Perhaps best not to stir up Egwene’s memories of her captivity. Nynaeve could remember all too well the other woman’s nightmares for weeks after she was freed, waking up screaming that she would not be chained. Much the best to let it lie. It was not as if Egwene need ever meet the Seanchan woman. Burn that woman! Burn Egeanin to ash! Burn her!
“This is not using my time wisely,” she said aloud. The words echoed through the tall columns. With the other women gone, they looked even more foreboding than before, more a hiding place for unseen watchers and things that jumped out at you. Time to be away.
First, though, she changed her hair to a tassel of long narrow braids, her dress to clinging folds of dark green silk. A transparent veil covered her mouth and nose, fluttering slightly when she breathed. With a grimace she added beads of green jade woven into the thin plaits. Should any of the Black sisters be using their stolen ter’angreal to enter the World of Dreams and see her in the Panarch’s Palace, they would think her only a Taraboner woman who had dreamed herself there in more ordinary fashion. Some knew her by sight, though. Lifting a handful of beadstrung braids, she smiled. Pale honey. She had not realized that was possible. I wonder what I look like. Could they still know me?
Suddenly a tall standmirror stood beside Callandor, In the glass, her big brown eyes widened in shock, her rosebud of a mouth fell open. She had Rendra’s face! Her features flickered back and forth, eyes and hair flashing darker then lighter; straining, she settled them as the innkeeper’s. No one would know her now. And Egwene thought she did not know how to be careful.
Closing her eyes, she concentrated on Tanchico, on the Panarch’s Palace, on need. Something dangerous to Rand, to the Dragon Reborn, need… Around her, Tel’aran’rhiod shifted; she felt it, a sliding lurch, and opened her eyes eagerly to see what she had found.
It was a bedchamber, as big as any six at the Three Plum Court, the white plaster walls worked in painted friezes, golden lamps hanging from the ceiling by gilded chains. The tall posts of the bed spread carved limbs and leaves in a canopy above the mattresses. A woman well short of her middle years stood stiffly with her back to one of the posts at the foot of the bed; she was really quite lovely, in that poutymouthed way that Nynaeve herself had adopted. Atop her dark braids sat a crown of golden trefoil leaves among rubies and pearls with a moonstone larger than a goose egg, and around her neck hung a broad stole, dangling to her knees and embroidered along its length with trees. Aside from crown and stole she wore only a glistening coat of sweat.
Her tremulous eyes were fixed on the woman lying at her ease on a low couch. The second woman’s back was to Nynaeve, as misty as Egwene had been earlier. She was short and slight, dark hair flowing loose to her shoulders, wideskirted gown of pale yellow silk definitely not Taraboner. Nynaeve did not have to see her face to know it had large blue eyes and a foxlike shape, or see the bonds of Air holding the woman against the bedpost to know she was looking at Temaile Kinderode.
“…learn so much when you use your dreams instead of wasting sleep,” Temaile was saying with a Cairhienin accent, laughing. “Are you not enjoying yourself? What shall I teach you next? I know. ‘I Have Loved a Thousand Sailor Men.’ ” She waggled an admonishing finger. “Be sure you learn all the words properly, Amathera. You know I would not want to — What are you gaping at?”
Abruptly Nynaeve realized the woman against the bedpost — Amathera? The Panarch? — was staring straight at her. Temaile shifted lazily as though to turn her
head.
Nynaeve clamped her eyes shut. Need. Shift.
Letting herself sag against the narrow column, Nynaeve gulped air as if she had run twenty miles, not even wondering where she was. Her heart pounded like a wild drum. Speak of landing in a vipers’ den. Temaile Kinderode. The Black sister Amico had said enjoyed causing pain, enjoyed it enough to have made one of the Black Ajah comment. And her not able to channel a spark. She could have ended up decorating a bedpost beside Amathera. Light! She shivered, seeing it. Calm yourself, woman! You are out of there, and even if Temaile saw you, she saw a honeyhaired woman who vanished, just a Taraboner who dreamed herself into Tel’aran’rhiod for a moment. Surely Temaile could not have been aware of her long enough to sense she could channel; even when she could not do it, the ability was there to be felt by one who shared it. Only a moment. Not long enough, with luck.
At least she knew Amathera’s situation now. The woman was certainly no ally of Temaile. This method of searching had already repaid use. But not enough, not yet. Controlling her breathing as best she could, she looked around.
Rows of the thin white columns ran the length and breadth of a huge chamber nearly as wide as it was long, with smooth polished white floorstones below and gilded bosses on the ceiling high above. A thick rope of white silk ran all the way around the room on waisthigh posts of dark polished wood, except where it would have blocked the doorways with doublepointed arches. Stands and open cabinets lined the walls, and the bones of peculiar beasts, with more display cases out in the floor, also roped off. The main exhibition hall of the palace, from Egwene’s description. What she sought must be in this very chamber. Her next step would not be as blind as the first; there were certainly no vipers, no Temaile, here.
A handsome woman suddenly appeared beside a glass case with four carved legs out in the middle of the floor. She was no Taraboner, with her dark hair falling in waves to her shoulders, yet that was not what made Nynaeve gape. The woman’s dress seemed to be mist, sometimes silvery and opaque, sometimes gray and so thin as to show her limbs and body clearly. From wherever she had dreamed herself here, she assuredly had a vivid imagination to conceive that! Even the scandalous Domani dresses she had heard of surely could not equal this.
The woman smiled at the glass case, then continued on up the hall, stopping on the far side to study something Nynaeve could not make out, something dark atop a white stone stand.
Frowning, Nynaeve released her grip on a fistful of honeycolored braids. The woman would disappear at any moment; few dreamed themselves into Tel’aran’rhiod for long. Of course, it did not matter if the woman saw her; she was certainly no one on their list of Black sisters. And yet she seemed somehow… Nynaeve realized she had taken hold of a handful of braids again. The woman… Of its own accord her hand pulled — hard — and she stared at it in amazement; her
knuckles were white, her hand quivering. It was almost as if thinking of that woman… Arm shaking, her hand tried to yank her hair out of her scalp. Why under the Light?
The mistclad woman still stood in front of the distant white pedestal. Trembling spread from Nynaeve’s arm into her shoulder. She had certainly never seen the woman before. And yet… She tried to open her fingers; they only clamped down harder. Surely she never had. Shivering from head to toe, she hugged herself with the one arm she had free. Surely… Her teeth wanted to chatter. The woman seemed… She wanted to weep. The woman…
Images burst into her head, exploding; she slumped against the column beside her as if they had physical force; her eyes bulged. She saw it again. The Chamber of Falling Blossoms, and that sturdily handsome woman surrounded by the glow of saidar. Herself and Elayne, babbling like children, fighting to be first to answer, pouring out everything they knew. How much had they told? It was difficult to bring out details, but she dimly remembered keeping some things back. Not because she wanted to; she would have told the woman anything, done anything she asked. Her face heated with shame, and anger. If she had managed to hide any scraps, it was only because she had been so — eager! — to answer the last question asked that she passed over earlier.
It makes no sense, a small voice said in the back of her head. If she’s a Black sister I don’t know about, why did she not hand us over to Liandrin? She could have. We’d have gone with her like lambs.
Cold rage would not let her listen. A Black sister had made her dance like a puppet and then told her to forget. Ordered her to forget: And she had! Well, now the woman would find out what it was like to face her ready and forewarned!
Before she could reach for the True Source, Birgitte was suddenly beside the next column in that short white coat and wide yellow trousers gathered at the ankle. Birgitte, or some woman dreaming she was Birgitte, with golden hair in an elaborate braid. A warning finger pressed against her lips, she pointed at Nynaeve, then urgently toward one of the doublearched doorways behind them. Bright blue eyes compelling, she vanished.
Nynaeve shook her head. Whoever the woman was, she had no time. Opening herself to saidar, she turned, filled to overflowing with the One Power and righteous wrath. The woman clothed in mist was gone. Gone! Because that goldenhaired fool had distracted her! Perhaps that one was still about, waiting for her. Wrapped in the Power, she strode through the doorway the woman had indicated.
The goldenhaired woman was waiting in a brightly carpeted hallway where unlit golden lamps gave off the scent of perfumed oil. She held a silver bow now, and a quiver of silver arrows hung at her waist.
“Who are you?” Nynaeve demanded furiously. She would give the woman a chance to explain herself. And then teach her a lesson she would not soon forget! “Are you the same fool who shot at me in the Waste, claiming she was Birgitte? I
was about to teach a member of the Black Ajah manners when you let her get away!”
“I am Birgitte,” the woman said, leaning on her bow. “At least, that is the name you would know. And the lesson might have been yours, here as surely as in the Threefold Land. I remember the lives I have lived as if they were books wellread, the longer gone dimmer than the nearer, but I remember well when I fought at Lews Therin’s side. I will never forget Moghedien’s face, any more than I will forget the face of Asmodean, the man you almost disturbed at Rhuidean.”
Asmodean? Moghedien? That woman was one of the Forsaken? A Forsaken in Tanchico. And one at Rhuidean, in the Waste! Egwene would certainly have said something if she knew. No way to warn her, not for seven days. Anger — and saidar — surged in her. “What are you doing here? I know that you all vanished after the Horn of Valere called you, but you are…” She trailed off, a trifle flustered at what she had been about to say, but the other woman calmly finished for her.
“Dead? Those of us who are bound to the Wheel are not dead as others are dead. Where better for us to wait until the Wheel weaves us out in new lives than in the World of Dreams?” Birgitte laughed suddenly. “I begin to talk as if I were a philosopher. In almost every life I can remember I was born a simple girl who took up the bow. I am an archer, no more.”
“You’re the heroine of a hundred tales,” Nynaeve said. “And I saw what your arrows did at Falme. Seanchan channeling did not touch you. Birgitte, we face near a dozen of the Black Ajah. And one of the Forsaken as well, it seems. We could use your help.”
The other woman grimaced, embarrassed and regretful. “I cannot, Nynaeve. I cannot touch the world of flesh unless the Horn calls me again. Or else the Wheel weaves me out. If it did this moment, you would find only an infant mewling at her mother’s breast. As for Falme, the Horn had called us; we were not there as you were, in the flesh. That is why the Power could not touch us. Here, all is part of the dream, and the One Power could destroy me as easily as you. More easily. I told you; I am an archer, a sometime soldier, no more.” Her complex golden braid swung as she shook her head. “I do not know why I am explaining. I should not even be talking to you.”
“Why not? You’ve spoken to me before. And Egwene thought she saw you. That was you, wasn’t it?” Nynaeve frowned. “How do you know my name? Do you just know things?”
“I know what I see and hear. I have watched you, and listened, whenever I could find you. You and the other two women, and the young man with his wolves. According to the precepts, we may speak to none who know they are in Tel’aran’rhiod. And yet, evil walks the dream as well as the world of flesh; you who fight it attract me. Even knowing I can do almost nothing, I find myself wanting to help you. But I cannot. It violates the precepts, precepts which have held me for so many turns of the Wheel that in my oldest, faintest memories I know I had already
lived a hundred times, or a thousand. Speaking to you violates precepts as strong as law.”
“It does,” said a harsh, male voice.
Nynaeve jumped and almost lashed out with the Power. The man was dark and strongly muscled, with the long hilts of two swords thrusting above his shoulders as he strode the few paces from where he had appeared to Birgitte. With what she had heard from Birgitte, the swords were enough to name him as Gaidal Cain, but where fair, goldenhaired Birgitte was as beautiful as in the stories, he was definitely not. In fact, he was perhaps as ugly a man as Nynaeve had ever seen, his face wide and flat, his heavy nose too big, and his mouth a gash, far too broad. Birgitte smiled at him, though; her touch on his cheek held more than fondness. It was a surprise to see he was the shorter. Stocky and muscled as he was, powerful in his movements, he gave the impression of being taller than he was.
“We have almost always been linked,” Birgitte told Nynaeve without taking her eyes from Cain’s. “He is usually born well before me — so I know my time approaches again when I cannot find him — and I usually hate him at first sight in the flesh. But we nearly always end lovers or wed. A simple story, but I think we have spun it out in a thousand variations.”
Cain ignored Nynaeve as though she did not exist. “The precepts exist for a reason, Birgitte. Nothing but strife and trouble has ever come from breaking them.” His voice was indeed harsh, Nynaeve realized. Not at all like that of the man in the stories.
“Perhaps I cannot sit by while evil fights,” Birgitte said quietly. “Or perhaps I simply hunger for the flesh again. It has been long since we were born last. The Shadow rises again, Gaidal. It rises here. We must fight it. That is the reason we were bound to the Wheel.”
“When the Horn calls us, we will fight. When the Wheel weaves us, we will fight. Not until then!” He glowered at her. “Have you forgotten what Moghedien promised you when we followed Lews Therin? I saw her, Birgitte. She will know you here.”
Birgitte turned to Nynaeve. “I will aid you as I can, but do not expect too much.
Tel’aran’rhiod is the whole of my world, and I can do less here than you.”
Nynaeve blinked; the dark, heavy man had not moved that she had seen, but he suddenly stood two paces away, drawing a honing stone along one of his swords with a soft, silky rasp. Plainly, as far as he was concerned, Birgitte was speaking to the air.
“What can you tell of Moghedien, Birgitte? I must know what I can, to face her.”
Leaning on her bow, Birgitte frowned thoughtfully. “Facing Moghedien is difficult, and not only because she is Forsaken. She hides and takes no risks. She attacks only where she sees weakness, and moves only in shadows. If she fears defeat, she will run; she is not one to fight to the last, even when doing so has the
chance of victory. A chance is not enough for Moghedien. But do not take her lightly. She is a serpent coiled in high grass, waiting her own moment to strike, with less compassion than the snake. Especially here do not take her lightly. Lanfear always claimed Tel’aran’rhiod for her own, but Moghedien could do things here far beyond Lanfear, though she has not Lanfear’s strength in the world of flesh. I think she would not take the risk of confronting Lanfear.”
Nynaeve shivered, fear warring with the anger that let her contain the Power. Moghedien. Lanfear. This woman spoke so casually of the Forsaken. “Birgitte, what did Moghedien promise you?”
“She knew what I was, even though I did not. How, I do not know.” Birgitte glanced at Cain; he appeared absorbed in his sword, but she lowered her voice anyway. “She promised to make me weep alone for as long as the Wheel turns. She said it as a fact that simply had not happened yet.”
“And yet you are willing to help.”
“As I can, Nynaeve. Remember that I told you not to expect too much.” Once more she looked at the man sharpening his sword. “We will meet again, Nynaeve. If you are careful, and survive.” Hefting her silver bow, she went to put an arm around Cain’s shoulders and murmur in his ear. Whatever she said, Cain was laughing as they vanished.
Nynaeve shook her head. Careful. Everybody was telling her to be careful. A legendary hero who said she would help, only there was not much she could do. And one of the Forsaken in Tanchico.
The thought of Moghedien, of what the woman had done to her, strengthened her anger until the One Power pulsed in her like the sun. Abruptly she was back in the great hall where she had been standing before, almost hoping the woman had returned. But the hall was empty of life except for herself. Fury and the Power roared through her till she thought her skin would crisp and blacken. Moghedien, or any of the Black sisters, could sense her far more easily holding the Power than without, but she held it anyway. She almost wanted them to find her, so she could strike at them. Temaile was very likely still in Tel’aran’rhiod. If she went back up to that bedchamber, she could settle Temaile once and for all. She could settle Temaile
— and warn the rest. It was enough to make her growl.
What had Moghedien been smiling at? Striding out to the case, a wide glass box atop a carved table, she peered in. Six mismatched figurines stood in a circle beneath the glass. A foottall nude woman balanced on the toes of one foot, dancing, all flowing lines, and a shepherd less than half as large, playing the pipes with his crook on his shoulder and a sheep at his feet, were as similar as any two. She had no doubt what had attracted the Forsaken’s smile, though.
In the center of the circle a redlacquered wooden stand held a disc as big as a man’s hand, divided into halves by a sinuous line, one side gleaming whiter than snow, the other blacker than pitch. It was made of cuendillar, she knew; she had seen its like, and only seven had ever been made. One of the seals on the Dark
One’s prison; a focus for one of the locks that held him away from the world in Shayol Ghul. This was perhaps as important a discovery as whatever it was that threatened Rand. This had to be gotten away from the Black Ajah.
Suddenly she became aware of her reflection. The top of the case was the finest glass, without bubbles, and gave an image as clear as a mirror, if fainter. Dark green folds of silk draped her body so they showed every curve of breast and hip and thigh. Long honey braids full of jade beads framed a face with big brown eyes and a pouting mouth. The glow of saidar did not show, of course. Disguised so she did not even know herself, she walked about carrying a painted sign that screamed Aes Sedai.
“I can be careful,” she muttered. Yet she held on a moment longer. The Power filling her was like life bubbling along her limbs, all the pleasures she had ever known seeping through her flesh. In the end, feeling foolish took enough edge from her anger to allow her to let go. Or maybe it dulled her anger to where she could no longer hold on.
Whatever the reason, it did not help her search. What she was after had to be somewhere in this huge hall among all these displays. Pulling her eyes away from what looked like the bones of a toothy lizard ten paces long, she closed them. Need. Danger to the Dragon Reborn, to Rand. Need.
Shift.
She was standing inside the white silk rope along the walls, the edge of a white stone pedestal touching her dress. What lay on top did not look very dangerous at first glance — a necklace and two bracelets of jointed black metal — but she could come no closer to anything than this. Not without sitting on it, she thought wryly.
She stretched her hand out to touch it — Pain. Sorrow. Suffering — and jerked it back, gasping, the raw emotions still echoing in her head. Even her faint doubts vanished. This was what the Black Ajah was hunting. And if it still sat on this pedestal in Tel’aran’rhiod, it sat there in the waking world, too. She had beaten them. This white stone pedestal.
Whirling around, she stared toward the glass case that held the cuendillar seal, located the place she had been standing where she first saw Moghedien. The woman had been looking at this pedestal, at the bracelets and collar. Moghedien had to know. But…
Everything around her spun and blurred, fading.
“Wake up, Nynaeve,” Elayne muttered, suppressing a yawn as she shook the sleeping woman’s shoulders. “It has to be an hour by now. I want some sleep, too. Wake up, or I’ll see how you like your head in a bucket of water.”
Nynaeve’s eyes popped open, staring up at her. “If she knows what it is, why hasn’t she given it to them? If they know who she is, why does she have to look at it in Tel’aran’rhiod! Is she hiding from them, too?”
“What are you talking about?”
Braids tossing about as she wriggled up to sit with her back against the head of
the bed, Nynaeve jerked her silk shift down. “I will tell you what I am talking about.”
Elayne’s mouth fell open as Nynaeve unfolded the tale of what her meeting with Egwene had become. Searching with need. Moghedien. Birgitte and Gaidal Cain. The black metal necklace and bracelets. Asmodean in the Waste. One of the seals on the Dark One’s prison in the Panarch’s Palace. Elayne sank down weakly onto the side of the mattress long before Nynaeve came to Temaile and the Panarch, thrown in almost as an afterthought. And changing her appearance, masquerading as Rendra. If Nynaeve’s face had not been grimly serious, Elayne could have thought it one of Thom’s wilder stories.
Egeanin, sitting up crosslegged in her linen shift, hands on knees, looked close to disbelieving. Elayne hoped Nynaeve did not start a row because she had loosed the woman’s wrists.
Moghedien. That was the most horrifying part. One of the Forsaken in Tanchico. One of the Forsaken weaving the Power around the two of them, making them tell her everything. Elayne could not remember a bit of it. The thought was enough to press both her hands to a suddenly queasy stomach. “I don’t know whether Moghedien” — Light, could she really have just walked in and made us… ?
“is hiding from Liandrin and the others, Nynaeve. It sounds like what Birgitte”
Light, Birgitte giving her advice! — “said of her.”
“Whatever Moghedien is up to,” Nynaeve said in a tight voice, “I mean to pick a bone clean with her.” She slumped back against the flowercarved headboard. “In any case, we have to get the seal away from them as well as this necklace and bracelets.”
Elayne shook her head. “How can jewelry be dangerous to Rand? Are you sure?
Are they a ter’angreal of some sort? What did they look like exactly?”
“They looked like a necklace and bracelets,” Nynaeve snapped in exasperation. “Two jointed bracelets made of some black metal, and a wide necklace like a black collar…” Her eyes darted to Egeanin, but no faster than Elayne’s.
Unperturbed, the darkhaired woman knelt up to sit on her heels. “I have never heard of an a’dam made for a man, or any like the one you describe. No one tries to control a man who can channel.”
“That is exactly what this is for,” Elayne said slowly. Oh, Light, I suppose I was hoping it didn’t exist. At least Nynaeve had found it first; at least they had a chance to stop it being used against Rand.
Nynaeve’s eyes narrowed as she took in Egeanin’s free hands, but she did not mention them. “Moghedien must be the only one who knows. It makes no sense, otherwise. If we can find a way into the palace, we can take the seal and the… whatever it is. And if we can bring Amathera out as well, Liandrin and her cronies will find the Panarch’s Legion and the Civil Watch, and maybe the Whitecloaks, closing in. They’ll not all be able to channel their way out of that! The problem is getting inside undetected.”
“I have had a few thoughts on that,” Elayne told her, “but I fear the men are going to give us difficulties over it.”
“You leave them to me,” Nynaeve snorted. “I —” A thumping clatter rose in the hall, a man shouted; as quickly as it began, silence fell once more. Thom was on watch out there.
Elayne darted to pull open the door, embracing saidar as she rushed out, but Nynaeve scrambled off the bed right behind her. Egeanin as well.
Thom was just picking himself up off the floor, a hand to his head. Juilin with his staff and Bayle Domon with his cudgel stood over a man with pale yellow hair lying facedown on the floor, unconscious.
Elayne hurried to Thom, trying gently to help him up. He gave her a grateful smile, but stubbornly pushed her hands away. “I am quite all right, child.” All right? A knot was rising on his temple! “The fellow was walking down the hall, when suddenly he kicked me in the head. After my purse, I suppose.” Just like that. Kicked in the head, and he was all right.
“He would have had it, too,” Juilin said, “if I had not come to see if Thom wanted a relief.”
“Did I not decide,” Domon muttered. Their hostility seemed less focused for a change.
It took Elayne only a moment to realize why. Nynaeve and Egeanin were in the hall in their shifts. Juilin was eyeing them both in an approving manner that would have caused trouble if Rendra had seen it, though he was at least trying not to be obvious. Domon made no effort at all to hide his frank appraisal of Egeanin, crossing his arms and pursing his lips in disgusting fashion while looking her up and down.
The situation dawned on the other women quickly, but their reactions were quite different. Nynaeve, in her thin white silk, gave the thiefcatcher a flat stare and strode stiffly into the room, poking a somewhat flushed face back around the side of the doorframe. Egeanin, whose linen shift was considerably longer and thicker than Nynaeve’s — Egeanin, who had been cool serenity while being made prisoner, who fought like a Warder — Egeanin went wideeyed and crimsonfaced, gasping in horror. Elayne stared, amazed, as the Seanchan woman gave a mortified shriek and leaped back inside.
Doors flung open and down the hall heads popped out; they vanished instantly, to the bang of slamming doors, at the sight of a man stretched out on the floor and others standing over him. Heavy dragging noises suggested people blocking themselves in with beds or wardrobes.
Long moments later, Egeanin finally peeked out opposite Nynaeve, still scarlet to her hair. Elayne really did not understand. The woman was in her shift, true, but it covered her very nearly as well as Elayne’s Taraboner dress did. Still, Juilin and Domon had no right to ogle. She fixed the pair with a stare that should have set them to rights immediately.
Unfortunately, Domon was too busy chuckling and rubbing his upper lip to notice. At least Juilin saw, even if he did sigh heavily the way men did when they considered themselves put upon unfairly. Avoiding her eyes, he bent to heave the palehaired fellow onto his back. A handsome enough man, slender.
“I know this fellow,” Juilin exclaimed. “This is the man who tried to rob me. Or so I thought,” he added more slowly. “I do not believe in coincidence. Not unless the Dragon Reborn is in the city.”
Elayne exchanged frowns with Nynaeve. Surely the stranger was not in the employ of Liandrin; the Black Ajah would not use men to sneak about the halls any more …Any more than they would have hired street toughs. Elayne moved her gaze to Egeanin questioningly. Nynaeve’s was more demanding.
“He is Seanchan,” Egeanin said after a moment.
“A rescue attempt?” Nynaeve murmured dryly, but the other woman shook her head.“I do not doubt he was looking for me, but not for rescue, I think. If he knows
or even suspects — that I let Bethamin go free, he would be wanting to… talk with me.” Elayne suspected it was rather more than talk, confirmed when Egeanin added, “It might be best if you slit his throat. He may try to make trouble for you, too, if he thinks you are my friends, or if he discovers you are Aes Sedai.” The big Illianer smuggler gave her a shocked look, and Juilin’s jaw dropped almost to his chest. Thom, on the other hand, nodded in a disturbingly thoughtful fashion.
“We are not here to slit Seanchan throats,” Nynaeve said as though that might change later. “Bayle, Juilin, put him out in the alley behind the inn. By the time he wakes, he’ll be lucky to have his smallclothes. Thom, find Rendra and tell her we want strong tea in the Chamber of Falling Blossoms. And ask if she has any willowbark or acem; I will make you something for your head.” The three men stared at her. “Well, move!” she snapped. “We have plans to make!” She barely gave Elayne time to get back inside before closing the door with a bang and beginning to pull her dress over her head. Egeanin scrambled into hers as though the men were still looking at her.
“The better way is to ignore them, Egeanin,” Elayne said. It was odd to be advising someone older than Nynaeve, but however competent the Seanchan woman was in other ways, she clearly knew little about men. “It only encourages them, otherwise. I do not know why,” she admitted, “but it does. You were quite decently covered. Really.”
Egeanin’s head pushed out at the top of her dress. “Decent? I am not a serving girl. I am no shea dancer!” Her scowl became a perplexed frown. “He is rather goodlooking, though. I had not thought of him so before.”
Wondering what a shea dancer was, Elayne went to help her with her buttons. “Rendra will have something to say to you if you allow Juilin to flirt with you.”
The darkhaired woman gave her a startled look over her shoulder. “The thiefcatcher? It was Bayle Domon I meant. A properly setup man. But a smuggler,” she sighed regretfully. “A lawbreaker.”
Elayne supposed there was no accounting for tastes — Nynaeve certainly loved Lan, and he was much too stonefaced and intimidating — but Bayle Domon? The man was half as wide as he was tall, as thick as an Ogier!
“You chatter like Rendra, Elayne,” Nynaeve snapped. She was struggling to do up her dress, both hands behind her. “If you have finished blathering about men, perhaps you won’t mind skipping over the new seamstress you’ve no doubt found? We must make plans. If we wait until we’re with the men, they will try to take it over, and I am in no mood to waste time putting them in their place. Have you finished with her yet? I could use some help myself.”
Quickly fastening Egeanin’s last small button, Elayne went coolly to Nynaeve. She did not talk about men and dresses. Not nearly as much as Rendra. Holding her braids out of the way, Nynaeve gave her a frown when she tugged sharply at the other woman’s dress to do up the buttons. The closespaced triple row up the back was necessary, not simply ornament. Nynaeve would let Rendra talk her into the most fashionably tight bodices. And then say other people spent all their time thinking about clothes. She certainly thought of other things. “I have been thinking how we can move inside the palace unnoticed, Nynaeve. We can be all but invisible.”
As she talked, Nynaeve’s frowns smoothed out. Nynaeve herself had conceived a way to enter the palace. When Egeanin made a few suggestions, Nynaeve’s mouth tightened, but the notions were sensible, and even Nynaeve could not reject them out of hand. By the time they were ready to go down to the Chamber of Falling Blossoms, they had a plan agreed upon, and no intention of letting the men change a whit of it. Moghedien, the Black Ajah, whoever were running things in the Panarch’s Palace, were going to lose their prizes before they knew what had happened.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 53
(Wolf)
The Price of a Departure
Only three candles and two lamps lit the common room of the Winespring Inn, since candles and oil both were in short supply. The spears and other weapons were gone from the walls; the barrel that had held old swords was empty. The lamps stood on two of the tables pushed together in front of the tall stone fireplace, where Marin al’Vere and Daise Congar and others of the Women’s Circle were going over lists of the scanty food remaining in Emond’s Field. Perrin tried not to listen.
At another table Faile’s honing stone made a soft, steady whiskwhisk as she sharpened one of her knives. A bow lay in front of her, and a bristling quiver hung at her belt. She had turned out to be a fairly good shot, but he hoped she never discovered that it was a boy’s bow; she could not draw a man’s Two Rivers longbow, though she refused to admit it.
Shifting his axe so it would not dig into his side, he tried to put his mind back on what he was discussing with the men around the table with him. Not that all of them were keeping their own attention where it should be.
“They have lamps,” Cenn muttered, “and we make do with tallow.” The gnarled old man glared at the pair of candles in brass candlesticks.
“Give over, Cenn,” Tam said wearily, pulling pipe and tabac pouch from behind his sword belt. “For once, give over.”
“If we had to read or write,” Abell said, his voice less patient than the words, “we’d have lamps.” A bandage was wound around his temples.
As if to remind the thatcher that he was Mayor, Bran adjusted the silver medallion hanging on his wide chest, showing a pair of scales. “Keep your mind to the business at hand, Cenn. I’ll have none of your wasting Perrin’s time.”
“I just think we should have lamps,” Cenn complained. “Perrin would tell me if I was wasting his time.”
Perrin sighed; the night tried to drag his eyelids down. He wished it were someone else’s turn to represent the Village Council, Haral Luhhan or Jon Thane or Samel Crawe, or anybody but Cenn with his carping. But then, sometimes he wished one of these men would turn to him and say, “This is business for the Mayor and the Council, young fellow. You go on back to the forge. We’ll let you know what to do.” Instead they worried about wasting his time, deferred to him. Time. How many attacks had there been in the seven days since the first? He was not sure any longer.
The bandage on Abell’s head irritated Perrin. The Aes Sedai only Healed the most serious wounds now; if a man could manage without, they let him. It was not that there were many badly wounded yet, but as Verin pointed out wryly, even as Aes Sedai only had so much strength; apparently their trick with the catapult stones took as much as Healing. For once he did not want to be reminded of limits to Aes
Sedai strength. Not many badly wounded. Yet.
“How are the arrows holding out?” he asked. That was what he was supposed to be thinking about.
“Well enough,” Tam said, puffing his pipe alight from one of the candles. “We still recover most of what we shoot, in daylight at least. They drag a lot of their dead away at night — fodder for the cookpots, I suppose — and we lose those.” The other men were digging out their pipes, too, from pouches and coat pockets, Cenn muttering that he seemed to have forgotten his pouch. Grumbling, Bran passed his across, his bald pate gleaming in the candlelight.
Perrin rubbed at his forehead. What had he meant to ask next? The stakes. There was fighting at the stakes in most attacks now, especially at night. How many times had the Trollocs nearly broken through? Three? Four? “Does everyone have a spear or some sort of polearm now? What’s left to make more?” Silence answered him, and he lowered his hand. The other men were staring at him.
“You asked that yesterday,” Abell said gently. “And Haral told you then there isn’t a scythe or pitchfork left in the village that hasn’t been made into a weapon. We’ve more than we have hands for, in truth.”
“Yes. Of course. It just slipped my mind.” A snatch of conversation from the Women’s Circle caught his ear.
“…mustn’t let the men know,” Marin was saying softly, as if repeating a caution voiced before.
“Of course not,” Daise snorted, but not much louder. “If the fools find out the women are on half rations, they’ll insist on eating the same, and we can’t…”
Perrin closed his eyes, tried to close his ears. Of course. The men did the fighting. The men had to keep their strength up. Simple. At least none of the women had had to fight yet. Except the two Aiel women, of course, and Faile, but she was smart enough to stay back when it came to pushing spears among the stakes. That was the reason he had found the bow for her. She had the heart of a leopard, and more courage than any two men.
“I think it is time you went to bed, Perrin,” Bran suggested. “You cannot go on like this, sleeping an hour here and an hour there.”
Scrubbing his beard vigorously, Perrin tried to look alert. “I’ll sleep later.” When it was over. “Are the men getting enough sleep? I’ve seen some sitting up when they should be —”
The front door banged open to admit skinny Dannil Lewin out of the night, bow in hand and all in a lather. He wore one of the swords from the barrel on his hip; Tam had been giving classes when he had the time, and sometimes one of the Warders did as well.
Before Dannil could open his mouth, Daise snapped, “Were you raised in a barn, Dannil Lewin?”
“You can certainly treat my door a little more gently.” Marin divided her meaning look between the lanky man and Daise, a reminder that it was her door.
Dannil ducked his head, clearing his throat. “Pardon, Mistress al’Vere,” he said hastily. “Pardon, Wisdom. Sorry to burst in, but I’ve a message for Perrin.” He hurried to the table of men as if afraid the women would stop him again. “The Whitecloaks brought in a man who wants to talk to you, Perrin. He won’t talk to anybody else. He’s hurt bad, Perrin. They only brought him to the edge of the village. I don’t think he could make it as far as the inn.”
Perrin pushed himself to his feet. “I’m coming.” Not another attack, at any rate.
They were worst at night.
Faile snatched up her bow and joined him before he reached the door. And Aram stood up, hesitating, from the shadows on the foot of the stairs. Sometimes Perrin forgot the man was there, he kept so still. He looked odd with that sword strapped on his back atop his grimy, yellowstriped Tinker coat, his eyes so bright, hardly ever seeming to blink; and his face without expression. Neither Raen or Ila had spoken to their grandson since the day he picked up that sword. Nor to Perrin, either.
“If you’re coming, come,” he said gruffly, and Aram fell in at his heels. The man followed him like a hound whenever he was not pestering Tam or Ihvon or Tomas to teach him that sword. It was as if he had replaced his family and people with Perrin. Perrin would have done without the responsibility if he could, but there it was.
Moonlight shone down on thatched roofs. Few houses had a light in more than one window. Stillness clung to the village. Some thirty of the Companions stood guard outside the inn with their bows, as many wearing swords as could find them; everyone had adopted that name, and Perrin found himself using it, too, to his private disgust. The reason for guards on the inn, or wherever Perrin was, lay on the Green, no longer so crowded with sheep and cows. Campfires crowded above the Winespring, beyond where that fool wolfhead banner hung limp now, bright pools in the darkness surrounded by pale cloaks gleaming with the moon.
No one had wanted Whitecloaks in their homes, already crowded, and Bornhald did not want his soldiers split up in any case. The man seemed to think the village would turn on him and his men any moment; if they followed Perrin, they must be Darkfriends. Even Perrin’s eyes could not make out faces around the fires, but he thought he could feel Bornhald’s stare, waiting, hating.
Dannil readied ten Companions to escort Perrin, all young men who should have been laughing and carousing with him, all with bows ready to see him safe. Aram did not join them as Dannil led the way down the dark, dirt street; it was Perrin he was with and no one else. Faile kept hard by Perrin’s side, dark eyes shining in the moonlight, scanning the surroundings as though she were his whole protection.
Where the Old Road entered Emond’s Field the blocking wagons had been drawn aside to admit the Whitecloak patrol, twenty snowycloaked men with lances who sat their horses in burnished armor, no less impatient than their stamping
mounts. They stood out in the night for any eye, and most Trollocs could see as well in darkness as Perrin, but the Whitecloaks insisted on their patrols. Sometimes their scouting had brought warnings, and maybe their harassment kept the Trollocs a little off balance. It would have been good, though, if he had known what they were doing before it was done.
A cluster of villagers and farmers wearing bits of old armor and a few rusty helmets stood clustered around a man in a farmer’s coat lying in the roadway. They gave way for Faile and him, and he went to one knee beside the mart.
The odor of blood was strong; sweat glistened on the man’s moonshadowed face. A thumbthick Trolloc arrow like a small spear was stuck through his chest. “Perrin — Goldeneyes,” he muttered hoarsely, laboring for breath. “Must — get through — to Perrin — Goldeneyes.”
“Has someone sent for one of the Aes Sedai?” Perrin demanded, lifting the man as gently as he could, cradling his head. He did not listen for the answer; he did not think this man would last till an Aes Sedai came. “I am Perrin.”
“Goldeneyes? I — cannot see — very well.” His wide, wild stare was right at Perrin’s face; if he could see at all, the fellow must see his eyes shining golden in the dark.
“I am Perrin Goldeneyes,” he said reluctantly.
The man seized his collar, pulling his face close with surprising strength. “We are — coming. Sent to — tell you. We are co —” His head fell back, eyes staring at nothing now.
“The Light be with his soul,” Faile murmured, slinging her bow across her back.After a moment Perrin pried the man’s fingers loose. “Does anyone know him?” The Two Rivers men exchanged glances, shook their heads. Perrin looked up at the mounted Whitecloaks. “Did he say anything else while you were bringing him in? Where did you find him?”
Jaret Byar stared down at him, gauntfaced and holloweyed, an image of death. The other Whitecloaks looked away, but Byar always made himself meet Perrin’s yellow eyes, especially at night, when they glowed. Byar growled under his breath
— Perrin heard “Shadowspawn!” — and booted his horse in the ribs. The patrol galloped into the village, as eager to be away from Perrin as from Trollocs. Aram stared after them, expressionless, one hand over his shoulder to finger his sword hilt.
“They said they found him three or four miles south.” Dannil hesitated, then added, “They say the Trollocs are all scattered out in little bunches, Perrin. Maybe they’re finally giving up.”
Perrin laid the stranger back down. We are coming. “Keep a close watch. Maybe some family who tried to hold on to their farm is finally coming in.” He did not believe anyone could have survived out there this long, but it might be so. “Don’t shoot anybody by mistake.” He staggered to his feet, and Faile put a hand on his arm.
“It is time you were in bed, Perrin. You have to sleep sometime.”
He only looked at her. He should have made her stay in Tear. Somehow, he should have made her. If he had only thought well enough he could have.
One of the runners, a curlyhaired boy about chesthigh, slipped through the Two Rivers men to tug at Perrin’s sleeve. Perrin did not know him; there were many families in from the countryside. “There’s something moving in the Westwood, Lord Perrin. They sent me to tell you.”
“Don’t call me that,” Perrin told him sharply. If he did not stop the children, the Companions were going to start using it, too. “Go tell them I will be there.” The boy darted away.
“You belong in your bed,” Faile said firmly. “Tomas can handle any attack very well.”
“It isn’t an attack, or the boy would have said so, and somebody would be sounding Cenn’s bugle.”
She hung on to his arm, trying to pull him toward the inn, and so she was dragged along when he started the opposite way. After a few futile minutes she gave up and pretended she had been merely holding his arm all along. But she muttered to herself. She still seemed to think that if she spoke softly enough he could not hear. She began with “foolish,” “muleheaded,” and “musclebrained”; after that it escalated. It was quite a little procession, her muttering at him, Aram heeling him, Dannil and the ten Companions surrounding him like a guard of honor. If he had not been so tired, he would have felt a proper fool.
There were guards spaced in small clusters all along the sharp stake fence to watch the night, each with a boy for a runner. At the west end of the village the men on guard were all gathered up against the inside of the broad barrier, fingering spears and bows as they peered toward the Westwood. Even with the moonlight, the trees had to be blackness in their eyes.
Tomas’s cloak seemed to make parts of him vanish in the night. Bain and Chiad were with him; for some reason the two Maidens had spent every night at this end of Emond’s Field since Loial and Gaul left. “I’d not have bothered you,” the Warder said to Perrin, “but there only seems to be one out there, and I thought you might be able to…”
Perrin nodded. Everyone knew about his vision, especially in darkness. The Two Rivers people seemed to think it something special, something that marked him out an idiot hero. What the Warders thought, or the Aes Sedai, he had no idea. He was too tired to care tonight. Seven days, and how many attacks?
The edge of the Westwood lay five hundred paces away. Even to his eyes the trees ran together in shadows. Something moved. Something big enough to be a Trolloc. A big shape carrying. The burden lifted an arm. A human. A tall shadow
carrying a human.
“We will not shoot!” he shouted. He wanted to laugh; in fact, he realized he was laughing. “Come on! Come on, Loial!”
The dim shape lumbered forward faster than a man could run, resolving into the Ogier, speeding toward the village, carrying Gaul.
Two Rivers men shouted encouragement as if it were a race. “Run, Ogier! Run!
Run!” Perhaps it was a race; more than one assault had come out of those woods.
Short of the stakes Loial slowed with a lurch; there was barely room for his thick legs to edge through the barrier sideways. Once on the village side, he let the Aielman down and sank to the ground, leaning back against the hedge, panting, tufted ears drooping wearily. Gaul limped on one leg until he could sit, too, with Bain and Chiad both fussing over his left thigh, where his breeches were ripped and black with dry blood. He only had two spears left, and his quiver gaped emptily. Loial’s axe was gone, too.
“You fool Ogier,” Perrin laughed fondly. “Going off like that. I ought to let Daise Congar switch you for a runaway. At least you’re alive. At least you’re back.” His voice sank at that. Alive. And back in Emond’s Field.
“We did it, Perrin,” Loial panted, a tired drumlike boom. “Four days ago. We closed the Waygate. It will take the Elders or an Aes Sedai to open it again.”
“He carried me most of the way from the mountains,” Gaul said. “A Nightrunner and perhaps fifty Trollocs chased us the first three days, but Loial outran them.” He was trying to push the Maidens away without much success.
“Lie still, Shaarad,” Chiad snapped, “or I will say I have touched you armed and allow you to choose how your honor stands.” Faile gave a delighted laugh. Perrin did not understand, but the remark reduced the imperturbable Aielman to splutters. He let the Maidens tend his leg.
“Are you all right, Loial?” Perrin asked. “Are you hurt?”
The Ogier pulled himself up with an obvious effort, swaying for a moment like a tree about to fall. His ears still hung limp. “No, I am not hurt, Perrin. Only tired. Do not worry yourself about me. A long time out of the stedding. Visits are not enough.” He shook his head as if his thoughts had wandered. His wide hand engulfed Perrin’s shoulder. “I will be fine after a little sleep.” He lowered his voice. For an Ogier, he did; it was still a huge bumblebee rumble. “It is very bad out there, Perrin. We followed the last bands down, for the most part. We locked the gate, but I think there must be several thousand Trollocs in the Two Rivers already, and maybe as many as fifty Myrddraal.”
“Not so,” Luc announced loudly. He had galloped up along the edge of the houses from the direction of the North Road. He reined his rearing black stallion to a flashy halt, forehooves pawing. “You are no doubt fine at singing to trees, Ogier, but fighting Trollocs is something different. I estimate less than a thousand now. A formidable force to be sure, but nothing these stout defenses and brave men cannot hold at bay. Another trophy for you, Lord Perrin Goldeneyes.” Laughing, he tossed a bulging cloth bag at Perrin. The bottom gleamed darkly wet in the moonlight.
Perrin caught it out of the air and hurled it well over the stakes despite its weight. Four or five Trolloc heads, no doubt, and perhaps a Myrddraal. The man
brought in his trophies every night, still seeming to expect them to be put up for everyone to admire. A bunch of the Coplins and Congars had given him a feast the night he came in with a pair of Fades’ heads.
“Do I also know nothing of fighting?” Gaul demanded, struggling to his feet. “I say there are several thousand.”
Luc’s teeth showed white in a smile. “How many days have you spent in the Blight, Aiel? I have spent many.” Perhaps it was more snarl than smile. “Many. Believe what you wish, Goldeneyes. The endless days will bring what they bring, as they always have.” He pulled the stallion up on its hind legs again to whirl about, and galloped in among the houses and the trees that had once been the rim of the Westwood. The Two Rivers men shifted uneasily, peering after him or out into the night.
“He is wrong,” Loial said. “Gaul and I saw what we saw.” His face sagged wearily, broad mouth turned down and long eyebrows drooping on his cheeks. No wonder, if he had carried Gaul for three or four days.
“You have done a lot, Loial,” Perrin said, “you and Gaul both. A great thing. I am afraid your bedroom has half a dozen Tinkers in it now, but Mistress al’Vere will make you up a pallet. It is time for you to get some of that sleep you want.”
“And time for you as well, Perrin Aybara.” Scudding clouds made moonshadows play across Faile’s bold nose and high cheekbones. She was so beautiful. But her voice was firm enough for a wagon bed. “If you do not go now, I will have Loial carry you. You can hardly stand.”
Gaul was having trouble walking with his wounded leg. Bain supported him from one side. He tried to stop Chiad from taking the other, but she murmured something that sounded like “gai’shain” in a threatening way, and Bain laughed, and the Aielman allowed them both to help him, growling furiously to himself. Whatever the Maidens were going on about, it did have Gaul in a taking.
Tomas clapped Perrin on the shoulder. “Go, man. Everyone needs to sleep.” He himself sounded good for three more days without it.
Perrin nodded.
He let Faile guide him back to the Winespring Inn with Loial and the Aiel following, and Aram, and Dannil and the ten Companions encircling him. He was not sure when the others fell away, but somehow he and Faile were alone in his room on the second floor of the inn.
“Whole families are making do with no more space than this,” he muttered. A candle burned on the stone mantel over the small fireplace. Others did without, but Marin lit one here as soon as it turned dark so he would not have to be bothered. “I can sleep outside with Dannil and Ban and the others.”
“Do not be an idiot,” Faile said, making it sound affectionate. “If Alanna and Verin each has her own room, you should, too.”
He realized she had his coat off and was untying the laces of his shirt. “I am not too tired to undress myself.” He pushed her gently outside.
“You take everything off,” she ordered. “Everything, do you hear? You cannot sleep properly fully dressed, the way you seem to think.”
“I will,” he promised. When he had the door closed, he did tug off his boots before blowing out the candle and lying down. Marin would not like dirty boots on her coverlet.
Thousands, Gaul and Loial said. Yet how much could the two of them have seen, hiding on the way into the mountains, fleeing on the way back? Maybe one thousand at most, Luc claimed, but Perrin could not make himself trust the man for all the trophies he brought in. Scattered, according to the Whitecloaks. How close could they have come, armor and cloaks shining in the darkness like lanterns?
There was a way to see for himself, perhaps. He had avoided the wolf dream since his last visit; the desire to hunt down this Slayer rose up whenever he thought of going back, and his responsibilities lay here in Emond’s Field. But now, perhaps… Sleep rolled in while he was still considering.
He stood on the Green bathed by an afternoon sun low in the sky, a few white clouds drifting. There were no sheep or cattle around the tall pole where a breeze ruffled the red wolfhead banner, though a bluefly buzzed past his face. No people among the thatched houses. Small piles of dry wood atop ashes marked the Whitecloaks’ fires; he had rarely seen anything burning in the wolf dream, only what was ready to burn or already charred. No ravens in the sky.
As he scanned for the birds, a patch of sky darkened, became a window to somewhere else. Egwene stood among a crowd of women, fear in her eyes; slowly the women knelt around her. Nynaeve was one of them, and he believed he saw Elayne’s redgold hair. That window faded and was replaced. Mat stood naked and bound, snarling; an odd spear with a black shaft had been thrust across his back behind his elbows, and a silver medallion, a foxhead, hung on his chest. Mat vanished, and it was Rand. Perrin thought it was Rand. He wore rags and a rough cloak, and a bandage covered his eyes. The third window disappeared; the sky was only sky, empty except for the clouds.
Perrin shivered. These wolfdream visions never seemed to have any real connection to anything he knew. Maybe here, where things could change so easily, worry over his friends became something he could see. Whatever they were, he was wasting time fretting at them.
He was not surprised to find he wore a blacksmith’s long leather vest and no shirt, but when he put a hand to his belt, he found the hammer, not his axe. Frowning, he concentrated on the long halfmoon blade and thick spike. That was what he needed now. That was what he was now. The hammer changed slowly, as if resisting, but when the axe finally hung in the thick loop, it kept shining dangerously. Why did it fight him so? He knew what he wanted. A filled quiver appeared on his other hip, a longbow in his hand, a leather bracer on his left forearm.
Three landblurring strides took him where the nearest Trolloc camps supposedly
lay, three miles from the village. The last step landed him among nearly a dozen tall heaps of wood laid on old ashes amid trampleddown barley, the logs mixed with broken chairs and table legs and even a farmhouse door. Great black iron cauldrons stood ready to be hung over the laid cook fires. Empty cauldrons, of course, though he knew what would be cut up into them, what would be spitted on the thick iron rods stretched over some of the fires. How many Trollocs would these fires serve? There were no tents, and the blankets scattered about, filthy and stinking of old acrid Trolloc sweat, were no real guide; many Trollocs slept like animals, uncovered on the ground, even hollowing out a hole to lie in.
In smaller steps that covered no more than a hundred paces each, the land seeming only to haze, he circled Emond’s Field, from farm to farm, pasture to barley field to rows of tabac, through scattered copses of trees, along cart tracks and footpaths, finding more and more clusters of waiting Trolloc fires as he slowly spiraled outward. Too many. Hundreds of fires. That had to mean several thousand Trollocs. Five thousand or ten or twice that — it would make little difference to Emond’s Field if they all came at once.
Farther south the signs of Trollocs vanished. Signs of their immediate presence, at least. Few farmhouses or barns stood unburned. Scattered fields of charred stubble remained where barley or tabac had been torched; others had great swathes trampled through the crops. No reason for it but the joy of destruction; the people had been long gone when most of it was done. Once he lighted in the midst of large patches of ash, some charred wagon wheels still showing hints of bright color here and there. The site of the Tuatha’an caravan’s destruction pained him even more than the farmhouses. The Way of the Leaf should have a chance. Somewhere. Not here. Not letting himself look, he leaped south a mile or more.
Eventually he came to Deven Ride, rows of thatchroofed houses surrounding a green and a pond fed by a spring walled ’round with stone, the spillover splashing from cuts long since worn deeper than they had been made. The inn at the head of the green, the Goose and Pipe, was roofed with thatch, too, yet a little larger than the Winespring Inn, though Deven Ride surely had even fewer visitors than Emond’s Field. The village was certainly no bigger. Wagons and carts drawn close by every house spoke of farmers who had fled here with their families. Other wagons blocked the streets and the spaces between the houses all the way around the edge of the village. The precautions were not enough to have halted even one of the assaults made on Emond’s Field the last seven days.
In three circuits around the village Perrin found only half a dozen Trolloc camps. Enough to keep people in. Pen them until Emond’s Field was dealt with. Then the Trollocs could fall on Deven Ride at the Fades’ leisure. Perhaps he could find a way to get word to these villagers. If they fled south, they might find some way across the White River. Even trying to cross the trackless Forest of Shadows below the river was better than waiting to die…
The golden sun had not moved an inch. Time was different, here.
Running north as hard as he could, even Emond’s Field passed by in a blur. Watch Hill on its round prominence was bordered as Deven Ride had been with wagons and carts between the houses. A banner waved lazily in the breeze, on a tall pole in front of the White Boar on the hill’s crest. A red eagle flying across a field of blue. The Red Eagle had been the symbol of Manetheren. Perhaps Alanna or Verin had told ancient stories while they were in Watch Hill.
Here, too, he found only a few Trolloc camps, enough to pen the villagers. There was an easier way out from here than trying to cross the White, with its endless stretch of rapids.
On northward he ran, to Taren Ferry, on the bank of the Tarendrelle, which he had grown up calling the River Taren. Tall, narrow houses built on high stone foundations to escape the Taren’s yearly flooding when the snows melted in the Mountains of Mist. Nearly half those foundations supported only piles of ash and charred beams in that unchanging afternoon light. There were no wagons here, no signs of any defense. And no Trolloc camps that he could find. Perhaps no people remained here.
At the water’s edge stood a stout wooden dock, a heavy rope drooping as it arced across the swiftflowing river. The rope ran through iron rings on a flatdecked barge snugged against the dock. The ferry was still there, still usable.
A jump took him across the river, where wheel ruts scarred the bank and household objects lay about. Chairs and standmirrors, chests, even a few tables and a polished wardrobe with birds carved on the doors, all the things panicked people had tried to save, then abandoned to run faster. They would be spreading the word of what had happened here, what was happening in the Two Rivers. Some could have reached Baerlon by now, a hundred miles or more north, and surely the farms and villages between Baerlon and the river. Word spreading. In another month it might reach Caemlyn, and Queen Morgase with her Queen’s Guards and her power to raise armies. A month with luck. And as much to return, once Morgase believed. Too late for Emond’s Field. Maybe too late for the whole Two Rivers.
Still, it hardly made sense that the Trollocs had let anyone escape. Or the Myrddraal at any rate; Trollocs did not seem to think much beyond the moment. He would have thought destroying the ferry would have been the Fades’ first task. How could they be sure there were not enough soldiers at Baerlon to come down on them?
He bent to pick up a doll with a painted wooden face, and an arrow streaked through where his chest had been.
Springing out of his crouch he leaped up the bank, a blur streaking a hundred paces into the woods to crouch below a tall leatherleaf. Brush and floodtoppled trees woven with creepers covered the forest floor around him.
Slayer. Perrin had an arrow nocked, and wondered if he had drawn it from his quiver or simply thought it there. Slayer.
On the point of leaping away again, he paused. Slayer would know roughly
where he was. Perrin had followed the man’s blurring form easily enough; that elongated streak was clear if you were standing still. Twice now he had played the other’s game and nearly lost. Let Slayer play his this time. He waited.
Ravens swooped above the treetops, searching and calling. No movement to give him away; not a twitch. Only his eyes moved, studying the forest around him. A vagrant puff of air brought him a cold smell, human yet not, and he smiled. No sound save the ravens, though; this Slayer stalked well. But he was not used to being hunted. What else did Slayer forget beside smells? He surely would not expect Perrin to remain where he had landed. Animals ran from the hunter; even wolves ran.
A hint of movement, and for an instant a face appeared above a fallen pine some fifty paces away. The slanting light illuminated it clearly. Dark hair and blue eyes, a face all hard planes and angles, so reminiscent of Lan’s face. Except that in that brief glimpse Slayer licked his lips twice; his forehead was creased, and his eyes darted as they searched. Lan would not have let his worry show if he stood alone against a thousand Trollocs. Just an instant, and the face was gone again. The ravens darted and swirled above as if they shared Slayer’s anxiety, fearing to come below the treetops.
Perrin waited and watched, motionless. Silence. Only the cold smell to say he was not alone with the ravens overhead.
Slayer’s face appeared again, peering around a thickboled oak off to his left. Thirty paces. Oaks killed most of what grew close to them; only a few mushrooms and weedy things sprouted from the leafy mulch beneath its limbs. Slowly the man emerged into the open, boots making no sound.
In one motion Perrin drew and fired. The ravens screamed warning, and Slayer spun to take the broadhead shaft in his chest, but not through the heart. The man howled, clutching the arrow with both hands; black feathers rained down as the ravens beat their wings in a frenzy. And Slayer faded, him and his cry together, growing misty, transparent, vanishing. The ravens’ shrieks vanished as if severed with a knife; the arrow that had transfixed the man dropped to the ground. The ravens were gone, too.
With a second shaft halfdrawn, Perrin exhaled slowly, let off his tension on the bowstring. Was that how you died here? Simply fading away, gone forever?
“At least I finished him,” he muttered. And let himself be diverted in the process. Slayer was no part of why he had come to the wolf dream. At least the wolves were safe now. The wolves — and maybe a few others.
He stepped out of the dream…
…and woke staring at the ceiling, his shirt clinging sweatily. The moon gave a little light through the windows. There were fiddles playing somewhere in the village, a wild Tinker tune. They would not fight, but they had found a way to help, by keeping spirits up.
Slowly Perrin sat up, pulling on his boots in the palelit dark. How to do what he
had to do? It would be difficult. He had to be cunning. Only, he was not sure he had ever been cunning in his life. Standing, he stamped his feet to settle them in.
Sudden shouts outside and a fading clatter of hooves made him stride to the nearest window and throw up the sash. The Companions were milling about below. “What’s going on down there?”
Thirty faces turned up to him, and Ban al’Seen yelled, “It was Lord Luc, Lord Perrin. He nearly rode down Wil and Tell. I don’t think he even saw them. He was all hunched over in his saddle like he was hurt, and spurring that stallion for all he was worth, Lord Perrin.”
Perrin tugged at his beard. Luc had certainly not been wounded earlier. Luc… and Slayer? It was impossible. Darkhaired Slayer looked like Lan’s brother or cousin; if Luc, with his redgold hair, resembled anyone, maybe it was Rand a little. The two men could not have been more dissimilar. And yet That cold smell. They
did not smell the same, but both had an icy, hardly human scent. His ears picked up the sound of wagons being hauled out of the way down at the Old Road, shouts for haste. Even if Ban and the Companions ran, they would not catch the man now. Hooves galloped south hard.
“Ban,” he called, “if Luc shows up again, he’s to be put under guard and kept there.” He paused long enough to add, “And don’t call me that!” before hauling the sash down with a bang.
Luc and Slayer; Slayer and Luc. How could they be the same? It was impossible. But then, less than two years gone he had not really believed in Trollocs or Fades. Time enough to worry about it if he ever laid hands on the man again. Now there was Watch Hill and Deven Ride and… Some could be saved. Not everyone in the Two Rivers had to die.
On his way to the common room, he paused at the top of the stairs. Aram stood up from the bottom step, watching him, waiting to follow where he led. Gaul lay stretched out on a pallet near the fireplace with a bandage thick around his left thigh, apparently asleep. Faile and the Two Maidens sat crosslegged on the floor near him, talking softly. A much larger pallet lay on the far side of the room, but Loial sat on a bench with his legs stretched out so they would fit under one of the tables, nearly doubled over so he could scribble furiously with a pen by the light of a candle. No doubt he was recording what had happened on the journey to close the Waygate. And if Perrin knew Loial at all, the Ogier would have Gaul doing it all, whether he had or not. Loial did not seem to think anything he himself did was brave, or worth writing down. Except for them, the common room was empty. He could still hear those fiddles playing. He thought he recognized the tune. Not a Tinker song, now. “My Love Is a Wild Rose.”
Faile looked up at Perrin’s first step down, rising gracefully to meet him. Aram took his seat again when Perrin made no move toward the door.
“Your shirt is wet,” Faile said accusingly. “You slept in it, didn’t you? And your boots, I shouldn’t wonder. It has not been an hour since I left you. You march
yourself back upstairs before you fall down.”
“Did you see Luc leave?” he said. Her mouth tightened, but sometimes ignoring her was the only way. She managed to win too often when he argued with her.
“He came running through here a few minutes ago and dashed out through the kitchen,” she said finally. Those were the words; her tone said she was not finished with him and bed.
“Did he seem to be… injured?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “He staggered, and he was clutching something to his chest under his coat. A bandage, maybe. Mistress Congar is in the kitchen, but from what I heard he all but ran over her. How did you know?”
“I dreamed it.” Her tilted eyes took on a dangerous light. She must not be thinking. She knew about the wolf dream; did she expect him to explain where Bain and Chiad could hear, not to mention Aram and Loial? Well, maybe not Loial; he was so absorbed in his notes he would not have noticed a flock of sheep herded into the common room. “Gaul?”
“Mistress Congar gave him something to make him sleep, and a poultice for his leg. When the Aes Sedai wake in the morning, one of them will Heal him, if they think it serious enough.”
“Come sit down, Faile. I want you to do something for me.” She eyed him suspiciously, but let him lead her to a chair. When they were seated, he leaned across the table, trying to make his voice serious, but not urgent. On no account urgent. “I want you to take a message to Caemlyn for me. On the way, you can let Watch Hill know how things are here. Actually, it might be best if they crossed the Taren until it’s all done.” That had sounded properly casual; just a bit thrown in on the spur of the moment. “I want you to ask Queen Morgase to send us some of the Queen’s Guards. I know it’s a dangerous thing I’m asking, but Bain and Chiad can get you to Taren Ferry safely, and the ferry is still there.” Chiad stood up, staring at him anxiously. Why was she anxious?
“You will not have to leave him,” Faile told her. After a moment the Aiel woman nodded and resumed her seat beside Gaul. Chiad and Gaul? They were blood enemies. Nothing was making sense tonight.
“It is a long way to Caemlyn,” Faile went on quietly. Her eyes very intent on his, but her face could have been wood for all the expression it had. “Weeks to ride there, plus however long it might take to reach and convince Morgase, then more weeks to return with the Queen’s Guards.”
“We can hold out that long easily,” he told her. Burn me if I can’t lie as well as Mat! “Luc was right. There can’t be more than a thousand Trollocs still out there. The dream?” She nodded. At last she understood. “We can hold out here for a very long time, but in the meanwhile they’ll be burning crops and doing the Light knows what. We’ll need the Queen’s Guards to rid ourselves of them completely. You are the logical one to go. You know how to talk to a queen, being a queen’s cousin and all. Faile, I know what I’m asking is dangerous…” Not as dangerous as staying. “. . .
But once you reach the ferry, you’ll be on your way.”
He did not hear Loial approach until the Ogier laid his book of notes down in front of Faile. “I could not help overhearing, Faile. If you are going to Caemlyn, would you carry this? To keep it safe until I can come for it.” Squaring the volume up almost tenderly, he added, “They print many very fine books in Caemlyn. Forgive me for interrupting, Perrin.” But his teacup eyes were on her, not him. “Faile suits you. You should fly free, like a falcon.” Patting Perrin on the shoulder, he murmured in a deep rumble, “She should fly free,” then made his way to his pallet and lay down facing the wall.
“He is very tired,” Perrin said, attempting to make it seem just a comment. The fool Ogier could ruin everything! “If you leave tonight, you can be at Watch Hill by daybreak. You’ll have to swing to the east; the Trollocs are fewer there. This is very important to me… to Emond’s Field, I mean. Will you do it?”
She stared at him silently for so long he wondered if she meant to answer. Her eyes seemed to glisten. Then she got up and sat down on his lap, stroking his beard. “This needs trimming. I like it on you, but I do not want it down to your chest.”
He came close to gaping. She often changed the subject on him, but usually when she was losing an argument. “Faile, please. I need you to carry this message to Caemlyn.”
Her hand tightened in his beard, and her head swung as if she were arguing with herself inside her head. “I will go,” she said at last, “but I want a price. You always make me do things the hard way. In Saldaea, I would not have to be the one who asked. My price is… a wedding. I want to marry you,” she finished up in a rush.
“And I you.” He smiled. “We can say the betrothal vows in front of the Women’s Circle tonight, but I’m afraid the wedding has to wait a year. When you come back from Caemlyn —” She very nearly yanked a handful of beard out of his chin.
“I will have you for husband tonight,” she said in fierce, low tones, “or I will not go until I do!”
“If there was any way, I would,” he protested. “Daise Congar would crack my head if I wanted to go against custom. For the love of the Light, Faile, just carry the message, and I’ll wed you the very first day I can.” He would. If that day ever came. Suddenly she was very intent on his beard, smoothing it and not meeting his eyes. She started speaking slowly but picked up speed like a runaway horse. “I… just happened to mention… . in passing… I just mentioned to Mistress al’Vere how we had been traveling together — I don’t know how it came up — and she said — and Mistress Congar agreed with her — not that I talked to everybody! — she said that we probably — certainly — could be considered betrothed already under your customs, and the year is just to make sure you really do get on well together — which we do, as anyone can see — and here I am being as forward as some Domani hussy or one of those Tairen galls — if you ever even think of Berelain — oh,
Light, I’m babbling, and you won’t even —”
He cut her off by kissing her as thoroughly as he knew how.
“Will you marry me?” he said breathlessly when he was done. “Tonight?” He must have done ever better with the kiss than he thought; he had to repeat himself six times, with her giggling against his throat and demanding he say it again, before she seemed to understand.
Which was how he found himself not half an hour later kneeling opposite her in the common room, in front of Daise Congar and Marin al’Vere, Alsbet Luhhan and Neysa Ayellin and all the Women’s Circle. Loial had been roused to stand for him with Aram, and Bain and Chiad stood for Faile. There were no flowers to put in her hair or his, but Bain, guided by Marin, tucked a long red wedding ribbon around his neck, and Loial threaded another through Faile’s dark hair, his thick fingers surprisingly deft and gentle. Perrin’s hands trembled as he cupped hers.
“I, Perrin Aybara, do pledge you my love, Faile Bashere, for as long as I live.” For as long as I live and after. “What I possess in this world I give to you.” A horse, an axe, a bow. A hammer. Not much to gift a bride. I give you life, my love. It’s all I have. “I will keep and hold you, succor and tend you, protect and shelter you, for all the days of my life.” I can’t keep you; the only way I can protect you is to send you away. “I am yours, always and forever.” By the time he finished, his hands were shaking visibly.
Faile moved her hands to hold his. “I, Zarine Bashere…” That was a surprise; she hated that name. “…do pledge you my love, Perrin Aybara…” Her hands never trembled at all.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 54
(Female Silhouettes) Into the Palace
Seated on the tail end of the highwheeled cart trundling up a twisty Tanchican street behind four sweating men, Elayne scowled through the grimy veil that covered her from eyes to chin, kicking her bare feet irritably. Every lurch over the paving stones jarred her to the top of her skull; the more she braced herself by holding on to the rough wooden planks of the cart bed, the worse it was. It did not seem to bother Nynaeve much; she jounced about like Elayne, but, frowning slightly and eyes looking inward, she appeared hardly aware of it. And Egeanin, crowded against Nynaeve on the other side, veiled and with her dark hair in braids to her shoulders, rode each jolt easily, arms folded. Finally Elayne emulated the Seanchan woman; she could not avoid swaying into Nynaeve, but the ride no longer felt as if her lower teeth were going to be driven through the upper.
She would have walked gladly, even barefoot, but Bayle Domon had said it would not look right; people might wonder why women were not riding when there was plenty of room, and the last thing they wanted was anyone thinking about them twice. Of course he was not being bounced about like a sack of turnips; he was walking, at the head of the cart with ten of the twenty sailors he had brought along for escort. More would seem suspicious, he claimed. She suspected he would not have had so many if not for her and the other two women.
The cloudless sky still stretched gray overhead, though first light had crept on before they set out; the streets were still largely empty, and silent except for the rumble of the cart and the creak of its axle. When the sun topped the horizon people would begin to venture out, but now the few she saw were knots of men in baggy trousers and dark cylindrical caps, scuttling along with the furtive air of having been up to no good while dark had held. The old piece of canvas tossed over the cart’s load was carefully arranged so anyone could see it covered only three large baskets, yet even so one or another of those small clusters would pause like a pack of dogs, veiled faces all coming up together, eyes swiveling to follow the cart. Apparently twenty men with boarding swords and cudgels were too many to face, because all eventually hurried on.
The wheels dropped into a large hole where paving stones had been pried up in one of the riots; the cart fell away beneath her. She almost bit her tongue as she and the cart bed met again with a hard smack. Egeanin and her casual armfolding! Grabbing the edge of the cart bed, she frowned at the Seanchan woman. And found her tightlipped and holding on with both hands also.
“Not quite the same as standing on deck after all,” Egeanin said with a shrug. Nynaeve grimaced slightly and tried to edge away from the Seanchan woman,
though how she might manage it without climbing into Elayne’s lap was difficult to see. “I am going to speak to Master Bayle Domon,” she muttered meaningfully, just
as if the cart had not been her suggestion in the first place. Another lurch clicked her teeth shut.
They all three wore drab brown wool, thinwoven but coarse and not very clean, poor farm women’s dresses like shapeless sacks compared with the clinging silks of Rendra’s taste. Refugees from the countryside earning a meal as they could; that was what they were supposed to be. Egeanin’s relief at her first sight of the dresses had been quite evident, and almost as strange as her presence on the cart. Elayne would not have thought the latter conceivable.
There had been quite a lot of discussion — that was what the men called it — in the Chamber of Falling Blossoms, but she and Nynaeve had countered most of their fool objections and ignored the rest. The two of them had to enter the Panarch’s Palace, and as soon as possible. That was when Domon had raised another objection, one not as silly as the rest.
“You can no go into the palace alone,” the bearded smuggler muttered, staring at his fists on the table. “You say you will no channel unless you must, no to warn these Black Aes Sedai.” Neither of them had seen any need to mention one of the Forsaken. “Then you must have muscle to swing a club if the need do arise, and eyes to watch your backs will no be amiss either. I am known there, to the servants. I did take gifts to the old Panarch too. I will go with you.” Shaking his head, he growled, “You do make me stretch my neck on the headsman’s block because I did leave you at Falme. Fortune prick me if you do no! Well, it do be done now; you can no object to this! I will go in with you.”
“You are a fool, Illianer,” Juilin said contemptuously before she or Nynaeve could open their mouths. “You think the Taraboners will allow you to wander about the palace as you wish? A scruffy smuggler from Illian? I know the ways of servants, how to duck my head and make some emptyheaded noble think…” He cleared his throat hastily, and hurried on without looking at Nynaeve — or at her! “I should be the one to go with them.”
Thom laughed at the other two men. “Do you think either of you could pass for a Taraboner? I can; these will do in a pinch.” He knuckled his long mustaches. “Besides, you cannot run around the Panarch’s Palace carrying cudgel or staff. A more… subtle… method of protection is needed.” He flourished a hand, and a knife suddenly appeared, spinning through his fingers to vanish just as quickly; up his sleeve, Elayne believed.
“You all know what you have to do,” Nynaeve snapped, “and you cannot do it trying to watch over us like a pair of geese for market!” Taking a deep breath, she went on, in a milder tone. “If there was a way one of you could come along, I’d appreciate the extra eyes if nothing else, but it cannot be. We have to go alone, it seems, and that is all there is to it.”
“I can accompany you,” Egeanin announced suddenly from where Nynaeve had made her stand in the corner of the room. Everybody turned to look at her; she frowned back as though not quite certain herself. “These women are Darkfriends.
They should be brought to justice.”
Elayne was simply startled at the offer, but Nynaeve, the corners of her mouth going white, looked ready to drub the woman for it. “You think we would trust you, Seanchan?” she said coldly. “Before we leave, you’ll be locked securely in a storeroom however much talk it —”
“I give oath by my hope of a higher name,” Egeanin broke in, putting her hands over her heart, one atop the other, “that I will not betray you in any way, that I will obey you and guard your backs until you are safely out of the Panarch’s Palace.” Then she bowed three times, deeply and formally. Elayne had no idea what “hope of a higher name” meant, but the Seanchan woman certainly made it sound binding. “She can do it,” Domon said with slow reluctance. He eyed Egeanin and shook
his head. “Fortune prick me if there be more than two or three of my men I would wager on, coin for coin, against her.”
Nynaeve frowned at her hand gripping half a dozen of her long braids, then quite deliberately gave them a yank.
“Nynaeve,” Elayne told her firmly, “you yourself said you would like another pair of eyes, and I definitely would. Besides which, if we are to do this without channeling, I would not mind having someone along who can handle a nosy guard if need be. I am not up to thumping men with my fists, and neither are you. You remember how she can fight.”
Nynaeve glared at Egeanin, frowned at Elayne, and then stared at the men as if they had plotted this behind her back. At last, though, she nodded.
“Good,” Elayne said. “Master Domon, that means three sets of dresses, not two.
Now, the three of you had best be off. We want to be on our way by daybreak.” The cart jerking to a halt brought Elayne out of her reverie.
Dismounted Whiteeloaks were questioning Domon. Here the street ran into a square behind the Panarch’s Palace, a much smaller square than the one in front. Beyond, the palace stood in piles of white marble, slender towers banded with lacy stonework, snowy domes capped with gold and topped by golden spires or weather vanes. The streets to either side were much wider than most in Tanchico, and straighter.
The slow clopclop of a horse’s hooves on the square’s broad paving stones announced another rider, a tall man in burnished helmet, armor gleaming beneath his white cloak with its golden sunburst and crimson shepherd’s crook. Elayne put her head down; the four knots of rank under the flaring sun told her this was Jaichim Carridin. The man had never seen her, but if he thought she was staring he might wonder why. The hooves passed on along the square without pausing.
Egeanin had her face right down, too, but Nynaeve frowned openly after the Inquisitor. “That man is very worried about something,” she murmured. “I hope he’s not heard —”
“The Panarch is dead!” a man’s voice shouted from somewhere across the square. “They’ve killed her!”
There was no telling who had shouted, or where. The streets Elayne could see were blocked by Whitecloaks on horses.
Looking back down the street the cart had just climbed, she wished the guards would question Domon more quickly. People were gathering down at the first bend, milling about and peering up toward the square. It seemed Thom and Juilin had made a good job of seeding their rumors during the night. Now if only things did not erupt while they sat out here in the middle of it. If a riot started now… The only thing that kept her hands from shaking was her double grip on the cart bed. Light, a mob out here and the Black Ajah inside, maybe Moghedien… I’m so frightened my mouth is dry. Nynaeve and Egeanin were watching the crowd growing down the street, too, and not even blinking, much less trembling. I will not be a coward. I will not!
The cart rumbled forward, and she heaved a sigh of relief. It took her a moment to realize she had heard twin echoes from the other two women.
Before gates not much wider than the cart Domon was questioned again, by men in pointed helmets, their breastplates embossed with a tree painted gold. Soldiers of the Panarch’s Legion. The questions were shorter this time; Elayne thought she saw a small purse change hands, and then they were inside, rumbling across the roughpaved yard outside the kitchens. Except for Domon, the sailors remained out with the soldiers.
Elayne hopped down as soon as the cart halted, working her bare feet on the paving; the uneven stones were hard. It was difficult to believe the thin sole of a slipper could make so much difference. Egeanin scrambled up into the cart to pass the baskets out, Nynaeve taking the first on her back, one hand twisted behind her underneath, the other over her shoulder to grip the rim. Long white peppers, a little wizened by their journey all the way from Saldaea, filled the baskets nearly to the top.
As Elayne was taking hers, Domon came to the end of the cart and pretended to inspect the ice peppers. “The Whitecloaks and the Panarch’s Legion do be close to blows, it do appear,” he murmured, fingering peppers. “That lieutenant did say the Legion could protect the Panarch themselves if most of the Legion had no been sent to the ring forts. Jaichim Carridin do have access to the Panarch, but no the Lord Captain of the Legion. And they are no pleased that all the guards inside do be Civil Watch. A suspicious man might say someone do want the Panarch’s guards to watch each other more than anything else.”
“That is good to know,” Nynaeve murmured without looking at him. “I’ve always said you can learn useful things listening to men’s gossip.”
Domon grunted sourly. “I will take you inside; then I must go back to my men to make sure they do no get caught up in the mob.” Every sailor from every ship Domon had in port was out in the streets around the palace.
Hefting her own basket on her back, Elayne followed the other two women behind him, keeping her head down and wincing at every step until she was on the
reddishbrown tiles of the kitchen. The smells of spices and cooking meat and sauces filled the room.
“Ice peppers for the Panarch,” Domon announced. “A gift from Bayle Domon, a good shipowner of this city.”
“More of the ice peppers?” a stout, darkbraided woman in a white apron and the everpresent veil said, barely looking up from a silver tray where she was arranging an ornately folded white napkin among dishes of thin, golden Sea Folk porcelain. There were a dozen or more aproned women in the kitchen, as well as a pair of boys turning dripping roasts on spits in two of the six fireplaces, but clearly she was the chief cook. “Well, the Panarch, she seems to have enjoyed the last. Into the storeroom there.” She gestured vaguely toward one of the doors on the far side of the room. “I have no time to bother with you now.”
Elayne kept her eyes on the floor as she trailed after Nynaeve and Egeanin, sweating, and not for the heat of the iron stoves and fireplaces. A skinny woman in green silk not of Tarabon cut stood beside one of the wide tables, scratching the ears of a scrawny gray cat as it lapped cream from a porcelain dish. The cat named her, as well as her narrow face and wide nose. Marillin Gemalphin, once of the Brown Ajah, now of the Black. If she looked up from that cat, if she really became aware of them, there would be no need for channeling for her to know that two of them could; this close the woman would be able to sense the ability itself.
Sweat dripped from the end of Elayne’s nose by the time she pushed the storeroom door shut behind her with a hip. “Did you see her?” she demanded in a low voice, letting her basket halffall to the floor. Fretwork carved through the plastered wall just under the ceiling let in dim light from the kitchen. Rows of tall shelves filled the floor of the large room, laden with sacks and net bags of vegetables and large jars of spice. Barrels and casks stood everywhere, and a dozen dressed lambs and twice as many geese hung on hooks. According to the sketchy floorplan Domon and Thom had drawn between them, this was the smallest storeroom for food in the palace. “This is disgusting,” she said. “I know Rendra keeps a full kitchen, but at least she buys what she needs as she can. These people have been feasting while —”
“Hold your concern until you can do something about it,” Nynaeve told her in a sharp whisper. She had upended her basket on the floor and was stripping off her rough farm woman’s dress. Egeanin was already down to her shift. “I did see her. If you want her to come in here to see what the noise is about, keep talking.”
Elayne sniffed, but let it pass. She had not been making that much noise. Pulling off her own dress, she dumped the peppers out of her basket, and what had been hidden under them as well. Among other things, a dress of white belted in green, finespun wool embroidered above the left breast with a green tree of spreading branches atop the outline of a trefoil leaf. Her grimy veil was replaced by a clean one, of linen scraped nearly as sheer as silk. White slippers with padded soles were welcome on feet bruised by that walk from cart to kitchen.
The Seanchan woman had been the first out of her old clothes, but she was the last into her white garment, muttering all the while about “indecent” and “serving girl,” which made no sense. The dresses were servants’ dresses; the whole point was that servants could go anywhere and a palace had too many for anyone to notice three more. And as for indecent… Elayne could remember being a touch hesitant about wearing the Tarabon style in public, but she had become used to it soon enough, and even this thin wool could not cling as silk did. Egeanin seemed to have very strict ideas of modesty.
Eventually, though, the woman had done up her last lace, and the farm clothes had been stuffed into the baskets and covered with ice peppers.
Marillin Gemalphin was gone from the kitchen, though the raggedyeared gray cat still lapped cream on the table. Elayne and the other two started for the door that led deeper into the palace.
One of the undercooks was frowning at the cat, fist on her ample hips. “I would like to strangle this cat,” she muttered, pale brown braids swinging as she shook her head angrily. “It eats the cream, and because I put the drop of cream on the berries for my breakfast, I have the bread and water for my meals!”
“Count yourself lucky you are not out in the street, or swinging from the gallows.” The chief cook did not sound sympathetic. “If a lady says you have stolen, then you have stolen, even if it is the cream for her cats, yes? You, there!”
Elayne and her companions froze at the shout.
The darkbraided woman shook a long wooden spoon at them. “You come into my kitchen and stroll about as in the garden, you lazy sows you? You have come for the breakfast of the Lady Ispan, yes? If you do not have it there when she wakes, you will learn how to jump. Well?” She gestured at the silver tray she had been laboring over before, covered now with a snowy linen cloth.
There was no way to speak; if any one of them opened her mouth, her first words would show her no Taraboner. Thinking quickly, Elayne bobbed a servant’s curtsy and picked up the tray; a servant carrying something was going about her work and not likely to be stopped or told to do something else. Lady Ispan? Not an uncommon name in Tarabon, but there was an Ispan on the list of Black sisters.
“So you mock me, do you, you little cow you?” the stout woman roared, and started around the table waving her thick wooden spoon threateningly.
There was nothing to do without giving herself away; nothing but stay and be hit, or run. Elayne darted out of the kitchen with the tray, Nynaeve and Egeanin at her heels. The cook’s shouts followed them, but not the cook, thankfully. An image of the three of them running through the palace pursued by the stout woman made Elayne want to giggle hysterically. Mock her? She was sure that had been exactly the same curtsy servants had given her thousands of times.
More storerooms lined the narrow hallway leading away from the kitchen, and tall cupboards for brooms and mops, buckets and soaps, linens for tables, and all sorts of assorted things. Nynaeve found a fat feather duster in one. Egeanin took an
armful of folded towels from another, and a stout stone pestle out of a mortar in a third. She hid the pestle under the towels.
“A cudgel is sometimes handy,” she said when Elayne raised an eyebrow. “Especially when no one expects you to have it.”
Nynaeve sniffed but said nothing. She had hardly acknowledged Egeanin at all since agreeing to her presence.
Deeper in the palace the hallways broadened and heightened, the white walls carved with friezes and the ceilings set with gleaming arabesques of gold. Long, bright carpets ran along whitetiled floors. Ornate golden lamps on gilded stands gave light and the scent of perfumed oil. Sometimes the corridor opened into courtyards rounded by walks with slim, fluted columns, overlooked by balconies screened by filigreed stonework. Large fountains burbled; fish red and white and golden swam beneath lily pads with huge white flowers. Not at all like the city outside.
Occasionally they saw other servants, men and women, in white, tree and leaf embroidered on one shoulder, hurrying about their tasks, or men in the gray coats and steel caps of the Civil Watch carrying staffs or cudgels. No one spoke to them or even looked twice, not at three serving women obviously at their work.
At last they came to the narrow servants’ stairs marked on their sketchy map. “Remember,” Nynaeve said quietly, “if there are guards on her door, leave. If
she is not alone, leave. She is far from the most important reason we are here.” She took a deep breath, making herself look at Egeanin. “If you let anything happen to her—”
A trumpet sounded faintly from outside. A moment later a gong rang inside, and shouted orders drifted down the hall. Men in steel caps appeared for a moment down the hallway, running.
“Maybe we will not have to worry about guards on her door,” Elayne said. The riot had begun in the streets. Rumors spread by Thom and Juilin to gather the crowd. Domon’s sailors to egg them on. She regretted the necessity, but the disturbance would pull most of the guards out of the palace, maybe all with luck. Those people out there did not know it, but they fought in a battle to save their city from the Black Ajah and the world from the Shadow. “Egeanin should go with you, Nynaeve. Your part is the most important. If one of us needs someone to watch her back, it is you.”
“I’ve no need for a Seanchan!” Shouldering her duster like a pike, Nynaeve strode off down the hall. She really did not move like a servant. Not with that militant stride.
“Should we not be about our own task?” Egeanin said. “The riot will not hold attention completely for long.”
Elayne nodded. Nynaeve had passed out of sight around a corner.
The stairs were narrow and hidden in the wall, to keep servants as unseen as possible. The corridors on the second floor were much as those on the first, except
that doublepointed arches were almost as likely to give onto a stonelatticed balcony as onto a room. There seemed to be far fewer servants as they made their way to the west side of the palace, and none more than glanced at them. Wonderfully, the hallway outside the Panarch’s apartments was empty. No guards in front of the wide, treecarved doors set in a doublepeaked frame. Not that she had meant to retreat had there been guards, no matter what she had told Nynaeve, but it did make things simpler.
A moment later she was not so sure. She could feel someone channeling in those rooms. Not strong flows, but definitely the Power being woven, or maybe a weave maintained. Few women knew the trick of tying a weave.
“What is the matter?” Egeanin asked.
Elayne realized she had stopped. “One of the Black sisters is in there.” One, or more? Only one channeling, certainly. She pressed close to the doors. A woman was singing in there. She put her ear to the carved wood, heard raucous words, muffled yet clearly understandable.
“My breasts are round, and my hips are too. I can flatten a whole ship’s crew.”
Startled, she jerked back, porcelain dishes sliding on the tray under the cloth. Had she somehow come to the wrong room? No, she had memorized the sketch. Besides, in the entire palace the only doors carved with the tree led to the Panarch’s apartments.
“Then we must leave her,” Egeanin said. “You can do nothing without warning the others of your presence.”
“Perhaps I can. If they feel me channel, they will think it is whoever is in there.” Frowning, she bit her lower lip. How many were there? She could do at least three or four things at once with the Power, something only Egwene and Nynaeve could match. She ran down a list of Andoran queens who had shown courage in the face of great danger, until she realized it was a list of all the queens of Andor. I will be queen one day; I can be as brave as they. Readying herself, she said, “Throw open the doors, Egeanin, then drop down so I can see everything.” The Seanchan woman hesitated. “Throw open the doors.” Elayne’s own voice surprised her. She had not tried to make it anything, but it was quiet, calm, commanding. And Egeanin nodded, almost a bow, and immediately flung open both doors.
“My thighs are strong are strong as anchor chain. My kiss can burst —”
The darkbraided singer, standing wrapped in flows of Air to her neck and a soiled, wrinkled Taraboner gown of red silk, cut off short as the doors banged back. A frailappearing woman, lounging in pale blue of a highnecked Cairhienin cut on a long padded bench, ceased nodding her head to the song and leaped to her feet, outrage replacing the grin on her foxshaped face.
The glow of saidar already surrounded Temaile, but she did not have a chance. Appalled at what she saw, Elayne embraced the True Source and lashed out hard
with flows of Air, webbing her from shoulders to ankles, wove a shield of Spirit and slammed it between the woman and the Source. The glow around Temaile vanished, and she went flying across the bench as if she had been struck by a galloping horse, eyes rolling up into her head, to land unconscious on her back three paces away on the greenandgold carpet. The darkbraided woman gave a start as the flows around her winked out of existence, felt at herself in wondering disbelief as she stared from Temaile to Elayne and Egeanin.
Tying off the weave holding Temaile, Elayne hurried into the room, eyes searching for others of the Black Ajah. Behind her, Egeanin closed the doors after them. There did not seem to be anyone else. “Was she alone?” she demanded of the woman in red. The Panarch, by Nynaeve’s description. Nynaeve had mentioned something about a song.
“You are not… with them?” Amathera said hesitantly, dark eyes taking in their dresses. “You are Aes Sedai also?” She seemed willing to doubt that despite the evidence of Temaile. “But not with them?”
“Was she alone?” Elayne snapped, and Amathera gave a little jump.
“Yes. Alone. Yes, she…” The Panarch grimaced. “The others made me sit on my throne and speak the words they put into my mouth. It amused them to make me sometimes give justice, and sometimes pronouncements of horrible injustice, rulings that will cause strife for generations if I cannot put them aright. But her!” That fulllipped little mouth opened in a snarl. “Her they set to watch over me. She hurts me for no reason except to make me weep. She made me eat an entire trayful of white ice peppers and would not let me drink a drop until I begged on my knees while she laughed! In my dreams she hoists me to the top of the Tower of Morning by my ankles and lets me fall. A dream, but it seems real, and each time she lets me fall screaming a little nearer the ground. And she laughs! She makes me learn lewd dances, and filthy songs, and laughs when she tells me that before they leave she will make me sing and dance to entertain the —” With a shriek like a pouncing cat she threw herself across the bench onto the bound woman, slapping wildly, pummeling with her fists.
Egeanin, arms folded in front of the doors, seemed ready to let it go on, but Elayne wove flows of Air around Amathera’s waist. To her surprise she was able to lift her off the already senseless woman and set her on her feet. Perhaps learning how to handle those heavy weavings from Jorin had increased her strength.
Amathera kicked at Temaile, turning her glare on Elayne and Egeanin when her slippered feet missed. “I am the Panarch of Tarabon, and I mean to dispense justice to this woman!” That rosebud mouth had a very sulky look. Had the woman no sense of herself, of her position? She was equal to the king, a ruler!
“And I am the Aes Sedai who has come to rescue you,” Elayne said coolly. Realizing she still held the tray, she set it on the floor hurriedly. The woman seemed to be having enough trouble seeing beyond the white servants’ dresses without that. Temaile’s face was quite red; she would wake to bruises. No doubt fewer than she
deserved. Elayne wished there was a way to take Temaile with them. A way to bring even one to justice in the Tower. “We have come — at considerable risk! — to take you out of here. Then you can reach the Lord Captain of the Panarch’s Legion, and Andric and his army, and you can chase these women out. Perhaps we will be lucky enough to take some of them for trial. But first we must get you away from them.”
“I do not need Andric,” Amathera muttered. Elayne would have sworn she almost said “now.” “There are soldiers of my Legion around the palace. I know this. I have been allowed to speak to none of them, but once they see me, and hear my voice, they will do what must be done, yes? You Aes Sedai cannot use the One Power to harm…” She trailed off, scowling at the unconscious Temaile. “You cannot use it as a weapon, at least, yes? I know this.”
Elayne surprised herself by weaving tiny flows of Air, one to each of Amathera’s braids. The braids lifted straight up into the air, and the poutymouth fool had no choice but to follow them up on tiptoe. Elayne walked her that way, on tiptoe, until the woman stood right in front of her, dark eyes wide and indignant.
“You will listen to me, Panarch Amathera of Tarabon,” she said in icy tones. “If you try to walk out to your soldiers, Temaile’s cronies may very well tie you up in a bundle and hand you back to her. Worse, they will learn that my friends and I are here, and that I will not allow. We are going to creep out of here, and if you will not agree to that, I’ll bind and gag you and leave you beside Temaile for her friends to find.” There had to be some way to take Temaile, too. “Do you understand me?”
Amathera nodded slightly, held up as she was. Egeanin made an approving sound.
Elayne loosed the flows; the woman’s heels dropped to the carpet. “Now let’s see if we can find you something to wear that is suitable for sneaking.” Amathera nodded again, but her mouth was set at its sulkiest. Elayne hoped Nynaeve was having an easier time of it.
Nynaeve entered the great exhibition hall with its multitude of thin columns, feather duster already moving. This collection must always need dusting, and surely no one would look twice at a woman doing what was needed. She looked around, eyes drawn to wiredtogether bones that looked like a longlegged horse with a neck that pushed its skull up twenty feet. The vast chamber stretched emptily in all directions.
But someone could come in at any moment; servants who actually had been sent to clean, or Liandrin and all of her fellows come to search. Still holding the duster prominently, just in case, she hurried down to the white stone pedestal that had held the dull black collar and bracelets. She did not realize she had been holding her breath until she exhaled on seeing the things still there. The glasssided table holding the cuendillar seal lay another fifty paces on, but this came first.
Climbing over the wristthick white silk rope, she touched the wide, jointed collar. Suffering. Agony. Woe. They rolled through her; she wanted to weep. What kind of thing could absorb all that pain? Pulling her hand back, she glared at the
black metal. Meant to control a man who could channel. Liandrin and her Black sisters meant to use it to control Rand, turn him to the Shadow, force him to serve the Dark One. Someone from her village, controlled and used by Aes Sedai! Black Ajah, but Aes Sedai as surely as Moiraine with her scheming! Egeanin, making me like a filthy Seanchan!
The sudden incongruity of the last thought hit her; abruptly she realized she was deliberately making herself angry, angry enough to channel. She embraced the Source; the Power filled her. And a serving woman with the treeandleaf on her shoulder entered the columned hall.
Quivering with the urge to channel, Nynaeve waited, even lifting the duster, running the feathers over the collar and bracelets. The serving woman started down the pale floorstones; she would go in a moment, and Nynaeve could… What? Slip the things into her belt pouch and take them, but…
The serving woman would go? Why did I think she’ll leave instead of staying to work? She glanced sideways up the room at the woman coming toward her. Of course. No broom or mop, no feather duster, not even a rag. Whatever she’s here for, it cannot take lo—
Suddenly she saw the woman’s face clearly. Sturdily handsome, framed by dark braids, smiling in an almost friendly fashion but not really paying her any mind. Certainly not threatening in any way. Not quite the same face, but she knew it.
Before thought she struck out, weaving a hammerhard flow of Air to smash that face. In an instant the glow of saidar surrounded the other women, her features changed — somehow more regal now, prouder, Moghedien’s face remembered; and startled as well, surprised that she had not approached unsuspected — and Nynaeve’s flow was sliced razor clean. She staggered under the whiplash recoil, like a physical blow, and the Forsaken struck with a complex weave of Spirit streaked by Water and Air. Nynaeve had no idea what it was meant to do; frantically she tried to cut it as she had seen the other woman do, with a keenedged weave of Spirit. For a heartbeat she felt love, devotion, worship for the magnificent woman who would deign to allow her to…
The intricate weave parted, and Moghedien missed a step. A tinge remained in Nynaeve’s mind, like a fresh memory of wanting to obey, to grovel and please, what had happened at their first meeting all over again; it heated her rage. The knifesharp shield that Egwene had used to still Amico Nagoyin sprang into being, more weapon than shield, lashed at Moghedien — and was blocked, woven Spirit straining against woven Spirit, just short of severing Moghedien from the Source forever. Again the Forsaken’s counterblow came, slashing like an axe, intended to cut Nynaeve off in the same way. Forever. Desperately Nynaeve blocked it.
Suddenly she realized that under her anger she was terrified. Holding off the other woman’s attempt to still her while trying to do the same to her took everything she had. The Power boiled in her till she thought she must burst; her knees quivered with the effort of standing. And all went into those two things; she could not spare
enough to light a candle. Moghedien’s axe of Spirit waxed and waned in sharpness, but that would not matter if the woman managed to drive it home; Nynaeve could not see any real difference in outcome between being stilled by the woman and merely — merely! — being shielded and at her mercy. The thing brushed against the flow of Power from the Source into her, like a knife hovering over a chicken’s stretched neck. The image was all too apt; she wished she had not thought of it. In the back of her mind a tiny voice gibbered at her. Oh, Light, don’t let her. Don’t let her! Light, please, not that!
For a moment she considered letting go her own attempt to cut Moghedien off
— for one thing, she had to keep forcing it back to a razor edge; the woven flows did not want to hold the keenness — letting go and using that strength to force Moghedien’s attack further back, maybe sever it. But if she tried, the other woman would not need to defend; she could add that strength to her own attack. And she was one of the Forsaken. Not just a Black sister. A woman who had been Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends, when Aes Sedai had been able to do things undreamed of now. If Moghedien threw her whole strength at her…
A man who came in then, or any woman unable to channel, would have seen only two women facing each other across the white silk rope from a distance of less than ten feet. Two women staring at one another in a vast hall full of strange things. They would have seen nothing to say it was a duel. No leaping about and hacking with swords as men would do, nothing smashed or broken. Just two women standing there. But a duel all the same, and maybe to the death. Against one of the Forsaken.
“All my careful planning ruined,” Moghedien said abruptly in a tight, angry voice, whiteknuckled hands gripping her skirts. “At the very least I shall have to go to untold effort to put everything back as it was. It may not be possible. Oh, I do mean to make you pay for that, Nynaeve al’Meara. This has been such a cozy hiding place, and those blind women have a number of very useful items in their possession even if they do not —” She shook her head, lips peeling back to bare her teeth in a snarl. “I think I will take you with me this time. I know. I shall keep you for a live mounting block. You will be brought out to kneel on all fours so I can step from your back to my saddle. Or perhaps I shall give you to Rahvin. He always repays favors. He does have a pretty little queen to amuse him now, but pretty women were always Rahvin’s weakness. He likes to have two or three or four at once dancing attendance on him. How will you like that? To spend the rest of your life competing for Rahvin’s favors. You will want to, once he has his hands on you; he has his little tricks. Yes, I do believe Rahvin shall have you.”
Anger welled up in Nynaeve. Sweat streamed down her face, and her legs shook as if they might give way, but anger gave her strength. Furious, she managed to push her weapon of Spirit a hair closer to severing Moghedien from the Source before the woman halted it again.
“So you discovered that little gem behind you,” Moghedien said in a moment of
precarious balance. Surprisingly, her voice was almost conversational. “I wonder how you did that. It does not matter. Did you come to take it away? Perhaps to destroy it? You cannot destroy it. That is not metal, but a form of cuendillar. Even balefire cannot destroy cuendillar. And if you mean to use it, it does have… drawbacks, shall we say? Put the collar on a man who channels, and a woman wearing the bracelets can make him do whatever she wishes, true, but it will not stop him going mad, and there is a flow the other way, too. Eventually he will begin to be able to control you, too, so you end with a struggle at every hour. Not very palatable when he is going mad. Of course, you can pass the bracelets around, so no one has too much exposure, but that does mean trusting someone else with him. Men are always so good at violence; they make wonderful weapons. Or two women can each wear one bracelet, if you have someone you trust enough; that slows the seepage considerably, I understand, but it also lessens your control, even if you work in perfect unison. Eventually, you will find yourselves in a struggle for control with him, each of you needing him to remove your bracelet as surely as he needs you to remove the collar.” She tilted her head, lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “You are following this, I trust? Controlling Lews Therin — Rand al’Thor as he is called now
— would be most useful, but is it worth the price? You can see why I have left the collar and bracelets where they are.”
Trembling to contain the Power, to hold her woven flows, Nynaeve frowned. Why was the woman telling her all of this? Did she think it did not matter because she was going to win? Why her sudden change from rage to talk? There was sweat on Moghedien’s face, too. Quite a lot of sweat, beading on her broad forehead, running down her cheeks.
Suddenly everything changed in Nynaeve’s mind. Moghedien’s was not a voice tight with anger; it was a voice tight with strain. Moghedien was not suddenly going to hurl all of her strength at her; she already was. The woman was putting out as much effort as she. She was facing one of the Forsaken, and far from being plucked like a goose for supper, she had not lost a feather. She was meeting one of the Forsaken, strength for strength! Moghedien was trying to distract her, to gain an opening before her own strength gave out! If only she could do the same. Before her strength went.
“Do you wonder how I know all this? The collar and bracelets were made after I was… Well, we will not talk of that. Once I was free, the first thing I did was seek information about those last days. Last years, really. There are a good many fragments here and there that make no sense to anyone who does not have some idea to begin with. The Age of Legends. Such a quaint name you have given my time. Yet even your wildest tales no more than hint at the half. I had lived over two hundred years when the Bore was opened, and I was still young, for an Aes Sedai. Your ‘legends’ are but pale imitations of what we could do. Why…”
Nynaeve stopped listening. A way to distract the woman. Even if she could think of something to say, Moghedien would be on her guard against the method
she herself was using. She could not spare effort for as much as a threadthin weave, any more than… any more than Moghedien could. A woman from the Age of Legends, a woman long used to wielding the One Power. Perhaps used to doing almost everything with the Power before she was imprisoned. In hiding since being freed, how used to doing things without the Power had she become?
Nynaeve let her legs sag. Dropping the feather duster, she caught hold of the pedestal to support herself. There was very little fakery needed.
Moghedien smiled and took a step nearer. “…travel to other worlds, even worlds in the sky. Do you know that the stars are…” So sure, that smile. So triumphant.
Nynaeve seized the collar, ignoring the joltingly pained emotions that spilled into her, and hurled it, all in one motion.
The Forsaken had only begun to gape when the wide black circlet struck her between the eyes. Not a hard blow, certainly not enough to stun, but not expected, either. Moghedien’s control over her woven flows faltered, just slightly, only for an instant. Yet for that instant the balance between them shifted. The shield of Spirit slid between Moghedien and the Source; the halo surrounding her winked out.
The woman’s eyes bulged. Nynaeve expected her to leap for her throat; that was what she would have done. Instead, Moghedien jerked her skirts to her knees and ran.
With no need to defend herself, it took only a little effort for Nynaeve to weave Air around the fleeing woman. The Forsaken froze in midstride.
Hurriedly Nynaeve tied her weaving. She had done it. I faced one of the Forsaken and beat her, she thought incredulously. Looking at the woman held from the neck down by air with the consistency of stone, even seeing her leaning forward on one foot, it was hard to believe. Examining what she had done, she saw it had not been as complete a victory as she had wanted. The shield had blurred its sharp edge before it slid home. Moghedien was captured and shielded, but not stilled.
Trying not to totter, she walked around in front of the other woman. Moghedien still looked queenly, but like a very frightened queen, licking her lips, eyes darting wildly. “If… if you ffree me, we can ccome to ssome arrangement. There is mmuch I can tteach you —”
Ruthlessly Nynaeve cut her off, weaving a gag of Air that held the woman’s jaws gaping. “A live mounting block. Wasn’t that what you said? I think that is a very good idea. I like to ride.” She smiled at the woman, whose eyes looked to be coming out of her head.
Mounting block indeed! Once Moghedien had been put on trial in the Tower and stilled — there could be no doubt of the sentence for one of the Forsaken — she would surely be put to some useful work in kitchens or gardens or stables, except when she was brought out to show that even the Forsaken could not escape justice, and treated no differently from any other servant, beyond being watched. But let her think Nynaeve was as cruel as she. Let her think it until she was actually put on…
Nynaeve’s mouth twisted. Moghedien was not going to be put on trial. Not now, anyway. Not unless she could figure out some way to get her out of the Panarch’s. Palace. The woman seemed to believe the grimace portended something ill for her; tears leaked from her eyes, and her mouth worked, trying to force words past the gag.
Disgusted with herself, Nynaeve walked unsteadily back to where the black collar lay, stuffing it quickly into her belt pouch before the stark emotions in it could do more than touch her. The bracelets followed, with the same feelings of suffering and sorrow. I was ready to torture her by letting her think I would! She deserves it surely, but that is not me. Or is it? Am I no better than Egeanin?
She jerked around, furious that she could even consider such a question, and stalked past Moghedien to the glasswalled table. There had to be some way to bring the woman to justice.
There were seven figurines in the case. Seven, and no seal.
For a moment she could only stare. One of the figures, an odd animal shaped roughly like a pig but with a large round snout and feet as wide as its thick legs, stood where the seal had, in the center of the table. Suddenly her eyes narrowed. It was not really there; the thing was woven from Air and Fire, in flows so minute they made cobwebs seem cables. Even concentrating, she could barely see them. She doubted if Liandrin or any of the other Black sisters could have. A tiny, slicing flick of the Power, and the fat animal vanished, in its place the blackandwhite seal on its redlacquered stand. Moghedien, the hider, had hidden it in plain sight. Fire melted a hole in the glass, and the seal went into her pouch, too. It bulged now, and pulled her belt down.
Frowning at the woman poised on the toe of one slipper, she tried to think of some means of taking her as well. But Moghedien would not fit in her pouch, and she rather thought that even if she could pick the other woman up, the sight might raise a few eyebrows. Still, as she made her way to the nearest arched doorway, she could not help looking back every other step. If only there was some way. Pausing for one last, regretful look from the doorway, she turned to go.
This door opened onto a courtyard with a fountain full of lilypads. On the other side of the fountain, a slim, copperyskinned woman in a pale cream Taraboner dress that would have made Rendra blush was just raising a fluted black rod a pace in length. Nynaeve recognized Jeaine Caide. More, she recognized the rod.
Desperately she flung herself to one side, so hard that she slid along the smooth white floorstones until one of the thin columns stopped her with a jar. A legthick bar of white shot through where she had been standing, as if the air had turned to molten metal, slicing all the way across the exhibition hall; where it struck, pieces simply vanished out of columns, priceless artifacts ceased to exist. Hurling flows of Fire behind her blindly, hoping to strike something, anything, in the courtyard, Nynaeve scrambled away across the hall on hands and knees. Little more than waisthigh, the bar sawed sideways, carving a swathe through both walls; between,
cases and cabinets and wired skeletons collapsed and crashed. Severed columns quivered; some fell, but what dropped onto that terrible sword did not survive to smash displays and pedestals to the floor. The glasswalled table fell before the molten shaft vanished, leaving a purplish bar that seemed burned into Nynaeve’s vision; the cuendillar figures were all that dropped out of that molten white shaft, bouncing on the floor.
The figurines did not break, of course. It seemed Moghedien was right; not even balefire could destroy cuendillar. That black rod was one of the stolen ter’angreal. Nynaeve could remember the warning appended to their list in a firm hand. Produces balefire. Dangerous and almost impossible to control.
Moghedien seemed to be trying to scream through her invisible gag, head whipping back and forth in a frenzy as she fought her bonds of Air, but Nynaeve spared her no more than a glance. As soon as the balefire disappeared, she raised herself up enough to peer back across the hall, through the rent sawed along the chamber wall. Beside the fountain, Jeaine Caide was swaying, one hand to her head, the black rod almost falling from the other. But before Nynaeve could strike at her, she had clutched the fluted rod again; balefire burst from its end, destroying everything in its path through the chamber.
Dropping almost to her belly, Nynaeve crawled the other way as fast as she could, amid the crash and clatter of falling columns and masonry. Panting, she pulled herself into a corridor slashed through both walls. There was no telling how far the balefire had sliced; all the way out of the palace, perhaps. Twisting about on a carpet littered with bits of stone, she peeked cautiously around the side of the doorframe.
The balefire had gone again. Silence held in the ruined exhibition hall, except when a weakened piece of stonework gave way and smashed to the rubblestrewn floor. There was no sign of Jeaine Caide, though enough of the far wall had fallen to show the fountained courtyard clearly. She was not about to risk going to see if the ter’angreal had killed the woman in using it. Her breath came raggedly, and her arms and legs trembled enough that she was glad to lie there a moment. Channeling took energy the same as any other work; the more you did, the more energy. And the wearier you were, the less you could channel. She was not entirely certain she herself was up to facing even a weakened Jeaine Caide right then.
Such a fool she had been. Battling Moghedien with the Power, and never thinking that channeling that strong would have every Black sister in the palace jumping out of her skin. She was lucky the Domani woman had not arrived with her ter’angreal while she was still absorbed with the Forsaken. They very likely both would have died before they knew she was there.
Suddenly she stared in disbelief. Moghedien was gone! The balefire had not come nearer than ten feet from where she had stood, but she was not there any longer. It was impossible. She had been shielded.
“How do I know what’s impossible?” Nynaeve muttered. “It was impossible for
me to beat one of the Forsaken, but I did it.” Still no sign of Jeaine Caide.
Pushing herself to her feet, she hurried for the appointed meeting place. If only Elayne had not run into any trouble, they might make it out here safely after all.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 55
(Waves)
Into the Deep
Servants boiled along the halls as Nynaeve ran, shouting frantic questions. They might not be able to sense channeling, but they had certainly felt the palace being torn half apart. She threaded her way through, just one more serving woman in a panic as far as they were concerned.
Saidar faded from her as she sped down corridors and across courtyards. Holding on to anger was difficult when she was increasingly uneasy for Elayne. If the Black sisters had found her… Who knew what they had beside the balefire ter’angreal? The list they had been given certainly did not give a use for everything.
Once she saw Liandrin, with her pale honey braids, and Rianna, with that white streak in her black hair, hurrying down a flight of broad marble stairs; she could not see the glow of saidar around them, but from the way servants cried out and leaped from their path, they were whipping a way clear for themselves with the Power. It made her glad she had not tried to cling to the Source herself; they would have picked her out of the throng in an instant by the glow, and until she had some rest, she was not up to facing either of them, much less both. She had what she had come for. They had to wait.
The crowd thinned and disappeared by the time she reached the narrow hall on the west side of the palace that was the meeting place. The others were waiting for her beside a small, bronzestudded door fastened with a large iron lock. Including Amathera, standing very straight, wearing a light linen cloak with the hood up. The Panarch’s white dress might pass for servingwoman garb if you did not look closely enough to see it was silk, and the veil that did not hide her face was certainly servant’s linen. The sound of shouts came muffled through the door. Apparently the riot was still going on. Now if only the men were doing the rest of their part.
Ignoring Egeanin, Nynaeve threw her arms around Elayne in a quick hug. “I was so worried. Did you have any trouble?”
“Not a bit,” Elayne replied. Egeanin shifted slightly, and the younger woman gave her a meaningful look, then added, “Amathera did cause a little problem, but we sorted it out.”
Nynaeve frowned. “Trouble? Why would she give trouble? Why would you give trouble?” That last was for the Panarch, who held her head high, refusing to look at anyone. Elayne seemed as reluctant.
It was the Seanchan woman who answered. “She tried to sneak off to rouse her soldiers to harry the Darkfriends out. After she had been warned.” Nynaeve refused to look at her.
“Do not scowl so, Nynaeve,” Elayne said. “I chased her down quickly, and we had a little talk. I think she is in perfect agreement with me now.”
The Panarch’s cheek twitched, “I am in agreement, Aes Sedai,” she said hastily.
“I will do exactly as you say, and I will provide papers that should make even the rebels let you pass unhindered. There is no need for more… talking.”
Elayne nodded as if all of that made sense, motioning for the women to be quiet. Whereupon the Panarch obediently closed her mouth. A trifle sullenly, but perhaps that was just the shape of her mouth. Clearly there had been some very odd goings on, and Nynaeve intended to find the bottom of them. Later. The narrow hallway was still empty in both directions, but panicked shouts still echoed from deeper in the palace. The mob rumbled beyond the small door.
“But what of you?” Elayne went on with a frown. “You were supposed to be here half an hour ago. Did you cause all of this? I felt two women channeling enough of the Power to shake the palace down, and then a bit later someone did try to shake it down. I thought it must be you. I had to restrain Egeanin from going to find you.”
Egeanin? Nynaeve hesitated, then made herself touch the Seanchan woman’s shoulder. “Thank you.” Egeanin looked as though she did not quite understand herself what she had done, but she gave a quick nod. “Moghedien found me, and because I was worrying about how to bring her out for trial, Jeaine Caide nearly took my head off with balefire.” Elayne gave a small squeak, and she hurried to reassure her. “It didn’t really come close to me.”
“You captured Moghedien? You captured one of the Forsaken?”
“Yes, but she got away.” There. She had admitted everything. Conscious of all their eyes on her, she shifted uncomfortably. She did not like being in the wrong. She especially did not like being in the wrong when it was she who had pointed out that it was wrong in the first place. “Elayne, I know what I said about being careful, but once I had her in my hands, it seemed all I could think of was bringing her to trial.” Taking a deep breath, Nynaeve made her voice apologetic. She hated doing that. Where were those fool men? “I endangered everything because I didn’t keep my mind on what we were about, but please don’t scold me.”
“I won’t,” Elayne said firmly. “So long as you remember to be careful in the future.” Egeanin cleared her throat. “Oh, yes,” Elayne added hastily. The waiting seemed to be getting to her; there were spots of color in her cheeks. “Did you find the collar, and the seal?”
“I have them.” She patted her pouch. The shouting outside seemed to be getting louder. And the shouts echoing down the halls were, too. Liandrin must be turning the palace upside down to find out what had happened. “What is keeping those men?”
“My Legion,” Amathera began. Elayne looked at her, and she snapped her mouth shut. Whatever talk they had had must have been something. The Panarch was pouting like a girl afraid of being sent to bed without supper.
Nynaeve glanced at Egeanin. The Seanchan woman was watching the door intently. She had wanted to come after her. Why won’t she let me hate her? Am I so different from her?
Suddenly the door swung open. Juilin pulled two thin bent metal rods out of the lock and straightened from a crouch. Blood ran down the side of his face. “Hurry. We must be away from here before it gets out of hand.”
Staring past him wideeyed, Nynaeve wondered what he considered out of hand. Bayle Domon’s sailors, at least three hundred of them, formed a semicircle two deep about the door, Domon himself waving a cudgel, shouting to encourage them. He had to shout for the roar that filled the wide street. Men jostled and struggled and shouted in a seething mass, barely held back by the sailors’ clubs and staffs. Not that they were really interested in the sailors. Scattered through the crowd, clumps of mounted Whitecloaks swung their swords at men crowding them with pitchforks and barrel staves and bare hands. Showers of stones fell around them, sometimes banging off a helmet, but silently in the uproar. A lone Whitecloak’s horse suddenly screamed and reared, and toppled over backward; it scrambled to its feet quickly, minus its rider. Other riderless animals dotted the mass of men. Was this what they had set off just to cover themselves? She tried reminding herself why — put her hand on her pouch to feel the cuendillar seal, the collar and bracelets — but it was hard. Men were dying out there, surely.
“Will you women move?” Thom called, waving for them to come out. He had a bleeding gash over one bushy eyebrow, perhaps from a stone, and his brown cloak would not even do for the ragbag now. “If the Panarch’s Legion ever stops running, this could grow messy.”
Amathera made a startled sound, just before Elayne pushed her firmly out. Nynaeve and Egeanin followed, and as soon as all four women were out, the sailors folded in around them in a tight ring that began straggling away from the palace. It was all Nynaeve could do to keep her feet, jostled by the men who were trying to protect her. Once Egeanin slipped and nearly fell. Nynaeve caught her arm, helped her back up, and got a grateful grin. We are not so different, she thought. Not the same, but not all that different. She did not have to make herself smile encouragingly at the Seanchan woman.
The milling mass lasted several streets away from the palace, but once they broke clear the narrow twisting ways were almost empty. Those who were not actually involved in the riot seemed wise enough to stay clear of it. The sailors spread out a little, giving the women more room. Any straggler who looked in their direction got hard stares, though. The streets of Tanchico were still the streets of Tanchico. Somehow that surprised Nynaeve. It seemed that she had been weeks inside the palace. Surely the city should be different.
When the babble began to fade behind them, Thom managed a quite elegant bow to Amathera as he limped along. “An honor, Panarch,” he said. “If I may be of any service, you have only to speak.”
Shockingly, Amathera glanced at Elayne, grimaced slightly, and said, “You mistake me, good sir. I am only a poor refugee from the countryside, rescued by these good women.”
Thom exchanged startled looks with Juilin and Domon, but when he opened his mouth, Elayne said, “Could we get on to the inn, Thom? This is hardly the place for conversation.”
When they reached the Three Plum Court, it was scarcely less surprising to hear Elayne introduce the Panarch to Rendra as Thera, a refugee with no money who needed a pallet, and maybe some work to earn her meals. The innkeeper shrugged resignedly, but as she led “Thera” away to the kitchens she was already telling the woman what lovely hair she had and how pretty she would look in the right dress.
Nynaeve waited until the rest of them were in the Chamber of Falling Blossoms with the door closed before saying, “Thera? And she went along! Elayne, Rendra will have the woman serving at table in the common room!”
Elayne did not seem surprised. “Yes, very likely.” Sinking into a chair with a sigh, she kicked off her slippers and began massaging her feet vigorously. “It was not difficult to convince Amathera she should stay in hiding for a few days. It really isn’t that far from ‘The Panarch is dead’ to ‘Death to the Panarch.’ I think seeing the riot helped, too. She doesn’t want to depend on Andric to put her back on her throne; she wants her own soldiers to do it, even if it means hiding until she can get in touch with the Lord Captain of the Legion. I believe Andric is in for a surprise with her. It is too bad he doesn’t surprise her. She deserves it.” Domon and Juilin exchanged glances, shook, their heads uncomprehendingly. Egeanin nodded to herself as if she, at least, understood, and approved.
“But why?” Nynaeve demanded. “You may have been upset because she sneaked off on her own, but this? How did she manage that anyway, with two of you watching her?” Egeanin’s eyes flickered toward Elayne, so quickly Nynaeve was not sure she had really seen it.
Elayne bent to rub the sole of one foot. It must have hurt; there was red in her cheeks. “Nynaeve, the woman has no idea what the lives of the common people are like.” As if she did! “She does seem to have a true concern for justice — I think she does — yet it did not bother her at all that there was enough food in the palace for a year. I mentioned the soup kitchens, and she did not know what I was talking about! A few days working for her supper will do her good.” Stretching her legs under the table, she worked her bare toes. “Oh, that does feel good. Not that she’ll have many, I suppose. Not if she is to rally the Panarch’s Legion to pry Liandrin and the others out of the palace. A pity, but there it is.”
“Well, she has to,” Nynaeve told her firmly. It was good to sit down, though she could not understand the girl’s concern with her feet. They had hardly walked at all today. “And the sooner the better. We need the Panarch, and not in Rendra’s kitchen.” She did not think there was any need to worry about Moghedien. That woman had had every opportunity to come into the open, after she had freed herself. That still puzzled her; she must have been careless in tying off the shield. But if Moghedien had been unwilling to face her then, when she must have known Nynaeve was nearly exhausted, she could not think the woman would come after
them. Not for something she seemed to think was not worth very much. The same did not apply to Liandrin, however. If Liandrin figured out half of what had happened, she would be hunting them.
“The justice of the DaughterHeir,” Thom murmured, “may yet supersede the justice of the Panarch. There were men streaming in through that door as we left, and I think some had already got in the front. I saw smoke coming out of several windows. By tonight, little more than a firegutted ruin will remain. No need for soldiers to chase the Black Ajah, and thus ‘Thera’ can have her few days to learn the lesson you want to teach. You will make a fine queen one day, Elayne of Andor.”
Elayne’s pleased smile faded as she looked at him. Rising to pad around the table, she rummaged in his coat pockets for a kerchief and began dabbing blood from his forehead despite his protests. “Hold still,” she told him, sounding for all the world like a mother tending an unruly child.
“Could we at least see what we risked our necks for?” he said when it became clear Elayne was going to do exactly as she wished.
Opening her belt pouch, Nynaeve laid the contents out on the table, the blackandwhite disc that helped hold the Dark One’s prison shut, the collar and bracelets that sent ripples of sorrow through her before she could lay them down. Everyone gathered close to stare.
Domon fingered the seal. “I did own a thing like this once.”
Nynaeve doubted it. Only seven had been made. Three were broken now, cuendillar or no. Another was in Moiraine’s hands. Four surviving. How well could four keep that prison at Shayol Ghul locked? A shivery thought.
Egeanin touched the collar, pushed the bracelets away from the collar. If she felt the emotions trapped in them, she did not show it. Perhaps that sensitivity came only with the ability to channel. “It is not an a’dam,” the Seanchan woman said. “That is made of a silvery metal, and all of one piece.”
Nynaeve wished she had not mentioned a’dam.But she never wore the bracelet of one. And she did let that poor woman she told us about go. Poor woman. She — this Bethamin — was the one who controlled women with an a’dam. Egeanin had showed more mercy than Nynaeve would have. “It is as least as much like an a’dam as you and I are alike, Egeanin.” The woman looked startled, but after a moment she nodded. Not so different. Two women, each doing the best she could.
“Do you mean to keep on pursuing Liandrin?” Juilin seated himself, arms folded on the table, studying the things there. “Whether or not she is chased out of Tanchico, she is still out there. And the others. But these seem too important to leave lying about. I am only a thiefcatcher, but I would say these must be taken to the White Tower for safekeeping.”
“No!” Nynaeve was startled at her own vehemence. So were the others, by the way they stared at her. Slowly she picked up the seal and replaced it in her pouch. “This goes to the Tower. But that…” She did not want to touch the black things again. If those were in the Tower, Aes Sedai might decide to use them just as the
Black Ajah had intended to. To control Rand. Would Moiraine? Siuan Sanche? She would not take the chance. “That is too dangerous to risk it ever falling back into the hands of Darkfriends. Elayne, can you destroy them? Melt them. I don’t care if they burn through the table. Just destroy them!”
“I see what you mean,” Elayne said with a grimace. Nynaeve doubted she did
— Elayne believed in the Tower wholeheartedly — but she believed in Rand, too.
Nynaeve could not see the glow of saidar, of course, but the intent way the girl stared at the vile objects told her she was channeling. The bracelets and necklace lay there. Elayne frowned; her stare became more intent. Abruptly she shook her head. Her hand poised hesitantly for a moment, close to one of the bracelets, before picking it up. And dropped it again, with a gasp. “It feels… It’s full of…” Drawing a deep breath, she said, “I did what you asked, Nynaeve. A hammer would be burning a puddle for the Fire I wove into it, but it isn’t even warm.”
So Moghedien had not lied. Doubtless she had thought there was no need, that she would surely win. How did the woman get loose? But what to do with the things? She was not going to let them fall into anyone’s hands.
“Master Domon, do you know a very deep part of the sea?” “I do, Mistress al’Meara,” he said slowly.
Gingerly, trying not to feel the emotions, Nynaeve shoved the collar and bracelets across the table to him. “Then drop these into it, where no one can ever fish them out again.”
After a moment, he nodded. “I will.” He stuffed them into his coat pocket hurriedly, clearly disliking to touch something that must have to do with the Power. “In the deepest part of the sea I do know, near the Aile Somera.”
Egeanin was frowning at the floor, no doubt thinking about the Illianer leaving. Nynaeve had not forgotten the woman calling him “a properly setup man.” She herself felt like laughing. It was all but done. As soon as Domon could sail, the hateful collar and bracelets would be gone forever. They could leave for Tar Valon. And then… Then back to Tear, or wherever al’Lan Mandragoran was. Facing Moghedien, realizing how close she had been to being killed or worse, only made her urgency to deal with him greater. A man she had to share with a woman she hated, but if Egeanin could look fondly on a man she once took prisoner — and Domon was certainly eyeing her with interest — and if Elayne could love a man who would go mad, then she could puzzle out some way to enjoy what she could have of Lan.
“Shall we go downstairs and see how ‘Thera’ is taking to being a servant?” she suggested. Soon for Tar Valon. Soon.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 56
(Wolf) Goldeneyes
The common room of the Winespring Inn was silent but for the scratch of Perrin’s pen. Silent, and empty but for him and Aram. Latemorning light made small pools beneath the windows. No cooking smells came from the kitchen; there were no fires lit anywhere in the village, and even coals banked in ashes had been doused. No point in giving the gift of fire easy to hand. The Tinker — he sometimes wondered whether it was proper to think of Aram that way any longer, but a man could not stop being what he was, sword or no — stood against the wall by the front door, watching Perrin. What did the man expect? What did he want? Dipping his pen in the small stone ink jar, Perrin set aside the third sheet of paper and began a fourth.
Pushing through the door, bow in hand, Ban al’Seen rubbed an uneasy finger up and down his big nose. “The Aiel are back,” he said quietly, but his feet moved as if he could not make them be still. “Trollocs coming, from north and south. Thousands of them, Lord Perrin.”
“Don’t call me that,” Perrin said absently, frowning at the page. He had no way with words. He certainly did not know how to say things in the fancy way women liked. All he could was write what he felt. Dipping the pen again, he added a few lines.
I will not ask your forgiveness for what I did. I do not know if you could give it, but I will not ask. You are more precious to me than life. Never think I have abandoned you. When the sun shines on you, it is my smile. When you hear the breeze stir through the apple blossoms, it is my whisper that I love you. My love is yours forever.
Perrin
For a moment he studied what he had written. It did not say enough, but it would have to do. He did not have the right words any more than he had time.
Carefully blotting the damp ink with sand, he folded the pages together. He very nearly wrote “Faile Bashere” on the outside before making it “Faile Aybara.” He realized he did not even know if a wife took her husband’s name in Saldaea; there were places where they did not. Well, she had married him in the Two Rivers; she would have to put up with Two Rivers customs.
He placed the letter in the middle of the mantel over the fireplace— perhaps it would reach her eventually — and adjusted the wide red marriage ribbon behind his collar so it hung down his lapels properly. He was supposed to wear it for seven days, an announcement to everyone who saw him that he was newly wed. “I will try,” he told the letter softly. Faile had tried to tie one in his beard; he wished he had let her.
“Pardon, Lord Perrin?” Ban said, still shifting his feet anxiously. “I didn’t hear.”
Aram was chewing his lip, his eyes wide and frightened.
“Time to see to the day’s work,” Perrin said. Perhaps the letter would reach her. Somehow. He took his bow from the table and slung it on his back. Axe and quiver already hung at his belt. “And don’t call me that!”
In front of the inn, the Companions were gathered on their horses, Wil al’Seen with that fool wolfhead banner, the long staff resting on his stirrup iron. How long since Wil had refused to carry the thing? The survivors of those who had joined him the first day jealously guarded the right, now. Wil, with his bow on his back and a sword at his hip, looked proud as an idiot.
As Ban scrambled into his saddle, Perrin heard him say, “The man is as cool as a winter pond. Like ice. Maybe it won’t be so bad today.” He barely paid attention. The women were gathered on the Green.
They made a circle five or six deep around the tall pole where the larger red wolfhead flapped out in a breeze. Five or six deep, shoulder to shoulder, with polearms made from scythes and pitchforks, and woodaxes, and even stout kitchen knives and cleavers.
Throat tight, he mounted Stepper and rode toward them. The children were a tight mass inside the circle of women. All the children in Emond’s Field.
Riding slowly along the ranks, he felt the women’s eyes following him, and the children’s. Fear scent, and worry; the children showed it on their toopale faces, but all smelled of it. He reined in where Marin al’Vere and Daise Congar and the rest of the Women’s Circle stood together. Alsbet Luhhan had one of her husband’s hammers on her shoulder, and her Whitecloak helmet acquired the night of her rescue sat slightly crooked because of her thick braid. Neysa Ayellin held a longbladed carving knife firm in her hand, and had two more stuck behind her belt.
“We have planned this out,” Daise said, looking up at him as if she expected an argument and did not intend to allow it. She held a pitchfork, fastened to a pole nearly three feet taller than she, upright in front of her. “If the Trollocs break through anywhere, you men are going to be busy, so we will take the children out. The older ones know what to do, and they’ve all played hideandseek in the woods. Just to keep them safe until they can come out.”
The older ones. Boys and girls of thirteen and fourteen had toddlers strapped on their backs, and held smaller children by the hand. Girls older than that stood in the ranks with the women; Bode Cauthon had a woodaxe gripped in both hands, her sister Eldrin a boar spear with a broad point. Boys older were out with the men, or up on the thatched rooftops with their bows. The Tinkers were in with the children. Perrin glanced down at Aram, standing by his stirrup. They would not fight, but each adult had two babes fastened on his or her back and another cradled in the crook of an elbow. Raen and Ila, each with an arm around the other, would not look at him. Just to keep them safe until they could come out.
“I’m sorry.” He had to stop and clear his throat. He had not meant it to come to this. Think as hard as he could, nothing else came that he could have done. Even
giving himself to the Trollocs would not have stopped them killing and burning. The end would have been the same. “It was not fair, what I did with Faile, but I had to. Please understand that. I had to.”“Don’t be silly, Perrin,” Alsbet said, voice emphatic but round face smiling warmly. “I can never abide it when you’re silly. Do you think we would expect you to do any different?”
A heavy cleaver in one hand, Marin reached up to pat his knee with the other. “Any man worth cooking a meal for would have done the same.”
“Thank you.” Light, but he sounded hoarse. In a minute he would be snuffling like a girl. But for some reason he could not smooth his voice. They must think him an idiot. “Thank you. I shouldn’t have fooled you, but she’d not have gone if she suspected.”
“Oh, Perrin.” Marin laughed. She actually laughed, with all they faced, and smelling of fear as she did; he wished he had half her courage. “We knew what you were up to before you ever put her on her horse, and I am not sure she didn’t as well. Women do find themselves doing what they don’t want just to please you men. Now you go on and do what you have to. This is Women’s Circle business,” she added firmly.
Somehow he managed to smile back at her. “Yes, mistress,” he said, knuckling his forehead. “Beg pardon. I know enough to keep my nose out of that.” The women around her laughed in soft amusement as he turned Stepper away.
Ban and Tell were riding right behind him, he realized, with the rest of the Companions strung out after Wil and the banner. He motioned the pair to come up beside him. “If things go badly today,” he said when they were on either side of him, “the Companions are to come back here and help the women.”
“But —”
He cut Tell’s protest short. “You do what I say! If it goes wrong, you get the women and children out! You hear me?” They nodded; reluctantly, but they did it.
“What about you?” Ban asked quietly.
Perrin ignored him. “Aram, you stick with the Companions.”
Striding along between Stepper and Tell’s shaggy horse, the Tinker did not even look up. “I go where you go.” He said it simply, but his tone left no room for argument; he was going to do as he wanted whatever Perrin said. Perrin wondered if real lords ever had problems like this.
At the west end of the Green, the Whitecloaks were all mounted, cloaks with the golden sunburst bright, helmets and armor gleaming, lance points shining, a long column of fours that stretched back between the nearest houses. They must have spent half the night polishing. Dain Bornhald and Jaret Byar swung their horses to face Perrin. Bornhald sat straight in his saddle, but he smelled of apple brandy. Byar’s gaunt face twisted with an even deeper rage than usual as he stared at Perrin.
“I thought you would be at your places by now,” Perrin said.
Bornhald frowned at his horse’s mane, not answering. After a moment, Byar spat, “We are leaving here, Shadowspawn.” An angry mutter rose from the
Companions, but the holloweyed man ignored them as he did Aram’s reaching over his shoulder to his sword hilt. “We will cut our way back to Watch Hill through your friends and rejoin the rest of our men.”
Leaving. Over four hundred soldiers, leaving. Whitecloaks, but mounted soldiers, not farmers, soldiers who had agreed — Bornhald had agreed! — to support the Two Rivers men wherever the fighting was hottest. If Emond’s Field was to have any chance at all, he had to hang on to these men. Stepper tossed his head and snorted as if catching his rider’s mood. “Do you still believe I’m a Darkfriend, Bornhald? How many attacks have you seen so far? Those Trollocs have tried to kill me as much as anybody else.”
Bornhald raised his head slowly, eyes haunted and at the same time halfglazed. Hands in steelbacked gauntlets flexed on his reins unconsciously. “Do you think I do not know by now that these defenses were prepared without you? It was none of your doing, yes? I will not keep my men here to watch you feed your own villagers to the Trollocs. Will you dance atop a pile of their bodies when it is done, Shadowspawn? Not ours! I mean to live long enough to see you brought to justice!” Perrin patted Stepper’s neck to quiet the stallion. He had to keep these men. “You want me? Very well. When it’s over, when the Trollocs are done, I’ll not resist
if you try to arrest me.”
“No!” Ban and Tell shouted together, and growls built behind them from the others. Aram peered up at Perrin, stricken.
“An empty promise,” Bornhald sneered. “You mean everyone to die here save yourself!”
“You’ll never know if you run away, will you?” Perrin made his voice hard and contemptuous. “I will keep my promise, but if you run, you might never find me again. Run, if you want! Run, and try to forget what happens here! All your talk of protecting people from Trollocs. How many died at Trolloc hands after you came? My family wasn’t the first, and certainly not the last. Run! Or stay, if you can remember you’re men. If you need to find the courage, look at the women, Bornhald. Any one of them is braver than the whole lot of you Whitecloaks!”
Bornhald shook as though every word were a blow; Perrin thought the man might fall out of his saddle. Swaying upright, Bornhald stared at him. “We will remain,” he said hoarsely.
“But, my Lord Bornhald,” Byar protested.
“Clean!” Bornhald roared at him. “If we must die here, we will die clean!” He wrenched his head back to Perrin, spittle on his lips. “We will remain. But at the last I will see you dead, Shadowspawn! For my family, for my father, I—will— see— you—dead!” Sawing his horse around roughly, he cantered back to his whitecloaked column. Byar bared his teeth in a wordless snarl at Perrin before following.
“You do not mean to keep that promise?” Aram said anxiously. “You cannot.”
“I have to check everyone,” Perrin said. Small chance he would live long
enough to keep it. “There isn’t much time.” He booted Stepper in the flanks and the horse leaped forward, toward the west end of the village.
Behind the sharp stakes facing the Westwood, men crouched with their spears and halberds and polearms fashioned by Haral Luhhan, who was there in his blacksmith’s vest with a scythe blade on the end of an eightfoot shaft. Behind them stood the men with bows in ranks broken by four catapults, Abell Cauthon walking along slowly to speak to each man.
Perrin reined in beside Abell. “Word is they’re coming from north and south,” he said quietly, “but keep a sharp eye.”
“We’ll watch. And I’m ready to send half my men wherever they are needed. They’ll not find Two Rivers folk easy meat.” Abell’s grin was reminiscent of his son’s.
To Perrin’s embarrassment, the men raised a ragged cheer as he rode by, with the Companions and the banner at his heels: “Goldeneyes! Goldeneyes!” and now and then a “Lord Perrin!” He knew he should have stamped harder on that in the beginning.
To the south, Tam had charge, more grimfaced than Abell and striding almost like a Warder, hand resting on his sword hilt. That wolfish, deadly grace looked strange on the blocky, grayhaired farmer. Yet his words to Perrin were not so different from Abell’s. “We Two Rivers folk are a tougher lot than most know,” he said quietly. “Don’t you worry we will not do ourselves proud today.”
Alanna was at one of the six catapults here, fussing over a large stone being lifted into the cup on the end of the thick arm. Ihvon sat his horse near her in his Warder’s colorchanging cloak, slender as a steel blade and alert as a hawk; there was no doubt he had chosen his ground — wherever Alanna was — and his fight — to bring her out alive whatever. He barely looked at Perrin. But the Aes Sedai paused, hands hovering over the stone, eyes following him as he passed. He could all but feel her weighing and measuring and judging. Those cheers followed him, too.
Where the hedge of stakes ran beyond the few houses east of the Winespring Inn, Jon Thane and Samel Crawe had charge between them. Perrin told them what he had Abell, and once again got much the same reply. Jon, in a mail shirt with holes rusted through in several places, had seen the smoke of his mill burning, and Samel, with his horse face and long nose, was sure he had seen the smoke of his farm. Neither expected an easy day, but both wore stony determination like cloaks.
It was to the north that Perrin had decided to make his fight. Fingering the ribbon hanging down one lapel, he peered in the direction of Watch Hill, the direction Faile had gone, and wondered why he had chosen the north side. Fly free, Faile. Fly free, my heart. He supposed it was good a place to die as any.
Bran supposedly was in charge here, in his steel cap and discsewn metal jerkin, but he stopped checking the men along the hedge to give Perrin as much of a bow as his girth would allow. Gaul and Chiad stood ready, heads wrapped in shoufa and
faces hidden to the eyes behind black veils. Side by side, Perrin noted; whatever had passed between them, it seemed to outweigh their clans’ blood feud. Loial had a pair of woodaxes, dwarfed in his huge hands; his tufted ears thrust forward fiercely, and his wide face was grim.
Do you think I would run away? he had said when Perrin suggested he could slip off into the night after Faile. His ears had dropped with weariness and hurt. I came with you, Perrin, and I will stay until you go. And then he had laughed suddenly, a deep booming sound that almost rattled the dishes. Perhaps someone will even tell a story of me, one day. We do not go in for such things, but there could be an Ogier hero, I suppose. A joke, Perrin. I made a joke. Laugh. Come, we will tell each other jokes, and laugh, and think of Faile flying free.
“It is no joke, Loial,” Perrin murmured as he rode along the lines of men, trying not to listen to their cheers. “You are a hero whether you want to be or not.” The Ogier gave him a tight, widemouthed grin before setting his eyes back on the cleared ground beyond the hedge. Whitestriped sticks marked hundredpace intervals out to five hundred; beyond that lay quilted fields, tabac and barley, most trampled in earlier attacks, and hedges and low stone fences, and copses of leatherleaf, pine and oak.
So many faces Perrin knew in those waiting ranks of men. Stout Eward Candwin and lanternjawed Paet al’Caar with spears. Whitehaired Buel Dowtry, the fletcher, stood with the bowmen, of course. There was stocky, grayhaired Jac al’Seen and his bald cousin Wit, and gnarled Flann Lewin, a lanky beanpole like all of his male kin. Jaim Torfinn and Hu Marwin, among the first to ride after him; they had felt too uncomfortable to join the Companions, as if missing the ambush in the Waterwood had opened some gap between them and the others. Elam Dowtry, and Dav Ayellin, and Ewin Finngar. Hari Coplin and his brother Darl, and old Bili Congar. Berin Thane, the miller’s brother, and fat Athan Dearn, and Kevrim al’Azar, whose grandsons had grown sons, and Tuck Padwhin, the carpenter, and…
Making himself stop counting them, Perrin rode to where Verin stood beside one of the catapults under the watchful eye of Tomas on his gray. The plump, brownclad Aes Sedai studied Aram a moment before turning her birdlike gaze up to Perrin, one eyebrow raised as if to question why he was bothering her.
“I am a little surprised to see you and Alanna still here,” he told her. “Hunting girls who can learn to channel can’t be worth getting killed. Or keeping a string tied to a ta’veren, either.”
“Is that what we are doing?” Folding her hands at her waist, she tilted her head to one side thoughtfully. “No,” she said at last, “I do not think we could go quite yet. You are a very interesting study, as much as Rand, in your own way. And young Mat. Could I only split myself into three, I would latch one onto each of you and follow you every moment of the day and night even if I had to marry you.”
“I already have a wife.” It felt odd, saying that. Odd, and good. He had a wife, and she was safe.
She shattered his moment of reverie. “Yes, you do. But you do not know what marrying Zarine Bashere means, do you?” She reached up to turn his axe in its loop on his belt, studying it. “When are you going to give this up for the hammer?”
Staring at the Aes Sedai, he reined Stepper back a pace, pulling the axe out of her hands, before he knew it. What marrying Faile meant? Give up the axe? What did she mean? What did she know?
“ISAM!” The guttural roar rose like thunder, and Trollocs appeared, each half again as tall as a man and twice as wide, trotting into the fields to halt beyond bowshot, a hulking, blackmailed mass, deep and stretching the length of the village. Thousands of them packed together, huge faces distorted by beaks and snouts, heads with horns or feathered crests, spikes at elbows and shoulders, scythecurved swords and spiked axes, hooked spears and barbed tridents, a seemingly endless sea of cruel weapons. Behind them, Myrddraal galloped up and down on midnight horses, ravenblack cloaks hanging undisturbed as they whirled their mounts.
“ISAM!”
“Interesting,” Verin murmured.
Perrin would not have thought that was the word. This was the first time the Trollocs had shouted anything understandable. Not that he had any idea what it meant.
Smoothing his marriage ribbon, he forced himself to ride calmly to the center of the Two Rivers line. The Companions formed behind him, the breeze lifting the banner with its red wolfhead. Aram had his sword out in both hands. “Be ready!” Perrin called. His voice was steady; he could not believe it.
“ISAM!” And the black tide rolled forward, howling wordlessly.
Faile was safe. Nothing else mattered. He would not let himself see the faces of the men stretched out to either side of him. He heard the same howls drifting from the south. Both sides at once. They had never tried that before. Faile was safe. “At four hundred paces… !” All along the ranks, bows rose together. Closer the howling mass came, long thick legs eating ground. Closer. “Loose!”
The snap of bowstrings was lost in the Trolloc roar, but a goosefletched hail streaked the sky as it arced out, plunged down into the blackmailed horde. Stones from the catapults erupted in fiery balls and sharp splinters in those seething ranks. Trollocs fell. Perrin saw them go down, trampled beneath boots and hooves. Even some Myrddraal fell. Yet the tidal wave rushed on, closing holes and gaps, apparently undiminished.
There was no need to order another volley. A second followed the first as quickly as men could nock arrows, a second rain of broadhead points rising before the first dropped, the third following behind, the fourth, the fifth. Fire exploded among the Trollocs as fast as the catapult arms could be winched down, Verin galloping from catapult to catapult to lean down from her saddle. And the huge bellowing forms came on, crying in no language Perrin understood, but crying for blood, human blood and flesh. Men crouching behind the stakes readied themselves,
hefting their weapons.
Perrin felt cold inside. He could see the ground behind the Trolloc charge already littered with their dead and dying, yet it hardly seemed they were fewer. Stepper pranced nervously, but he could not hear the dun’s whicker for the rolling howls of Trollocs. The axe came into his hand smoothly, long halfmoon blade and thick spike catching the sunlight. Not midday yet. My heart is yours forever, Faile. This time, he did not think the stakes would…
Not even slowing, the front rank of Trollocs ran onto the sharp stakes, faces contorted by snouts or beaks twisting with pained shrieks, howling as they were impaled, driven down by more huge shapes scrambling up over their backs, some of those falling among the stakes, replaced by more, always more. One last volley of arrows drove home at pointblank range, and then it was the spears and halberds and homemade polearms, thrusting and stabbing at towering forms in black mail, sometimes falling while the bowmen shot as best they could at the inhuman faces above their friends’ heads, boys shooting down from the rooftops as well, madness and death and earsplitting roars and screams and howls. Slowly, inexorably, the Two Rivers line bulged inward at a dozen places. If it broke, anywhere…
“Fall back!” Perrin bellowed. A boarsnouted Trolloc, already bleeding, forced its way through the ranks of men, shrieking and striking with its thick, curved sword. Perrin’s axe split its head to the snout. Stepper was trying to rear, screaming silently in the din. “Fall back!” Darl Coplin went down, clutching a thigh transfixed by a wristthick spear; old Bili Congar tried to drag him backward while awkwardly wielding a boar spear; Hari Coplin swung his halberd in defense of his brother, mouth wide in a seemingly soundless shout. “Fall back between the houses!”
He was not sure whether others heard and passed the order, or the mountainous weight of Trollocs simply pressed in, but slowly, one grudging step at a time, the humans moved back. Loial swung his bloodied axes like mallets, wide mouth snarling. Beside the Ogier, Bran thrust his spear grimly; he had lost his steel cap, and blood ran in his fringe of gray hair. From his stallion Tomas carved a space around Verin; hair in wild disarray, she had lost her horse; balls of fire streaked from her hands, and every Trolloc struck exploded in flames as if soaked in oil. Not enough to hold. The Two Rivers men edged back, jostling around Stepper. Gaul and Chiad fought backtoback; she had only one spear left, and he slashed and stabbed with his heavy knife. Back. To west and east men had curved out from the defenses there to keep the Trollocs from flanking them, pouring arrows in. Not enough. Back.
Suddenly a huge ramhorned shape was trying to pull Perrin out of the saddle, trying to climb up after him. Thrashing, Stepper went down under the combined weight. Leg pinned and pained near to breaking, Perrin struggled to bring his axe around, to fight hands bigger than an Ogier’s away from his throat. The Trolloc screamed as Aram’s sword sliced into its neck. Even as it collapsed atop Perrin, spraying blood, the Tinker spun smoothly to run another Trolloc through the
middle.
Grunting with pain, Perrin kicked his way clear, aided by Stepper scrambling to his feet, but there was no time to think of remounting. He barely rolled aside as a black horse’s hooves stamped where his head had been. Pale, eyeless face snarling, the Fade leaned from its saddle as he tried to rise, deadblack sword slashing, brushing his hair as he dropped. Ruthlessly he swung his axe, chopping one of the horse’s legs out from under it. Horse and rider toppled together; as they fell, he buried his axe where the Halfman’s eyes should have been.
He wrenched the blade free in time to see Daise Congar’s pitchfork tines take a goatsnouted Trolloc in the throat. It seized the long shaft with one hand, stabbing a barbed spear at her with the other, but Marin al’Vere calmly hamstrung it with one blow of her cleaver; the leg gave way, and she just as coolly severed the Trolloc’s spine at the base of its neck. Another Trolloc lifted Bode Cauthon into the air by her braid; mouth wide in a terrified scream, she sank her woodaxe into its mailed shoulder just as her sister, Eldrin, thrust her boar spear through its chest and graybraided Neysa Ayellin drove a thick butchering knife in as well.
All up and down the line, as far as Perrin could see, the women were there. Their numbers were the only reason the line still held, almost driven back against the houses. Women among the men, shoulder to shoulder; some no more than girls, but then, some of those “men” had never shaved yet. Some never would. Where were the Whitecloaks? The children! If the women were here, there was no one to get the children out. Where are the bloody Whitecloaks? If they came now, at least they might buy another few minutes. A few minutes to get the children away.
A boy, the same darkhaired runner who had come for him the night before, seized his arm as he turned to search for the Companions. The Companions had to try to cut a way out for the children. He would send them, and do what he could here. “Lord Perrin!” the boy shouted at him through the deafening din. “Lord Perrin!”
Perrin tried to shake him off, then snatched him up kicking under one arm; he belonged with the other children. Split up, in tight ranks stretching from house to house, Ban and Tell and the other Companions were shooting from their saddles, over the heads of the men and women. Wil had driven the banner’s staff into the ground so he could work his bow, too. Somehow, Tell had managed to catch up Stepper; the dun’s reins were tied to Tell’s saddle. The boy could go on Stepper’s back.
“Lord Perrin! Please listen! Master al’Thor says somebody’s attacking the Trollocs! Lord Perrin!”
Perrin was halfway to Tell, hobbling on his bruised leg, when it penetrated. He stuffed the axe haft through his belt to hoist the boy up in front of his face by the shoulders. “Attacking them? Who?”
“I don’t know, Lord Perrin. Master al’Thor said to tell you he thought he heard somebody shouting ‘Deven Ride.’ ”
Aram grabbed Perrin’s arm, wordlessly pointing with his bloody sword. Perrin turned in time to see a hail of arrows plunge into the Trollocs. From the north. Another flight was already rising toward the top of its arc.
“Go back to the other children,” he said, setting the boy down. He had to be up where he could see. “Go! You did well, boy!” he added as he ran awkwardly for Stepper. The little fellow scampered back into the village grinning. Every step sent a jolt of pain up Perrin’s leg; maybe the thing was broken. He had no time to worry about that.
Seizing the reins Tell tossed him, he hauled himself up into his saddle. And wondered if he was seeing what he wanted to see instead of what was really there.
Beneath a redeagle banner at the edge of where the fields had been stood long rows of men in farmer’s clothes, shooting their bows methodically. And beside the banner, Faile sat Swallow’s saddle, Bain at her stirrup. It had to be Bain behind that black veil, and he could see Faile’s face clearly. She looked excited, fearful, terrified and exuberant. She looked beautiful.
Myrddraal were trying to turn some of the Trollocs around, trying to lead a charge against the Watch Hill men, but it was useless. Even Trollocs who did turn went down before they covered fifty strides. A Fade and its horse fell, not to arrows, but to panicked Trolloc hands and spears. It was the Trollocs moving back now, then running in a frenzy, fleeing shots from both sides once the Emond’s Field men had room to lift bows, too, Trollocs falling, Myrddraal going down. It was a slaughter, but Perrin hardly saw. Faile.
The same boy appeared at his stirrup. “Lord Perrin!” he shouted. To be heard above cheering now, men and women shouting for joy and relief as the last Trollocs who had not made it out of bow range fell. Not many had, Perrin believed, but he was barely able to think. Faile. The boy tugged at his breeches’ leg. “Lord Perrin! Master al’Thor said to tell you the Trollocs are breaking! And they are shouting ‘Deven Ride’! The men, I mean. I heard them!”
Perrin bent to ruffle the boy’s curly hair. “What’s your name, lad?” “Jaim Aybara, Lord Perrin. I’m your cousin, I think. Sort of, anyway.”
Perrin squeezed his eyes shut for a moment to keep the tears in. Even when he opened them his hand still trembled on the lad’s head. “Well, Cousin Jaim, you tell your children about today. You tell your grandchildren, your grandchildren’s children.”
“I’m not going to have any,” Jaim said stoutly. “Girls are horrible. They laugh at you, and they don’t like to do anything worth doing, and you never understand what they’re saying.”
“I think one day you’ll find out they’re the opposite of horrible. Some of it won’t change, but that will.” Faile.
Jaim looked doubtful, but then he brightened, a wide grin spreading across his face. “Wait till I tell Had Lord Perrin called me cousin!” And he darted away to tell Had, who would have children, too, and all the other boys who would, one day. The
sun stood straight overhead. An hour, maybe. It had all taken no more than an hour. It felt like a lifetime.
Stepper moved forward, and he realized he must have dug his heels in. Cheering people made way for the dun, and he hardly heard them. There were great gaps where Trollocs had broken down the stakes with sheer weight of numbers. He rode through one over a mound of dead Trollocs and never noticed. Dead Trollocs bristling with arrows carpeted the open ground, and here and there a pincushioned Fade flailed and thrashed. He saw none of it. He had eyes for only one thing. Faile.
She started out from the Watch Hill men, pausing to stop Bain from following, and rode to meet him. She rode so gracefully, as if the black mare were part of her, slimly erect, guiding Swallow more with her knees than the reins held so casually in one hand. The red marriage ribbon still twined through her hair, the ends dangling past her shoulders. He must find her flowers.
For a moment those tilted eyes studied him, her mouth… Surely she could not be uncertain, but she smelled it. “I said I would go,” she said finally, holding her head high. Swallow danced sideways, neck arched, and Faile mastered the mare without seeming to noticed “I did not say how far. You cannot say I did.”
He could not say anything. She was so beautiful. He just wanted to look at her, to see her, beautiful, alive, with him. Her scent was clean sweat with just the slightest hint of herbal soap. He was not sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. Maybe both. He wanted to pull all the smell of her into his lungs.
Frowning, she went on. “They were ready, Perrin. Truly, they were. I barely had to say anything to convince them to come. The Trollocs had hardly bothered them at all, but they could see the smoke. We traveled hard, Bain and I, and reached Watch Hill well before first light, and we started back as soon as the sun rose.” Her frown became a wide smile, eager and proud. Such a beautiful smile. Her dark eyes sparkled. “They followed me, Perrin. They followed me! Even Tenobia has never led men in battle. She wanted to once, when I was eight, but Father had a talk with her alone in her chambers, and when he rode off to the Blight she stayed behind.” With a rueful grin, she added, “I think you and he use the same methods sometimes. Tenobia exiled him, but she was only sixteen, and the Council of Lords managed to change her mind after a few weeks. She will be blue with envy when I tell her.” Again she paused, this time drawing a deep breath and planting a fist on her hip. “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she demanded impatiently. “Are you just going to sit there like a hairy lump? I did not say I would leave the Two Rivers. You said that, not I. You’ve no right to be angry because I did not do what I never promised! And you trying to send me away because you thought you were going to die! I came back to —”
“I love you.” It was all he could say, but strangely it seemed to be enough. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than she reined Swallow close enough to throw an arm around him and press her face against his chest; she seemed to be trying to squeeze him in two. He stroked her dark hair gently, just feeling the
silkiness of it, just feeling her.
“I was so afraid I would be too late,” she said into his coat. “The Watch Hill men marched as fast as they could, but when we arrived, and I saw the Trollocs fighting right in among the houses, so many of them, as if the village were being buried in an avalanche, and I couldn’t see you…” She drew a shivering breath and let it out slowly. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. Just. “Did the men from Deven Ride come?”
He gave a start, and his hand stopped stroking. “Yes, they did. How did you know? .Did you arrange that, too?” She began shaking; it took him a moment to know she was laughing.
“No, my heart, though I would have if I could. When that man came with his message — ‘We are coming’ — I thought — hoped — that that was what it meant.” Pulling her face back a little, she looked up at him seriously. “I could not tell you, Perrin. I could not raise your hopes when I only suspected. It would have been too cruel if… Don’t be angry with me, Perrin.”
Laughing, he lifted her out of her saddle and set her sideways in front of his; she laughed her protests, and stretched across the high pommel to put both arms around him. “I will never, ever be angry with you, I sw —” She cut him off with a hand over his mouth.
“Mother says the worst thing Father ever did to her was vow never to be angry with her. It took her a year to force him to take it back, and she says he was hardly fit to live with long before then from holding in. You will be angry with me, Perrin, and I with you. If you want to make me another wedding vow, vow you will not hide it when you are. I cannot deal with what you will not let me see, my husband. My husband,” she repeated in a satisfied tone, snuggling against him. “I do like the sound of that.”
He noticed she did not say she would always let him know when she was angry; on past experience, he would have to discover it the hard way at least half the time. And she made no promises not to keep secrets from him again, either. Right then, it did not matter so long as she was with him. “I will let you know when I’m angry, my wife,” he promised. She gave him a slanted look, as if she was not sure how to take that. You won’t ever come to understand them, Cousin Jaim, but you won’t care.
Abruptly he became aware of the dead Trollocs all around him, like a black field full of feathered weeds, the thrashing Myrddraal still refusing to die finally. Slowly he turned Stepper. A slaughter yard and a shambles of Shadowspawn stretching for hundreds of paces in every direction. Crows hopped across the ground already, and vultures soared overhead in a huge milling cloud. No ravens, though. And the same to the south, according to Jaim; he could see the vultures wheeling beyond the village for proof. Not enough to repay for Deselle or Adora or little Paet or… Not enough; it would never be enough. Nothing could ever repay for them. He hugged Faile; hard enough to make her grunt, but when he tried to ease up, she put her
hands on his arms, gripping just as hard to keep them where they were. She was enough.
People were streaming out of Emond’s Field, Bran limping and using his spear for a staff, Marin smiling with an arm around him, Daise being hugged by her husband, Wit, and Gaul and Chiad hand in hand with their veils down. Loial’s ears drooped wearily, and Tam had blood on his face, and Flann Lewin was standing only with the help of his wife, Adine; there was blood on nearly everyone, and hasty bandages. But they came out in a widening throng, Elam and Dav, Ewin and Aram, Eward Candwin and Buel Dowtry, Hu and Tad the stablemen from the Winespring Inn, Ban and Tell and the Companions riding with that banner still. This time he did not see the missing faces, only those who were still there. Verin and Alanna on their horses, with Tomas and Ihvon riding close behind. Old Bili Congar waving a jug that surely held ale, or better yet brandy, and Cenn Buie as gnarled as ever if bruised, and Jac al’Seen with an arm around his wife, and his sons and daughters around him with their wives and husbands. Raen and Ila, still with the babes on their backs. More. Faces he did not know at all; men who must be from Deven Ride and the farms down there. Boys and girls running among them, laughing.
They fanned out to either side, forming a great hollow circle with the Watch Hill men, Faile and him at its center. Everyone avoided the dying Fades, but it was as if they did not see the Shadowspawn lying everywhere, only the pair on Stepper. Silently they watched, until Perrin began to feel nervous. Why doesn’t somebody say something? Why are they staring like that?
The Whitecloaks appeared, riding slowly out of the village in their long gleaming column of fours, Dain Bornhald at their head with Jaret Byar. Every white cloak shone as though freshly laundered; every lance slanted at precisely the same angle. Sullen mutters rose, but people moved aside to let them enter the circle.
Bornhald raised a gauntleted hand, halting the column in a jingle of bridles and creak of saddles, when he faced Perrin. “It is done, Shadowspawn.” Byar’s mouth quivered on the brink of a snarl, but Bornhald’s face never changed, his voice never rose. “The Trollocs are done here. As we agreed, I arrest you now for Darkfriend and murderer.”
“No!” Faile twisted around to stare up at Perrin, eyes angry. “What does he mean, as you agreed?”
Her words were nearly drowned by the roar from every side. “No! No!” and “You will not take him!” and “Goldeneyes!”
Keeping his gaze on Bornhald, Perrin lifted a hand, and silence descended slowly. When all was quiet, he said, “I said I would not resist, if you aided.” Surprising, how calm his voice was; inside he seethed with a slow, cold anger. “If you aided, Whitecloak. Where were you?” The man did not answer.
Daise Congar stepped out from the encircling throng with Wit, who clung to her as if he never intended to let go of her again. For that matter, her stout arm was
wrapped around Wit’s shoulders in much the same fashion. They made an odd picture as she planted her pitchforkpolearm firmly, her the taller by a head and holding her considerably smaller husband as though she meant to protect him. “They were on the Green,” she announced loudly, “all lined up and sitting their horses pretty as girls ready for a dance at Sunday. They never stirred. It was that that made us come…” A fierce murmur of agreement rippled from the women. “. . . when we saw you were about to be overrun, and they just sat there like bumps on a log!”
Bornhald did not take his eyes from Perrin for an instant; he did not even blink. “Did you think I would trust you?” he sneered. “Your plan only failed because these others arrived — yes? — and you can claim no part in that.” Faile shifted; without looking away from the man, Perrin laid a finger across her lips just as she opened her mouth. She bit him — hard — but she did not say anything. Bornhald’s voice finally began to rise. “I will see you hang, Shadowspawn. I will see you hang, whatever it takes! I will see you dead if the world burns!” The last came as a shout. Byar’s sword slid a hand of bare steel from its scabbard; a massive Whitecloak behind him — Farran, Perrin thought his name was — drew his completely, with a pleased smile rather than Byar’s toothy snarl.
They froze as quivers rattled to arrows being drawn, and bows came up all around the circle, fletchings drawn to ear, every broadhead shaft pointed at a Whitecloak. Up and down the thick column, highcantled saddles creaked as men shifted uneasily. Bornhald showed no sign of fear, and he did not smell of it, either; his scent was all hate. He ran almost fevered eyes over the Two Rivers folk encircling his men and returned them to Perrin just as hot and hatefilled.
Perrin motioned downward, and tension was let off bowstrings reluctantly, bows lowered slowly. “You would not help.” His voice was cold iron, anvilhard. “Since you came to the Two Rivers, the help you’ve given has been almost accidental. You never really cared if people were burned out, killed, so long as you could find somebody to call Darkfriend.” Bornhald shivered, though his eyes still burned. “It is time for you to go. Not just from Emond’s Field. It is time for you to gather up your Whitecloaks and leave the Two Rivers. Now, Bornhald. You are going now.”
“I will see you hang one day,” Bornhald said softly. He jerked his hand for the column to follow and booted his horse forward as if he meant to ride Perrin over.
Perrin moved Stepper aside; he wanted these men gone, not more killing. Let the man have a final gesture of defiance.
Bornhald never turned his head, but hollowcheeked Byar stared silent hate at Perrin, and Farran seemed to look at him with regret for some reason. The others kept their eyes front as they passed in a jingle of tack and the clop of hooves. Silently the circle opened to let them out, heading north.
A knot of ten or twelve men approached Perrin on foot, some in mismatched bits and pieces of old armor, all grinning anxiously, as the last of the Whitecloaks went by. He did not recognize any of them. A widenosed, leatheryfaced fellow
seemed to be their leader, his white hair bare but a rusty mail shirt covering him to the knees, though the collar of a farmer’s coat poked up around his neck. He bowed awkwardly over his bow. “Jerinvar Barstere, my Lord Perrin. Jer, they call me.” He spoke hurriedly, as if afraid of being interrupted. “Pardon for bothering you. Some of us will see the Whitecloaks along, if that’s all right with you. A good many want to get on home, even if we can’t get there before dark. There’s as many Whitecloaks again in Watch Hill, but they would not come. Had orders to hold fast, they said. Bunch of fools, if you ask me, and we’re more than tired of having them around, poking their noses into people’s houses and trying to make you accuse your neighbor of something. We’ll see them off, if that’s all right with you.” He gave Faile an abashed look, ducking his broad chin, but the flow of words did not slow. “Pardon, my Lady Faile. Didn’t mean to bother you and your lord. Just wanted to let him know we’re with him. A fine woman you have there, my Lord. A fine woman. No offense meant, my Lady. Well, we’ve daylight still, and talk shears no sheep. Pardon for bothering you, my Lord Perrin. Pardon, my Lady Faile.” He bowed again, imitated by the others, and they hurried away with him herding them, muttering at them, “No time for us to be bothering the lord and his lady. There’s work to do yet.”
“Who was that?” Perrin said, a trifle stunned by the torrent; Daise and Cenn together could not talk that much. “Do you know him, Faile? From Watch Hill?”
“Master Barstere is the Mayor of Watch Hill, and the others are the Village Council. The Watch Hill Women’s Circle will be sending a delegation down under their Wisdom once they’re certain it is safe. To see if ‘this Lord Perrin’ is right for the Two Rivers, they say, but they all wanted me to show them how to curtsy to you, and the Wisdom, Edelle Gaelin, is bringing you some of her driedapple tarts.”
“Oh, burn me!” he breathed. It was spreading. He knew he should have stamped it down hard in the beginning. “Don’t call me that!” he shouted after the departing men. “I’m a blacksmith! Do you hear me? A blacksmith!” Jer Barstere turned to wave at him and nod before hurrying the others on.
Chortling, Faile tugged at his beard. “You are a sweet fool, my Lord Blacksmith. It is too late to turn back now.” Suddenly her smile became truly wicked. “Husband, is there any possibility you might be alone with your wife any time soon? Marriage seems to have made me as bold as a Domani gall! I know you must be tired, but —” She cut off with a small shriek and clung to his coat as he booted Stepper to a gallop toward the Winespring Inn. For once the cheers that followed did not bother him at all.
“Goldeneyes! Lord Perrin! Goldeneyes!”
From the thick branch of a leafy oak on the edge of the Westwood, Ordeith stared at Emond’s Field, a mile to the south. It was impossible. Scourge them. Flay them. Everything had been going according to plan. Even Isam had played into his hands. Why did the fool stop bringing Trollocs? He should have brought in enough to turn the Two Rivers black with them! Spittle dripped from his lips, but he did not
notice, any more than he realized that his hand was fumbling at his belt. Harry them till their hearts burst! Harrow them into the ground screaming! All planned to pull Rand al’Thor to him, and it came to this! The Two Rivers had not even been scratched. A few farms burned did not count, nor a few farmers butchered alive for Trolloc cookpots. I want the Two Rivers to burn, burn so the fire lives in men’s memories for a thousand years!
He studied the banner waving over the village, and the one not that far below him. A scarlet wolfhead on scarletbordered white, and a red eagle. Red for the blood the Two Rivers must shed to make Rand al’Thor howl. Manetheren. That’s meant to be Manetheren’s banner. Someone had told them of Manetheren, had they? What did these fools know of the glories of Manetheren? Manetheren. Yes. There was more than one way to scourge them. He laughed so hard he nearly fell out of the oak before he realized that he was not holding on with both hands, that one gripped his belt where a dagger should have hung. The laugh twisted into a snarl as he stared at that hand. The White Tower held what had been stolen from him. What was his by right as old as the Trolloc Wars.
He let himself drop to the ground, and scrambled onto his horse before looking at his companions. His hounds. The thirty or so Whitecloaks remaining no longer wore their white cloaks, of course. Rust spotted their dull plateandmail, and Bornhald would never have recognized those sullen, suspicious faces, dirty and unshaven. The humans watched Ordeith, distrustful yet afraid, not even glancing at the Myrddraal in their midst, its slugpale, eyeless face as bleakly wooden as theirs. The Halfman feared Isam would find it; Isam had not at all been pleased when that raid on Taren Ferry let so many escape to carry away word of what was happening in the Two Rivers. Ordeith giggled at the thought of Isam discomforted. The man was a problem for another time, if he still lived.
“We ride for Tar Valon,” he snapped. Hard riding, to beat Bornhald to the ferry. Manetheren’s banner, raised again in the Two Rivers after all these centuries. How the Red Eagle had harried him, so long ago. “But Caemlyn first!” Scourge them and flay them! Let the Two Rivers pay first, and then Rand al’Thor, and then…
Laughing, he galloped north through the forest, not looking back to see if the others followed. They would. They had nowhere else to go now.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 57
(Spears and Shield)
A Breaking in the Threefold Land
The molten afternoon sun broiled the Waste, flinging shadows across the mountains to the north, just ahead now. The dry hills passed beneath Jeade’en’s hooves, high and low like swells in an ocean of cracked clay, miles rolling away behind. The mountains had held Rand’s eyes since they first came in sight the day before, not snowcapped, not so tall as the Mountains of Mist, much less the Spine of the World, but jagged slabs of brown and gray stone, streaked in some places with yellow or red or bands of glittering flecks, tumbled about so that a man might think to try the Dragonwall afoot first. Sighing, he settled in his saddle and adjusted the shoufa he wore with his red coat. In those mountains lay Alcair Dal. Soon there would be an ending of sorts, or a beginning. Maybe both. Soon, perhaps.
Yellowhaired Adelin strode easily ahead of the dapple stallion, and nine more sundark Far Dareis Mai made a wide ring around him, all with bucklers and spears in hand, cased bows on their backs, black veils dangling on their chests ready to be lifted. Rand’s honor guard. The Aiel did not call it that, yet the Maidens came to Alcair Dal for Rand’s honor. So many differences, and he did not know what half really were even when he saw them.
For instance, Aviendha’s behavior toward the Maidens, and theirs to her. Most of the time, as now, she walked beside his horse with her arms folded in the shawl around her shoulders; green eyes intent beneath her dark head scarf on the mountains ahead, she seldom spoke with the Maidens beyond a word or two, but that was not the oddity. Her arms folded; that was the heart of it. The Maidens knew she wore the ivory bracelet, yet seemed to pretend not to see it; she would not take it off, yet hid her wrist whenever she thought one of them might be looking.
You have no society, Adelin had told him when he suggested some other than the Maidens of the Spear might provide his escort. Each chief, whether of clan or sept, would be accompanied by men from the society he had belonged to before becoming chief. You have no society, but your mother was a Maiden. The yellowhaired woman and the other nine had not looked at Aviendha, a few steps away in the entry hall to Lian’s roof; they had not looked intently. For countless years Maidens who would not give up the spear have given their babes for the Wise Ones to hand to other women, none knowing where the child went or even whether boy or girl. Now a Maiden’s son has come back to us, and we know him. We will go to Alcair Dal for your honor, son of Shaiel, a Maiden of the Chumai Taardad. Her face was so set — all of their faces were, including Aviendha’s — that he thought they might offer to dance the spears if he refused.
When he accepted, they made him go through that ritual of “Remember honor” again, this time with some drink called oosquai, made from zemai, drinking to the bottom of a small silver cup with each of them. Ten Maidens; ten little cups. The
stuff looked like faintly browntinged water, tasted almost like it — and was stronger than doubledistilled brandy. He had not been able to walk straight after, and they had got him to bed, laughing at him, no matter how he protested, as much as he could with all of them tickling him so he could barely breathe for laughing himself. All but Aviendha. Not that she went away; she stayed and watched the whole thing with a face as blank as stone. When Adelin and the others finally tucked him into his blankets and left, Aviendha sat down beside the door, spreading her dark, heavy skirts, watching him stonily until he fell asleep. At his waking, she was still there, still watching. And refusing to talk about Maidens or oosquai or any of it; as far as she was concerned, it seemed not to have happened. Whether the Maidens would have been as reticent, he did not know; how could you possibly look ten women in the face and ask why they had gotten you drunk and made a game of taking your clothes off and putting you to bed?
So many differences, so few that made much sense that he could see, and no telling which might trip him up and ruin all his plans. Yet he could not afford to wait. He glanced over his shoulder. What was done, was done. And who can say what’s yet to come?
Well behind, the Taardad followed him. Not just the Nine Valley Taardad and the Jindo, but the Miadi and the Four Stones, the Chumai and the Bloody Water and more, broad columns surrounding the peddlers’ lurching wagons and the Wise Ones’ party, reaching back two miles through the shimmering heat haze, ringed by scouts and outrunners. Every day more had come in response to the runners Rhuarc had sent that first day, a hundred men and Maidens here, three hundred there, five hundred, according to the size of each sept and what each hold needed to keep for safety.
In the distance to the south and west, another band was approaching at a run, trailing dust for their pace; perhaps they belonged to some other clan on its way to Alcair Dal, but he thought not. Only twothirds of the septs represented yet, but he estimated there were well over fifteen thousand Taardad Aiel strung out behind him. An army on the march, and still growing. Nearly an entire clan coming to a meeting of chiefs, in violation of all custom.
Suddenly Jeade’en topped a rise, and there in a long, wide hollow below was the fair gathered for the meeting, and on the hills beyond, the camps of the clan and sept chiefs who had already arrived.
Spread among two or three hundred of the low, wallless tents, all widely spaced, were pavilions of the same grayish brown material that were tall enough to stand beneath, with goods displayed on blankets in the shade, brightly glazed pottery and even brighter rugs, jewelry in silver or gold. Aiel crafts mainly, but there would be things from beyond the Waste as well, including perhaps silk and ivory from far to the east. No one seemed to be trading; the few men and women in sight sat in one or another of the pavilions, usually alone.
Of the five camps scattered on heights around the fair, four looked just as empty,
only a few dozen men or Maidens stirring amid tents set up for as many as a thousand. The fifth camp sprawled over twice as much ground as any of the others, with hundreds of people visible, and likely as many more inside the tents.
Rhuarc trotted up the hill behind Rand with his ten Aethan Dor, Red Shields, followed by Heirn with ten Tain Shari, True Bloods, and fortyodd more sept chiefs with their escorts for honor, all with spears and bucklers, bows and quivers. It made a formidable force, more than had taken the Stone of Tear. Some of the Aiel in the camps and among the pavilions were peering at the hilltop. Not at the Aiel gathered there, Rand suspected. At him; a man on a horse. A thing seen very seldom in the Threefold Land. He would show them more before he was done.
Rhuarc’s gaze settled on the largest camp, where more Aiel in cadin’sor were boiling out of the tents, all to stare in their direction. “Shaido, unless I mistake myself,” he said quietly. “Couladin. You are not the only one to break custom, Rand al’Thor.”
“Perhaps as well I did.” Rand dragged the shoufa from around his head and stuffed it into his coat pocket atop the angreal, the carving of a roundfaced man with a sword across his knees. The sun began baking his bare head to show him how much protection the cloth had been. “If we had come according to custom…” The Shaido were loping toward the mountains, leaving behind apparently empty tents. And causing some little stir in the other camps, and the fair; the Aiel gave over staring at a man on a horse to peer after the Shaido. “Could you have forced a way into Alcair Dal against twotoone odds or better, Rhuarc?”
“Not before nightfall,” the clan chief replied slowly, “not even against Shaido dogrobbers. This is more than violation of custom! Even Shaido should have more honor than this!”
Angry mutters of agreement rose from the other Taardad on the hilltop. Except the Maidens; for some reason they had gathered around Aviendha off to one side, talking seriously among themselves. Rhuarc spoke a few quiet words to one of his Red Shields, a greeneyed fellow who looked as if his face had been used to pound fence posts, and the man turned downhill, running swiftly back toward the approaching Taardad.
“Did you expect this?” Rhuarc asked Rand as soon as the Red Shield left. “Is that why you summoned the entire clan?”
“Not this exactly, Rhuarc.” The Shaido began forming lines before a narrow gap into the mountains; they were veiling themselves. “But there was no other reason for Couladin to leave in the night except that he was eager to be somewhere, and where would he better like to be than here, causing me trouble? Are the others already in Alcair Dal? Why?”
“The opportunity presented by chiefs meeting is not to be missed, Rand al’Thor. There will be discussions of boundary disputes, grazing rights, a dozen things. Water. If two Aiel from different clans meet, they discuss water. Three from three clans, and they discuss water and grazing.”

six.
“And four?” Rand asked. Five clans represented already, and the Taardad made

Rhuarc hesitated a moment, hefting one of his short spears unconsciously. “Four
will dance the spears. But it should not be so here.”
The Taardad parted to let the Wise Ones through, shawls over their heads, with Moiraine and Lan and Egwene riding behind. Egwene and the Aes Sedai wore those white cloths around their temples, in damp imitation of the Aiel women’s head scarves. Mat rode up, too, off by himself, blackhafted spear across his pommel. His widebrimmed hat shadowed his face as he studied what lay ahead.
The Warder nodded to himself when he saw the Shaido. “That could be messy,” he said softly. His black stallion rolled an eye at Rand’s dapple; only that, and Lan was intent on the Aiel ranks before the gap, yet he patted Mandarb’s neck soothingly. “But not now, I think.”
“Not now,” Rhuarc agreed.
“If only you would… allow me to go in with you.” Except for that one slight hitch, Moiraine’s voice was as serene as ever; cool calm painted her ageless features, but her dark eyes looked at Rand as if her gaze alone could force him to relent.
Amys’s long pale hair, hanging below her shawl, swung as she shook her head firmly. “It is not his decision, Aes Sedai. This is the business of chiefs, men’s business. If we let you go into Alcair Dal now, the next time Wise Ones meet, or roofmistresses, some clan chief will want to put his nose in. They think we meddle in their affairs, and often try to meddle in ours.” She gave Rhuarc a quick smile meant to convey that she did not include him; her husband’s lack of expression told Rand he thought otherwise.
Melaine gripped her shawl under her chin, precisely staring at Rand. If she did not agree with Moraine, at least she mistrusted what he would do. He had hardly slept since leaving Cold Rocks; if they had peered into his dreams, they had seen only nightmares.
“Be careful, Rand al’Thor,” Bair said as if she had read his thoughts. “A tired man makes mistakes. You cannot afford mistakes today.” She pulled her shawl down around her thin shoulders, and her thin voice took on an almost angry note. “We cannot afford for you to make mistakes. The Aiel cannot afford it.”
The coming of more riders to the hilltop had drawn eyes back to them. Among the pavilions several hundred Aiel, men in cadin’sor and longhaired women in skirts and blouses and shawls, made a watchful crowd. Its attention shifted when Kadere’s dusty white wagon appeared behind its team of mules off to the right, with the heavy, creamcoated peddler on the driver’s seat, and Isendre all in white silk holding a matching parasol. Keille’s wagon followed, with Natael handling the reins at her side, and the canvastopped wagons, and finally the three big water wagons like huge barrels on wheels with their long mule teams. They looked at Rand as the wagons rambled past in a squeal of ungreased axles, Kadere and Isendre, Natael in
his gleeman’s patchcovered cloak, Keille’s great bulk encased in snowy white, a white lace shawl on her ivory combs. Rand patted Jeade’en’s arched neck. Men and women began spilling out of the fair below to meet the approaching wagons. The Shaido were waiting. Soon, now.
Egwene moved her gray close to Jeade’en; the dapple stallion tried to nuzzle Mist and got nipped for his trouble. “You’ve not given me any chance to speak to you since Cold Rocks, Rand.” He said nothing; she was Aes Sedai now, and not just because she called herself one. He wondered if she had spied on his dreams, too. Her face looked tight, her dark eyes tired. “Do not keep to yourself, Rand. You do not fight alone. Others do battle for you, too.”
Frowning, he tried not to look at her. His first thought was of Emond’s Field and Perrin, but he did not see how she could know where Perrin had gone. “What do you mean?” he said finally.
“I fight for you,” Moiraine said before Egwene could open her mouth, “as does Egwene.” A look flashed between the two women. “People fight for you who do not know it, any more than you know them. You do not realize what it means that you force the form of the Age Lace, do you? The ripples of your actions, the ripples of your very existence, spread across the Pattern to change the weave of lifethreads of which you will never be aware. The battle is far from yours alone. Yet you stand in the heart of this web in the Pattern. Should you fail, and fall, all fails and falls. Since I cannot go with you into Alcair Dal, let Lan accompany you. One more pair of eyes to watch your back.” The Warder turned slightly in his saddle, frowning at her; with the Shaido veiled for killing, he would not be eager to leave her alone.
Rand did not think he was supposed to have seen that look pass from Moiraine to Egwene. So they had a secret to keep from him. Egwene did have Aes Sedai eyes, dark and unreadable. Aviendha and the Maidens had come back to him. “Let Lan stay with you, Moiraine. Far Dareis Mai carries my honor.”
Moiraine’s mouth tightened at the corners, but apparently that was exactly the right thing to say so far as the Maidens were concerned. Adelin and the others donned wide grins.
Below, Aiel were crowding around wagon drivers as they began unhitching the mules. Not everyone was paying attention to the Aiel. Keille and Isendre stared at one another from beside their wagons, Natael speaking urgently to one woman, Kadere to the other, until they finally stopped their duel of eyes. The two women had been like that for some time. Had they been men, Rand would have expected it to come to blows long since.
“Be on your guard, Egwene,” Rand said. “All of you, be on your guard.”
“Even the Shaido will not bother Aes Sedai,” Amys told him, “any more than they will bother Bair or Melaine or myself. Some things are beyond even Shaido.”
“Just be on your guard!” He had not meant to be that sharp. Even Rhuarc stared at him. They did not understand, and he dared not tell them. Not yet. Who would spring their trap first? He had to risk them as well as himself.
“What about me, Rand?” Mat said suddenly, rolling a gold coin across the fingers of one hand as though unaware of it. “You have any objections to my going with you?”
“Do you want to? I thought you’d stay with the peddlers.”
Mat frowned at the wagons below, looked to the Shaido lined before the mountain gap. “I don’t think it will be so easy to get out of here if you get yourself killed. Burn me if you don’t stick me in the rendering kettle one way or… Dovienya,” he muttered — Rand had heard him say that before; Lan said it meant “luck” in the Old Tongue — and flipped the gold coin into the air. When he tried to snatch it back, it bounced off his fingertips and fell to the ground. Somehow, improbably, the coin landed on edge, rolling downhill, bounding across cracks in the baked clay, glittering in the sunlight, all the way down to the wagons, where it finally fell over. “Burn me, Rand,” he growled, “I wish you wouldn’t do that!”
Isendre picked up the coin and stood fingering it, peering up at the hilltop. The others stared, too; Kadere, and Keille, and Natael.
“You can come,” Rand said. “Rhuarc, isn’t it about time?”
The clan chief glanced over his shoulder. “Yes. Just about…” Behind him, pipes began playing a slow dancing tune. “. . . now.”
Singing rose to the pipes. Aiel boys stopped singing when they reached manhood, except for certain occasions. Only in battle songs and laments for the dead did an Aielman sing once he had taken up the spear. There were surely Maidens’ voices in that chanted harmony of parts, but deep male voices swallowed them.
“Wash the spears — while the sun climbs high. Wash the spears — while the sun falls low.”
Half a mile to right and left Taardad appeared, running in time to their song in two wide columns, spears ready, faces veiled, seemingly endless columns rolling toward the mountains.
“Wash the spears — Who fears to die? Wash the spears — No one I know!”
In the clan camps and in the fair, Aiel stared in amazement; something in the way they held themselves told Rand they were silent. Some of the wagon drivers stood as if stunned; others let their mules run loose and dove under their wagons. And Keille and Isendre, Kadere and Natael, watched Rand.
“Wash the spears — while life holds true. Wash the spears — until life ends.
Wash the spears…”
“Shall we go?” He did not wait for Rhuarc’s nod to heel Jeade’en to a walk down the hill, Adelin and the other Maidens falling in around him. Mat hesitated a moment before booting Pips to follow, but Rhuarc and the Taardad sept chiefs, each with his ten, stepped off with the dapple. Once, halfway to the fair tents, Rand looked back to the hilltop. Moiraine and Egwene sitting their horses with Lan.
Aviendha standing with the three Wise Ones. All watching him. He had almost forgotten what it was like not to have people watching him.
As he rode abreast of the fair, a delegation came out, ten or a dozen women in skirts and blouses and much gold and silver and ivory, as many men in the grays and browns of the cadin’sor but unarmed save for a belt knife, and that usually smaller than the heavybladed weapon Rhuarc wore. Still, they took a position that forced Rand and the others to halt, and appeared to ignore the veiled Taardad streaming by to east and west.
“Wash the spears — Life is a dream. Wash the spears — All dreams must end.”
“I did not expect this of you, Rhuarc,” a heavyset, grayhaired man said. He was not fat — Rand had not seen a fat Aiel — his heaviness was muscle. “Even from the Shaido it was a surprise, but you!”
“Times change, Mandhuin,” the clan chief replied. “How long have the Shaido been here?”
“They arrived just at sunrise. Why they traveled in the night, who can say?” Mandhuin frowned slightly at Rand, tilted his head toward Mat. “Strange times indeed, Rhuarc.”
“Who is here besides the Shaido?” Rhuarc asked.
“We Goshien arrived first. Then the Shaarad.” The heavy man grimaced over his blood enemies’ name, without stopping his study of the two wetlanders. “The Chareen and the Tomanelle came later. And last the Shaido, as I said. Sevanna convinced the chiefs to go in only a short time ago. Bael saw no reason to meet today, nor did some of the others.”
A broadfaced woman in her middle years, with hair yellower than Adelin’s, put fists on her hips in a rattle of ivory and gold bracelets. She wore as many, and as many necklaces, as Amys and her sisterwife combined. “We hear He Who Comes With the Dawn has come out of Rhuidean, Rhuarc.” She was frowning at Rand and Mat. The entire delegation was. “We hear that the Car’a’carn will be announced today. Before all of the clans arrive.”
“Then someone spoke you a prophecy,” Rand said. He touched the dapple’s flanks with his heels; the delegation moved out of his way.
“Dovienya,” Mat murmured. “Mia dovienya nesodhin soende.” Whatever it meant, it sounded a fervent wish:
The Taardad columns had come up on either side of the Shaido and turned to face them across a few hundred paces, still veiled, still singing. They made no move that could be considered threatening, really, only stood there, fifteen or twenty times the Shaido numbers, and sang, voices thundering in chanting harmony.
“Wash the spears — till shade is gone. Wash the spears — till water turns dry. Wash the spears — How long from home? Wash the spears — Until I die!”
Riding closer to the blackveiled Shaido, Rand saw Rhuarc lift a hand to his own veil. “No, Rhuarc. We are not here to fight them.” He meant that he hoped it would not come to that, but the Aielman took it differently.
“You are right, Rand al’Thor. No honor to the Shaido.” Leaving his veil hanging, Rhuarc raised his voice. “No honor to the Shaido!”
Rand did not turn his head to look, but he had the feeling black veils were being lowered behind him.
“Oh, blood and ashes!” Mat muttered. “Blood and bloody ashes!” “Wash the spears — till the sun grows cold.
Wash the spears — till water runs free. Wash the spears…”
The lines of Shaido shifted uneasily. Whatever Couladin or Sevanna had told them, they could count. To dance the spears with Rhuarc and those with him was one thing, even if it went against all custom; to face enough Taardad to sweep them away like an avalanche was something else. Slowly they parted, moving back to let Rand ride through, stepping back to make a wide path.
Rand heaved a sigh of relief. Adelin and the other Maidens, at least, walked looking straight ahead, as though the Shaido did not exist.
“Wash the spears — while I breathe. Wash the spears — my steel is bright. Wash the spears…”
The chant faded to a murmur behind them as they passed into the wide, steepwalled gorge, deep and shadowed as it wound into the mountains. For minutes the loudest sounds were the clatter of hooves on stone, the whisper of soft Aiel boots. Abruptly the passage gave way to Alcair Dal.
Rand could see why the canyon had been called a bowl, though there was nothing golden about it. Almost perfectly round, its gray wall sloped all the way around except at the far end, where it curled inward like a breaking wave. Clusters of Aiel dotted the slopes, heads and faces bare, many more clusters than there were clans. The Taardad who had come with the sept chiefs peeled away toward one or another of those. According to Rhuarc, grouping by society rather than clan was an aid to keeping peace. Only his Red Shields and the Maidens continued on with Rand and the Taardad chiefs.
The sept chiefs of the other clans all sat by clan, crosslegged before a deep ledge beneath the curling overhang. Six small knots, one of Maidens, stood between the sept chiefs and the ledge. Supposedly these were the Aiel who had come for the honor of clan chiefs. Six, although only five clans were represented. Sevanna would have the Maidens — though Aviendha had been quick to point out that Sevanna had never been Far Dareis Mai — but the extra… Eleven men in that, not ten. Even seeing only the back of a flamehaired head, Rand was sure it was Couladin.
On the ledge itself stood a goldenhaired woman in as much jewelry as the woman back at the fair tents, gray shawl draped over her arms — Sevanna, of
course — and four clan chiefs, none armed save for his long belt knife, and one the tallest man Rand had ever seen. Bael of the Goshien Aiel, by the descriptions Rhuarc had given; the fellow had to be at least a hand taller than Rhuarc or himself. Sevanna was speaking, and some trick of the canyon’s shape carried her words clearly throughout.
“…allow him to speak!” Her voice was tight and angry. Head high and back straight she tried to dominate the ledge by force of will. “I demand it as my right! Until a new chief is chosen, I stand for Suladric and the Shaido. I demand my right!”
“You stand for Suladric until a new chief is chosen, roofmistress.” The whitehaired man who spoke in irascible tones was Han, clan chief of the Tomanelle. With a face like dark, wrinkled leather, he would have been taller than average in the Two Rivers; for an Aiel, he was short, if stocky. “I have no doubt you know the rights of a roofmistress well, but perhaps not so well those of a clan chief. Only one who has entered Rhuidean may speak here — and you, who stand in Suladric’s place” — Han did not sound happy about that, but then he sounded as if he was seldom happy —“but the dreamwalkers have told our Wise Ones Couladin was refused the right to enter Rhuidean.”
Couladin shouted something, plainly furious yet indistinct — apparently the canyon’s trick only worked from the ledge — but Erim, of the Chareen, his own bright red hair nearly halfwhite, cut him off sharply. “Have you no respect for custom and law, Shaido? Have you no honor? Stand silent here.”
A few eyes on the slopes turned to see who the newcomers were. A ripple of nudges brought more around at the sight of two outlanders on horseback at the head of the sept chiefs, and one of the riders followed close by Maidens. How many Aiel peered down at him, Rand wondered. Three thousand? Four? More? None made a sound.
“We have gathered here to hear a great announcement,” Bael said, “when all the clans have come.” His dark reddish hair was graying, too; there were no young men among clan chiefs. His great height and deep voice drew eyes to him. “When all the clans have come. If all Sevanna wishes to speak of now is letting Couladin speak, I will go back to my tents and wait.”
Jheran, of the Shaarad, blood enemy of Bael’s Goshien, was a slender man, gray streaked heavily through his light brown hair. Slender, as a steel blade is slender, he spoke to no one of the chiefs in particular. “I say we do not return to our tents. Since Sevanna has brought us in, let us discuss what is only somewhat less important than the announcement we await. Water. I wish to discuss the water at Chain Ridge Stand.” Bael turned toward him threateningly.
“Fools!” Sevanna snapped. “I will have done with waiting! I—”
It was then that those on the ledge became aware of the new arrivals. In utter silence they watched them approach, the clan chiefs frowning, Sevanna scowling. She was a pretty woman, well short of her middle years — and youngerlooking for
standing among men well the other side of theirs — but with a greedy mouth. The clan chiefs were dignified, even Han in a sourmouthed fashion; her pale green eyes had a calculating look. Unlike any Aiel woman Rand had ever seen, she wore her loose white blouse undone low enough to show considerable tanned cleavage, framed by her many necklaces. He could have known the men for clan chiefs by their manner; if Sevanna was a roofmistress, she was surely nothing like Lian.
Rhuarc strode straight to the ledge, gave his spears and buckler, his bow and quiver, to his Red Shields, and climbed up. Rand handed his reins to Mat — who muttered, “Luck with us!” as he eyed the surrounding Aiel; Adelin nodded encouragingly to Rand — and stepped straight from his saddle to the ledge. A startled murmur rolled around the canyon.
“What do you do, Rhuarc,” Han demanded, scowling, “bringing this wetlander here? If you will not kill him, at least send him down from standing like a chief.”
“This man, Rand al’Thor, has come to speak to the chiefs of the clans. Did not the dreamwalkers tell you that he would come with me?” Rhuarc’s words brought a louder murmur from the listeners.
“Melaine told me many things, Rhuarc,” Bael said slowly, frowning at Rand. “That He Who Comes With the Dawn had come out of Rhuidean. You cannot mean that this man…” He trailed off in disbelief.
“If this wetlander can speak,” Sevanna said quickly, “so may Couladin.” She lifted a smooth hand, and Couladin scrambled onto the ledge, face an angry red.
Han rounded on him. “Stand down, Couladin! It is bad enough that Rhuarc violates custom without you doing it as well!”
“It is time to be done with wornout customs!” the fieryhaired Shaido shouted, stripping off his grayandbrown coat. There was no need for shouting — his words echoed across the canyon — but he did not lower his voice. “I am He Who Comes With the Dawn!” Shoving shirtsleeves above his elbows, he thrust his fists into the air. Around each forearm wound a serpentine creature scaled in crimson and gold, glittering metallically feet each tipped with five golden claws, goldenmaned heads resting on the backs of his wrists. Two perfect Dragons. “I am the Car’a’carn!” The roar that came back was like thunder, Aiel leaping to their feet and shouting joyously. The sept chiefs were on their feet, too, the Taardad clustered worriedly, the others shouting as loudly as anyone.
The clan chiefs looked stunned, even Rhuarc. Adelin and her nine Maidens hefted their spears as if they expected to use them any moment. Eyeing the gap leading out, Mat pulled his hat low and guided the two horses close to the ledge, motioning surreptitiously for Rand to get back into his saddle.
Sevanna smiled smugly, adjusting her shawl, as Couladin strode to the front of the ledge with his arms high. “I bring change!” he shouted. “According to the prophecy, I bring new days! We will cross the Dragonwall again, and take back what was ours! The wetlanders are soft, but rich! You remember the wealth brought back when last we went into the Wetlands! This time, we will take it all! This
time… !”
Rand let the man’s tirade wash over him. Of things possible, he had never suspected this. How? The word kept sliding through his head, yet he could not believe how composed he was. Slowly he took off his coat, hesitating a moment before fishing the angreal from his pocket; sticking it into the waistband of his breeches, he dropped the coat and walked to the front of the ledge, calmly undoing the laces of his sleeves. They slid down as he raised his arms above his head.
It took a moment for the assembled Aiel to notice the Dragons wrapped around his arms, too, shining in the sunlight. Their hush came by increments, but it was total. Sevanna’s mouth dropped open; she had not known of this. Obviously Couladin had not thought Rand would follow so quickly, had not told her another bore the markings, too. How? The man must have believed he would have time; once he had established himself, Rand could be dismissed as a fraud. Light, how? If the roofmistess of Comarda Hold was stunned now, so were the clan chiefs, save only Rhuarc. Two men marked as prophecy said only one could be.Couladin ranted on, waving his arms to make sure all saw. “…will not stop with the lands of the oathbreakers! We will take all the lands to the Aryth Ocean! The wetlanders cannot stand against —” Suddenly he became aware of the silence where eager cries had been. He knew what had caused it. Without turning to look at Rand, he shouted, “Wetlander! Look at his clothes! A wetlander!”
“A wetlander,” Rand agreed. He did not raise his voice, but the canyon carried it to everyone. The Shaido looked startled for a moment, then grinned triumphantly
— until Rand went on. “What does the Prophecy of Rhuidean say? ‘Born of the blood.’ My mother was Shaiel, a Maiden of the Chumai Taardad.” Who was she really? Where did she come from? “My father was Janduin, of the Iron Mountain sept, clan chief of the Taardad.” My father is Tam al’Thor. He found me, raised me, loved me. I wish I could have known you, Janduin, but Tam is my father. “ ‘Born of the blood, but raised by those not of the blood.’ Where did the Wise Ones send to look for me? Into the holds of the Threefold Land? They sent across the Dragonwall, where I was raised. According to the prophecy.”
Bael and the other three nodded slowly, but reluctantly; there was still the matter of Couladin also bearing the Dragons, and doubtless they would rather have one of their own. Sevanna’s face had firmed; no matter who bore the real markings, there was no doubt whom she supported.
Couladin’s confidence never wavered; he sneered openly at Rand, the first time he had even looked at him. “How long since the Prophecy of Rhuidean was first spoken?” He still seemed to think he had to shout. “Who can say how much the words have changed? My mother was Far Dareis Mai before she gave up the spear. How much has the rest changed? Or been changed! It is said we once served the Aes Sedai. I say they mean to bind us to them once more! This wetlander was chosen because he resembles us! He is none of our blood! He came with Aes Sedai leading him on a leash! And the Wise Ones greeted them as they would firstsisters!
You have all heard of Wise Ones who can do things beyond belief. The dreamwalkers used the One Power to keep me from this wetlander! They used the One Power, as Aes Sedai are said to do! The Aes Sedai have brought this wetlander here to bind us with fakery! And the dreamwalkers help them!”
“This is madness!” Rhuarc strode up beside Rand, staring out at the still silent gathering. “Couladin never went to Rhuidean, I heard the Wise Ones refuse him. Rand al’Thor did go. I saw him leave Chaendaer, and I saw him return, marked as you see.”
“And why did they refuse me?” Couladin snarled. “Because the Aes Sedai told them to! Rhuarc does not tell you that one of the Aes Sedai went down from Chaendaer with this wetlander! That is how he returned with the Dragons! By Aes Sedai witchery! My brother Muradin died below Chaendaer, murdered by this wetlander and the Aes Sedai Moiraine, and the Wise Ones, doing Aes Sedai bidding, let them walk free! When night came, I went to Rhuidean. I did not reveal myself until now because this is the proper place for the Car’a’carn to show himself! I am the Car’a’carn!”
Lies, touched with just enough flecks of truth. The man was all victorious confidence, sure he had an answer for anything.
“You say you went to Rhuidean without the permission of the Wise Ones?” Han demanded, frowning. Towering Bael looked just as disapproving with his arms folded, Erim and Jheran only slightly less so. The clan chiefs, at least, still wavered. Sevanna gripped her belt knife, glaring at Han as if she would like to drive it into his back.
Couladin had his answer, though. “Yes, without it! He Who Comes With the Dawn brings change! So says the prophecy! Useless ways must change, and I will change them! Did I not arrive here with the dawn?”
The clan chiefs stood balanced on the edge, and so did all the watching Aiel, all on their feet now, staring silently, waiting in their thousands. If Rand could not convince them, he likely would not leave Alcair Dal alive. Mat motioned again to Jeade’en’s saddle. Rand did not even bother to shake his head.
There was a consideration beyond getting out alive; he needed these people, needed their loyalty. He had to have people who followed him because they believed, not to use him, or for what he could give them. He had to.
“Rhuidean,” he said. The word seemed to fill the canyon. “You claim you went to Rhuidean, Couladin. What did you see there?”
“All know Rhuidean is not to be spoken of,” Couladin shot back.
“We can go apart,” Erim said, “and speak in private so you can tell us —” The Shaido cut him off, face flushed angrily.
“I will speak of it with no one. Rhuidean is a holy place, and what I saw was holy. I am holy!” He raised his Dragon marked arms again. “These make me holy!”
“I walked among glass columns beside Avendesora.” Rand spoke quietly, but the words carried everywhere. “I saw the history of the Aiel through my ancestors’
eyes. What did you see, Couladin? I am not afraid to speak. Are you?” The Shaido quivered with rage, face nearly the color of his fiery hair.
Uncertain looks passed between Bael and Erim, Jheran and Han. “We must go apart for this,” Han muttered.
Couladin did not seem to realize he had lost his advantage with the four, but Sevanna did. “Rhuarc has told him these things,” she spat. “One of Rhuarc’s wives is a dreamwalker, one of those who aids the Aes Sedai! Rhuarc has told him!”
“Rhuarc would not,” Han snapped at her. “He is clan chief, and a man of honor.
Do not speak of what you do not know, Sevanna!”
“I am not afraid!” Couladin shouted. “No man can call me afraid! I, too, saw with my ancestors’ eyes! I saw our coming to the Threefold Land! I saw our glory! The glory I will bring back to us!”
“I saw the Age of Legends,” Rand announced, “and the beginning of the Aiel journey to the Threefold Land.” Rhuarc caught his arm, but he shook the clan chief off. This moment had been fated since the Aiel gathered before Rhuidean the first time. “I saw the Aiel when they were called the Da’shain Aiel, and followed the Way of the Leaf.”
“No!” The shout rose from out in the canyon and spread in a roar. “No! No!” From thousands of throats. Spearpoints shaken in the air caught the sunlight. Even some of the Taardad sept chiefs were shouting. Adelin stared up at Rand, stricken. Mat shouted something at Rand, lost in the thunder, waving urgently for him to take his saddle.
“Liar!” The canyon’s shape carried Couladin’s bellow, wrath mixed with triumph, over the shouts of the gathering. Shaking her head frantically, Sevanna reached for him. She must at least have suspected now that he was the fake, yet if she could keep him quiet they might yet pull it off. As Rand hoped, Couladin pushed her away. The man knew Rand had been to Rhuidean — he could not possibly believe half of his own story — but neither could he believe this. “He proves himself a fraud from his own mouth! We have always been warriors! Always! To the beginning of time!”
The roar swelled, spears shaking, but Bael and Erim, Jheran and Han stood in stony silence. They knew now. Unaware of their looks, Couladin waved his Dragonwreathed arms to the assembled Aiel, exulting in the adulation.
“Why?” Rhuarc said softly beside Rand. “Did you not understand why we do not speak of Rhuidean? To face that we were once so different from everything we believe, that we were the same as the despised Lost Ones you call Tuatha’an. Rhuidean kills those who cannot face it. Not more than one man in three lives who goes to Rhuidean. And now you have spoken for all to hear. It cannot be stopped here, Rand al’Thor. It will spread. How many will be strong enough to bear it?”
He will take you back, and he will destroy you. “I bring change,” Rand said sadly. “Not peace, but turmoil.” Destruction follows on my heels everywhere. Will there ever be anywhere I do not tear apart? “What will be, will be, Rhuarc. I can’t
change it.”
“What will be, will be,” the Aielman murmured after a moment.
Couladin still strode up and down, shouting to the Aiel of glory and conquest, unaware of the clan chiefs staring at his back. Sevanna did not look at Couladin at all; her pale green eyes were intent on the clan chiefs, lips pulled back in a grimace, breasts heaving with anxious breaths. She had to know what their silent stares meant.
“Rand al’Thor,” Bael said loudly, the name slicing through Couladin’s shouts, cutting off the roar of the crowd like a blade. He stopped to clear his throat, head swinging as though seeking a way out of this. Couladin turned, folding his arms confidently, no doubt expecting a sentence of death for the wetlander. The very tall clan chief took a deep breath. “Rand al’Thor is the Car’a’carn. Rand al’Thor is He Who Comes With the Dawn.” Couladin’s eyes widened in incredulous fury.
“Rand al’Thor is He Who Comes With the Dawn,” leatheryfaced Han announced, just as reluctantly.
“Rand al’Thor is He Who Comes With the Dawn.” That from Jheran, grimly, and from Erim, “Rand al’Thor is He Who Comes With the Dawn.”
“Rand al’Thor,” Rhuarc said, “is He Who Comes With the Dawn.” In a voice too soft to carry even from the ledge, he added, “And the Light have mercy on us.”
For a long, stretched moment the silence lasted. Then Couladin leaped snarling from the ledge, snatching a spear from one of his Seia Doon, hurling it straight at Rand. Yet as he moved down, Adelin leaped up; his spearpoint stabbed through the layered bullhide of her outstretched buckler, swinging her around.
Pandemonium exploded through the canyon, men shouting and shoving. The other Jindo Maidens jumped up beside Adelin, forming a screen in front of Rand. Sevanna had climbed down to shout urgently at Couladin, hanging on his arm as he tried to lead his Shaido Black Eyes against the Maidens between him and Rand. Heirn and a dozen more Taardad sept chiefs joined Adelin, spears ready, but others were shouting loudly. Mat scrambled up, gripping his blackhafted spear with its ravenmarked sword point, roaring what had to be curses in the Old Tongue. Rhuarc and the other clan chiefs raised their voices, vainly trying to restore order. The canyon boiled like a cauldron. Rand saw veils lifted. A spear flashed, stabbing. Another. He had to stop this,
He reached out for saidin, and it flooded into him until he thought he would burst if he did not burn first; the filth of the taint spreading through him seemed to curdle his bones. Thought floated outside the Void; cold thought. Water. Here where water was so scarce, the Aiel always talked of water. Even in this dry air there was some water. He channeled, not really knowing what he did, reached out blindly.
Sharp lightning crackled above Alcair Dal, and the wind rushed in from every direction, howling across the lip of the canyon to drown the Aiel’s shouts. Wind, bringing minute traces of water, more and more, until something happened no man had ever seen there. A mist of rain began to fall. The wind above shrieked and
swirled. Wild lightnings streaked the sky. And the rain grew heavier and heavier, to a driving downpour, sweeping over the ledge, plastering his hair to his head and his shirt to his back, blanking out everything fifty paces away.
Abruptly the rain stopped hitting him; and invisible dome expanded around him, pushing Mat and the Taardad away. Through the water pouring down inside he could dimly see Adelin pounding at it, trying to force her way through to him.
“You utter fool, playing games with these other fools! Wasting all my planning and effort!”
Water dripped down his face as he turned to face Lanfear. Her silverbelted white dress was perfectly dry, the black waves of her hair untouched by a single raindrop among the silver stars and crescents. Those large black eyes stared at him furiously; anger twisted her beautiful face.
“I didn’t expect you to reveal yourself yet,” he said quietly, the Power still filled him; he rode the buffeting torrents, holding on with a desperation he kept out of his voice. It was not necessary to pull in more, only to let it come till it seemed his bones would crisp to ash. He did not know if she could shield him while saidin actually roared through him, but he let it fill him against the possibility. “I know you are not alone. Where is he?”
Lanfear’s beautiful mouth tightened. “I knew he would give himself away, coming into your dream. I could have managed matters if his panic —”
“I knew from the start,” he broke in. “I expected it from the day I left the Stone of Tear. Out here, where anyone could see I was fixed on Rhuidean and the Aiel. Do you think I did not expect some of you to come after me? But the trap is mine, Lanfear, not yours. Where is he?” The last came as a cold shout. Emotion skittered uncontrollably around the Void that surrounded him inside, the emptiness that was not empty, the emptiness filled with the Power.
“If you knew,” she snapped back, “why did you chase him away with your talk of fulfilling your destiny, of doing what has to be done?” Scorn weighted the words like stones. “I brought Asmodean to teach you, but he was always one to leap to another plan if the first proved difficult. Now he thinks he has found something better for himself in Rhuidean. And he is off to take it while you stand here. Couladin, the Draghkar, all to hold your attention while he made sure. All my plans for nothing because you must be stubborn! Do you have any idea what effort it will take to convince him again? It must be him. Demandred or Rahvin or Sammael would kill you before teaching you to lift a hand unless they have you bound like a dog at heel!”
Rhuidean. Yes. Of course. Rhuidean. How many weeks to the south? Yet he had done something once. If he could remember how… “And you let him go? After all your talk of aiding me?”
“Not openly, I said! What could he find in Rhuidean worth my coming into the open? When you agree to stand with me will be time enough. Remember what I told you, Lews Therin.” Her voice took on a seductive note; those full lips curved,
those dark eyes tried to swallow him like bottomless pools. “Two great sa’angreal. With those, together, we can. challenge —” This time she stopped on her own. He had remembered.
With the Power he folded reality, bent a small patch of what was. A door opened beneath the dome in front of him. That was the only way to describe it. An opening into darkness, into somewhere else.
“You do remember a few things, it seems.” She eyed the doorway, shifted that suddenly suspicious gaze to him. “Why are you so anxious? What is in Rhuidean?”
“Asmodean,” he said grimly. For a moment he hesitated. He could not see beyond the raindrenched dome. What was happening out there? And Lanfear. If only he could remember how he had shielded Egwene and Elayne. If only I could make myself kill a woman who’s only frowning at me. She is one of the Forsaken! It was no more possible now than it had been in the Stone.
Stepping through the door, he left her on the ledge and closed it behind him. No doubt she knew how to make one of her own, but the making of it would slow her down.
The Shadow Rising
Chapter 58
(Serpent and Wheel) The Traps of Rhuidean
Darkness surrounded him once the door vanished, blackness stretching in all directions, yet he could see. There was no sensation of heat or cold, even wet as he was; no sensation at all. Only existence. Plain gray stone steps rose in front of him, each step hanging unsupported, arching out until they dwindled from sight. He had seen these before, or their like; somehow he knew they would take him where he had to go. He ran up the impossible stairs, and as his boot left each one behind with its damp footprint, it faded away, vanished. Only steps ahead waited, only those taking him where he had to go. That was as it had been before, too.
Did I make these with the Power, or do they exist some other way?
With the thought, the gray stone under his foot began to fade, and all the others ahead shimmered. Desperately he concentrated on them, gray stone and real. Real! The shimmering stopped. They were not so plain now, but polished, the edges carved in a fancy border he thought he recalled seeing somewhere before.
Not caring where — not sure he dared think too long on it — he ran as hard as he could, taking the steps three at a time through the endless dark. They would take him where he wanted to go, but how long would it take? How much head start did Asmodean have? Did the Forsaken know a faster way to travel? That was the trouble. The Forsaken had all the knowledge; all he had was desperation.
Looking ahead, he winced. The steps had accommodated themselves to his long stride, with wide spaces between requiring those leaps now, across black as deep as… as what? A fall here might never end. He forced himself to ignore the gaps, to keep running. The old, halfhealed wound in his side began to throb, a vague awareness. But if he was aware of it at all, wrapped inside saidin, the wound was close to breaking open. Ignore it. The thought floated across the Void inside him. He did not dare lose this race, not if it killed him. Would these steps never stop climbing? How far had he come?
Suddenly he saw a figure in the distance ahead and off to his left, a man it seemed, in a red coat and red boots, standing on a glistening silvery platform that slid through the darkness. Rand needed no closer look to be sure it was Asmodean. The Forsaken was not running like a halfspent country boy; he was riding that whateveritwas.
Rand stopped dead on one of the stone steps. He had no idea what that platform was, shining like polished metal, but… The steps ahead of him vanished. The piece of stone beneath his boots began to glide forward, faster and faster. There was no wind in his face to tell him he was moving, nothing in that vast black to mark motion at all — except that he was beginning to catch up to Asmodean. He did not know if he was doing this with the Power; it just seemed to happen. The step wobbled and he made himself stop wondering. I don’t know enough yet.
The darkhaired man stood at his ease, one hand on a hip, pensively fingering his chin. A spill of white lace dripped from his neck; more halfhid his hands. His highcollared red coat seemed shinier than silk satin, and was oddly cut, with tails hanging almost to his knees. What seemed to be black threads, like fine steel wires, ran off from the man, disappearing into the surrounding dark. Those Rand had surely seen before.
Asmodean turned his head, and Rand gaped. The Forsaken could change their faces — or at least make you see a different face; he had seen Lanfear do it — but these were the features of Jasin Natael, the gleeman. He had been sure it would be Kadere, with his predatory eyes that never changed.
Asmodean saw him at the same moment and gave a start. The Forsaken’s silver perch darted forward — and suddenly a huge sheet of fire, like a thin slice from a monstrous flame, swept back toward Rand, a mile high and a mile wide.
He channeled at it desperately; just as it was about to strike him, it suddenly burst into shards, hurtling away from him, winking out. Yet even as the fiery curtain vanished it revealed another rushing at him. He shattered that, exposing another, splintered the third to reveal a fourth. Asmodean was getting away, Rand was sure of it. He could not see the Forsaken at all for the flames. Anger slid across the surface of the Void, and he channeled.
A wave of fire enveloped the crimson curtain sweeping toward him and rolled on, carrying it away, not a thin slice, but wild, billowing gouts as if whipped by stormwinds. He quivered with the Power roaring through him; anger at Asmodean clawed at the surface of the Void.
A hole appeared in the erupting surface. No, not a hole exactly. Asmodean and his shining platform stood in the middle of it; but as the flaming wave washed forward it slid together again. The Forsaken had built some sort of shield around himself.
Rand made himself ignore the distant anger outside the Void. It was only in cold calm that he could touch saidin; acknowledging anger would shatter the Void. The billows of fire ceased to exist as he stopped channeling. He had to catch the man, not kill him.
The stone step slid through the blackness even faster. Asmodean drew closer.
Abruptly the Forsaken’s platform stopped. A bright hole appeared in front of him, and he jumped through; the silvery thing vanished, and the door began to close.
Rand lashed out wildly with the Power. He had to hold it open; once it closed, he would have no idea where Asmodean had fled. The shrinking stopped. A square of harsh sunlight, big enough to step through. He had to hold it open, reach it before Asmodean could go too far…
Even as he thought about stopping, the step halted dead. It halted, but he hurtled forward, flying through the doorway. Something tugged his boot, and then he was tumbling head over heels across hard ground, to land finally in a breathless heap.
Fighting to fill his lungs, he pushed himself to his feet, not daring to let himself be helpless a moment. The One Power still filled him with life and vileness; his bruises felt as distant as his struggle for breath, as far off as the yellow dust that covered his damp clothes, covered him. Yet at the same time he was aware of every stir of furnace air, every grain of dust, every minute crack in the hardbaked clay. Already the sun was baking away the moisture, sucking it from his shirt and breeches. He was in the Waste, in the valley below Chaendaer, not fifty steps from fogshrouded Rhuidean. The doorway was gone.
He took a step toward the wall of mist and stopped, lifting his left foot. His bootheel was sliced cleanly though. The tug he had felt; the doorway closing. He was dimly aware of shivering in spite of the heat. He had not known it was that dangerous. The Forsaken had all the knowledge. Asmodean would not escape him.
Grimly he adjusted his clothes, tucking the carved little man and his sword firmly in place, ran to the fog and in. Gray blindness enveloped him. The Power filling him did nothing to make him see better here. Running blind.
Abruptly he threw himself down, rolling the last stride out of the fog onto gritty paving stones. Lying there, he stared up at three bright ribbons, silverblue in the strange light of Rhuidean, stretching to left and right, floating in the air. When he stood, they were at the level of his waist, chest and neck, and so thin that they vanished edgeon. He could see how they had been made and hung, even if he did not understand it. Hard as steel, sharp enough to make a razor seem a feather. Had he run into those, they would have sliced through him. A tiny surge of the Power, and the silver ribbons fell in dust. Cold anger, outside the Void; inside, cold purpose, and the One Power.
The bluish glow of the fog dome cast its shadowless light on the halffinished, slabsided palaces of marble and crystal and cut glass, the cloudpiercing towers, fluted and spiraled. And down the broad street ahead of him ran Asmodean, past dry fountains, toward the great plaza at the heart of the city.
Rand channeled — it seemed oddly difficult; he pulled at saidin, wrenched at it until it raged into him — he channeled, and thick bolts of jagged lightning shot from the domeclouds. Not at Asmodean, Just ahead of the Forsaken, gleaming pillars of red and white, fifty feet thick and a hundred paces high, centuries old, exploded and toppled across the street in rubble and clouds of dust.
From huge windows of colored glass, images of majestically serene men and women seemed to look at Rand in reproof. “I have to stop him,” he told them; his voice seemed to echo in his own ears.
Asmodean paused, starting back from the collapsing masonry. The dust drifting toward him never touched his shiny red coat; it parted around him, leaving clear air. Fire bloomed around Rand, enveloped him as the air became flame — and vanished before he was even aware of how he did it. His clothes were dry and hot; his hair felt singed, and baked dust fell at every step as he ran. Asmodean was scrambling over the broken stone blocking the street; more lightning flashed, raising
gouts of shattered paving stone ahead of him, ripping open crystal palace walls to rain ruin before him.
The Forsaken did not slow, and as he vanished, lightning flashed from the glowing clouds toward Rand, stabbing blindly but meant to kill. Running, Rand wove a shield around himself. Shards of stone bounded from it as he dodged crackling blue bolts, leaped over the holes they tore in the pavement. The air itself sparkled; the hair of his arms lifted with it, the hair on his head stirred.
There was something woven into the barrier of shattered columns. He hardened the shield around himself. Great tumbled chunks of red and white stone exploded as he reached to climb, a burst of pure light and flying stone. Safe inside his bubble, he ran through, only vaguely aware of the rumble of collapsing buildings. He had to stop Asmodean. Straining — and it took strain — he threw lightning ahead, balls of fire ripping up out of the ground, anything to slow the redcoated man. He was catching up. He entered the plaza only a dozen paces behind. Trying to increase his speed, he redoubled his efforts at slowing Asmodean, and fleeing, Asmodean fought to kill him.
The ter’angreal and other precious things the Aiel had given their lives to bring here were hurled into the air by lightning, tossed wildly by spinning whirlwinds of fire, constructs of silver and crystal shattering, strange metal shapes toppling as the ground shivered and broke open in wide rents.
Searching wildly, Asmodean ran. And flung himself at what might seem the least significant thing in all that litter. A carved white stone figurine perhaps a foot long, lying on its back, a man holding a crystal sphere in one upraised hand. Asmodean closed his hands on it with an exultant cry.
A heartbeat later, Rand’s hands grasped it, too. For the barest instant he stared into the Forsaken’s face; he looked no different than he had as a gleeman, except for a wild desperation in his dark eyes, a somewhat handsome man in his middle years
— nothing at all to say he was one of the Forsaken. The barest instant, and they both reached through the figure, through the ter’angreal, for one of the two most powerful sa’angreal ever made.
Vaguely Rand was aware of a great, halfburied statue in faroff Cairhien, of the huge crystal sphere in its hand, glowing like the sun, pulsing with the One Power. And the Power in him surged up like all the seas of the world in storm. With this surely he could do anything; surely he could even have Healed that dead child. The taint swelled as much, curling ’round every particle of him, seeping into every crevice, into his soul. He wanted to howl; he wanted to explode. Yet he only held half what that sa’angreal could deliver; the other half filled Asmodean.
Back and forth they straggled, tripping over scattered and broken ter’angreal, falling, neither daring to let go of the figure with even one finger for fear the other would pull it away. Yet as they rolled over and over, banging now against a redstone doorframe that somehow still stood, now against a fallen crystal statue lying on its side unbroken, a nude woman clasping a child to her breast, as they fought for
possession of the ter’angreal, the battle was fought on another level, too.
Hammers of Power large enough to level mountains struck at Rand, and blades that could have pierced the earth’s heart; unseen pincers tried to tear his mind from his body, ripped at his very soul. Every scrap of Power he could draw went to hurl those attacks away. Any one could destroy him as if he had never been; he was sure of it. Where they went he could not be sure. The ground bounded beneath them, shaking them as they struggled, flinging them about in a writhing tangle of straining muscle. Dimly he was aware of vast rumbles, of a thousand whining hums like some strange music. The glass columns, quivering, vibrating. He could not worry about them.
All those nights without sleep were catching up to him, the running he had done on top of it. He was tired, and if he could even know it inside the Void, then he was near exhaustion. Tossed by the quaking earth, he realized he was no longer trying to pull the ter’angreal from Asmodean, only to hold on. Soon his strength would go. Even if he managed to retain his grip on the stone figure, he would have to let go of saidin or be swept away by the rush of it, destroyed as surely as Asmodean would do it. He could not pull another thread through the ter’angreal; he and Asmodean were equally balanced, each with half of what the great sa’angreal in Cairhien could draw. Asmodean panted in his face, snarling; sweat dripped from the Forsaken’s forehead, ran down his cheeks. The man was tired, too. But as tired as he?
The flailing earth heaved Rand on top for an instant, and just as quickly spun Asmodean up, but in that brief moment Rand felt something pressed between them. The carving of the fat little man with the sword, still tucked into his waistband. An insignificant thing next to the immense Power they drew upon. A cup of water compared to a vast river, to an ocean. He did not even know if he could use it while linked to the great sa’angreal. And if he could? Asmodean’s teeth bared. Not a grimace, but a weary rictus of a smile; the man thought he was winning. Perhaps he was. Rand’s fingers trembled, weakening around the ter’angreal; it was all he could do to hold on to saidin, even linked as he was to the huge sa’angreal.
He had not seen those strange things like black steel wires around Asmodean since leaving the dark place, but he could visualize them even in the Void, place them in his mind around the Forsaken. Tam had taught him the Void as an aid to archery, to be one with the bow, the arrow, the target. He made himself one with those imagined black wires. He barely saw Asmodean frown. The man must be wondering why his face had grown calm; there was always calm in the moment before the arrow was loosed. He reached through the small angreal in his waistband, and more of the Power flowed into him. He did not waste time on exulting; it was such a small flow beside what he already contained, and this was his final blow. This would use his final strength. He formed it like a sword of Power, a sword of Light, and struck; one with the sword, one with the imagined wires.
Asmodean’s eyes went wide, and he screamed, a howl from the depths of
horror; like a struck gong the Forsaken quivered. For an instant there seemed to be two of him, shivering away from each other; then they slid back together. He fell over on his back, arms flung out in his now dirty, tattered red coat, chest heaving; staring up at nothing, his dark eyes looked lost.
As he collapsed, Rand lost his hold on saidin, and the Power left him. He had barely enough strength to clutch the ter’angreal to his chest and roll away from Asmodean. Pushing himself to his knees felt like climbing a mountain; he huddled around the figure of the man with his crystal sphere.
The earth had stopped moving. The glass columns still stood — he was grateful for that; destroying them would have been like obliterating the history of the Aiel
— but Avendesora, that had lived three thousand years in legend and truth, Avendesora blazed like a torch, and as for the rest of Rhuidean…
The plaza looked as if everything had been picked up and flung about by a mad giant. Half the great palaces and towers were only heaps of rubble, some spilling into the square; huge toppled columns marred others, and fallen walls, and empty gaps where huge windows of colored glass had been. A rift ran the whole way across the city, a split in the earth fifty feet wide. The destruction did not end there. The dome of fog that had hidden Rhuidean for so many centuries was dissipating; the underside no longer glowed, and harsh sunlight poured through great new gaps. Beyond, Chaendaer’s peak looked different, lower, and on the other side of the valley some of the mountains were definitely lower. Where one mountain had stood, a fan of stone and dirt stretched across the north end of the valley.
I destroy. Always I destroy! Light, will it ever end?
Asmodean rolled onto his belly, pushed to hands and knees. His eyes found Rand, and the ter’angreal, and he made as if to crawl toward them.
Rand could not have channeled a spark, but he had learned how to fight before his first nightmare of channeling. He lifted a fist. “Don’t even think about it.” The Forsaken stopped, swaying wearily. His face sagged, yet despair and desire warred across it; hate and fear glittered in his eyes.
“I do like to see men fight, but you two cannot even stand.” Lanfear moved into Rand’s view, surveying the devastation. “You have made a thorough job of it. Can you feel the traces? This place was shielded in some way. You did not leave enough for me to say how.” Dark eyes suddenly bright, she knelt in front of Rand, peering at what he held. “So that is what he was after. I thought they were all destroyed. Only half remains of the single one I have seen; a fine trap for some unwary Aes Sedai.” She put out a hand, and he clutched the ter’angreal tighter. Her smile did not touch her eyes. “Keep it, certainly. To me it is no more than a figurine.” Rising, she dusted her white skirts though they did not need it. When she realized he was watching her, she stopped searching the rubblestrewn plaza with her eyes, made her smile brighter. “What you used was one of the two sa’angreal I told you of. Did you feel the immensity of it? I have wondered what it must be like.” She seemed unaware of the hunger in her voice. “With those, together, we can displace the Great
Lord of the Dark himself. We can, Lews Therin! Together.”
“Help me!” Asmodean crawled toward her unsteadily, his upraised face painted in dread. “You don’t know what he has done. You must help me. I would not have come here if not for you.”
“What has he done?” she sniffed. “Beaten you like a dog, and not half so well as you deserve. You were never meant for greatness, Asmodean, only to follow those who are great.”
Somehow Rand managed to stand, still holding the stoneandcrystal figure to his chest. He would not continue on his knees in her presence. “You Chosen” — he knew taunting her was dangerous, but he could not stop himself — “gave your souls to the Dark One. You let him attach himself to you.” How many times had he replayed his battle with Ba’alzamon? How many times before he began to suspect what those black wires were? “I cut him off from the Dark One, Lanfear. I cut him off!”
Her eyes widened in shock, staring from him to Asmodean. The man had begun to weep. “I did not think that was possible. Why? Do you think to bring him to the Light? You’ve changed nothing about him.”
“He is still the same man who gave himself to the Shadow in the first place,” Rand agreed. “You told me how little you Chosen trust one another. How long could he keep it secret? How many of you would believe he didn’t do it himself somehow? I am glad you thought it impossible; maybe the rest of you will as well. You gave me the whole idea, Lanfear. A man to teach me how to control the Power. But I won’t be taught by a man linked to the Dark One. Now I don’t have to be. He may be the same man, but he doesn’t have much choice, does he? He can stay and teach me, hope I win, help me win, or he can hope the rest of you don’t take the excuse to turn on him. Which do you think he’ll choose?”
Asmodean stared wildeyed at Rand from his crouch, then thrust out a pleading hand toward Lanfear. “They will believe you! You can tell them! I would not be here except for you! You must tell them! I am faithful to the Great Lord of the Dark!”
Lanfear stared at Rand, too. For the first time ever that he had seen, she looked uncertain. “How much do you remember, Lews Therin? How much is you, and how much the shepherd? This is the sort of plan you might have devised when we —” Drawing a deep breath, she turned her head to Asmodean. “Yes, they will believe me. When I tell them you went over to Lews Therin. Everyone knows you will leap wherever you think your best chance lies. There.” She nodded to herself in satisfaction. “Another little present for you, Lews Therin. That shield will allow a trickle through, enough for him to teach. It will dissipate with time, but he’ll not be able to challenge you for months, and by that time he will have no choice but to remain with you. He was never very good at breaking through a shield; you must be willing to accept pain, and he never could.”
“NOOOOOO!” Asmodean crawled toward her. “You cannot do this to me!
Please, Mierin! Please!”
“My name is Lanfear!” Rage twisted her face to ugliness, and the man lifted into the air, spreadeagled; his clothes pressed to him and the flesh of his face distorted, spread out like butter under a rock.
Rand could not let her kill the man, but he was too tired to touch the True Source unaided; he could barely sense it, a dim glow just out of sight. For an instant his hands tightened on the stone man with the crystal sphere. If he reached through to the huge sa’angreal in Cairhien again now, that much of the Power might destroy him. Instead, he reached through the carving in his waistband; with the angreal, it was a feeble flow, a hairthin trickle compared to the other, but he was too weary to pull more. He hurled it all between the two Forsaken, hoping to distract her if nothing, else.
A bar of whitehot fire ten feet tall streaked between the pair in a blur surrounded by arcing blue lightning, searing a pacedeep groove across the square, a smoothsided gash glowing with melted earth and stone; the fiery shaft struck a greenstreaked palace wall and exploded, the roar buried in the rumble of collapsing marble. On one side of the melted slash Asmodean dropped to the pavement in a shuddering heap, blood trickling from nose and ears; on the other, Lanfear staggered back as if struck, then rounded on Rand. He swayed with the effort of what he had done, and lost saidin once more.
For a moment rage engorged her face as deeply as it had for Asmodean. For a moment Rand stood on the brink of death. Then fury vanished with startling abruptness, buried behind a seductive smile. “No, I mustn’t kill him. Not after we have gone to so much effort.” Moving closer, she reached up to stroke the side of his neck, where her bite from the dream was just healing; he had not let Moiraine know of it. “You still bear my mark. Shall I make it permanent?”
“Did you harm anyone at Alcair Dal, or in the camps?”
Her face never stopped smiling, but her caress changed, fingers suddenly poised as if to rip out his throat. “Such as who? I thought you had realized you did not love that little farmgirl. Or is it the Aiel jade?” A viper. A deadly viper who loved him — The Light help me! — and he did not know how to stop her if she decided to bite, whether him or someone else.
“I don’t want anyone hurt. I need them yet. I can use them.” It was painful saying that, painful for the amount of truth in it. But keeping Lanfear’s fangs out of Egwene and Moiraine, away from Aviendha and anyone else close to him, that was worth a little pain.
Throwing back her beautiful head, she laughed like chiming bells. “I can remember when you were too softhearted to use anyone. Devious in battle, hard as stone and arrogant as the mountains, but open and softhearted as a girl! No, I did not harm any of your precious Aes Sedai, or your precious Aiel. I do not kill without cause, Lews Therin. I do not even hurt without cause.” He was careful not to look at Asmodean; whitefaced, drawing jagged breaths, the man had pushed up
on one hand, using the other to wipe blood from his mouth and chin.
Turning slowly, Lanfear surveyed the great square. “You have destroyed this city as well as any army could have.” But it was not the ruined palaces she stared at, though she pretended; it was the broken square with its jumbled litter of ter’angreal and who knew what else. The corners of her mouth were tight when she turned back to Rand; her dark eyes held a spark of suppressed anger. “Use his teachings well, Lews Therin. The others are still out there, Sammael with his envy of you, Demandred with his hate, Rahvin with his thirst for power. They will be more eager to bring you down, not less, if — when — they discover you hold that.”
Her gaze flickered to the foottall figure in his hands, and for an instant he thought she was considering taking it from him. Not to keep the others from his back, but because with it he might be too powerful for her to handle. Right then he was not certain he could stop her if she used nothing but her hands. One instant she was weighing whether to leave the ter’angreal in his possession, the next measuring his tiredness. However much she talked of loving him, she would want to be far from him when he regained enough strength to use the thing. Briefly she scanned the plaza again, lips pursed; then abruptly a door opened beside her, not a door to blackness, but into what seemed a palace chamber, all carved white marble and white silk hangings.
“Which one were you?” he said as she stepped toward it, and she paused, looking over a shoulder at him with an almost coy smile.
“Do you think I could stand to be fat, ugly Keille?” She ran hands down her rounded slimness for emphasis. “Isendre, now. Slim, beautiful Isendre. I thought if you suspected, you would suspect her. My pride is strong enough to support a little fat, when it must.” The smile became a baring of teeth. “Isendre thought she was dealing with simple Friends of the Dark. I would not be surprised if right now she is frantically trying to explain to some angry Aiel women why a large quantity of their gold necklaces and bracelets are in the bottom of her chest. She actually did steal some of them herself.”
“I thought you said you didn’t harm anyone!”
“Now your soft heart shows. I can show a tender, woman’s heart when I choose. You’ll not be able to save her being welted, I think — she deserves that for the least of the looks she gave me — but if you return quickly, you can prevent them sending her off with one waterskin to walk out of this blighted land. They are quite hard on thieves, it seems, these Aiel.” She gave an amused laugh, shaking her head in wonder. “So different from what they were. You could slap a Da’shain’s face, and all he did was ask what he had done. Slap again, and he asked if he had offended. He would not change if you continued all day.” Giving Asmodean a contemptuous sidelong look, she added, “Learn well and quickly, Lews Therin. I mean us to rule together, not to watch Sammael kill you or Graendal add you to her collection of handsome young men. Learn well and quickly.” She stepped into the chamber of white marble and silk, and the doorway seemed to turn sideways, narrowed,
vanished.
Rand drew the first deep breath he had taken since her appearance. Mierin. A name remembered from the glass columns. The woman who had found the Dark One’s prison in the Age of Legends, who had bored into it. Had she known what it was? How had she escaped that fiery doom he had seen? Had she given herself to the Dark One even then?
Asmodean was struggling to his feet, unsteady and nearly falling again. He no longer bled, but blood still traced thin lines from his ears down the sides of his neck, made a smear across his mouth and chin. His filthy red coat was torn, his white lace ripped and snagged. “It was my link to the Great Lord that allowed me to touch saidin without going mad,” he said hoarsely. “All you have done is make me as vulnerable as you. You might as well let me go. I am not a very good teacher. She only chose me because —” His lips writhed, trying to pull the words back.
“Because there isn’t anyone else,” Rand finished for him and turned away.On tottering legs Rand crossed the broad square, picking his way through the litter. He and Asmodean had been flung halfway around the forest of glass columns from Avendesora. Crystal plinths lay against fallen statues of men and women, some broken in chunks, some not even chipped. A great flat ring of silvery metal had been flipped up on chairs of metal and stone, strange shapes in metal and crystal and glass, all mixed in a heap with shattered bits, a black metal shaft like a spear standing upright, improbably balanced on the pile. The entire plaza was like that.
Out from the great tree, a little searching among the jumble found what he sought. Kicking aside pieces of what seemed to be spiraled glass tubes, he shoved a plaincarved chair of red crystal aside and picked up a foottall figurine, a robed woman with a serene face, worked in white stone, holding up a clear sphere in one hand. Unbroken. As useless to him, or to any man, as its male twin was to Lanfear. He considered breaking it. One swing of his arm could shatter that crystal globe on the paving stones, surely.
“She was looking for that.” He had not realized Asmodean had followed him. Wavering, the man scrubbed at his bloody mouth. “She will rip your heart out to put her hands on it.”
“Or yours, for keeping it secret from her. She loves me.” Light help me. Like being loved by a rabid wolf! After a moment he put the female statue in the crook of his arm with the male. There might be a use for it. And I don’t want to destroy anything else.
Yet as he looked around, he saw something besides destruction. The fog was almost gone from the ruined city; only a few wispy sheets remained to drift among the buildings still standing beneath the sinking sun. The valley floor tilted sharply to the south now, and water spilled out of the great rent across the city, the gash that went all the way down to where that deep hidden ocean of water lay. Already the lower end of the valley was filling. A lake. It might reach nearly to the city eventually, a lake maybe three miles long in a land where a pool ten feet across
drew people. People would come to this valley to live. He could almost see the surrounding mountains already terraced with crops growing green. They would tend Avendesora, the last chora tree. Perhaps they would even rebuild Rhuidean. The Waste would have a city. Perhaps he would even live to see it.
With the angreal, the round little man with his sword, he was able to open a doorway to blackness. Asmodean stepped through with him reluctantly, sneering faintly when a single carved stone step appeared, just wide enough for the two of them. Still the same man who had given himself to the Dark One. His calculating, sideways glances were reminder enough of that, if Rand needed any.
They only spoke twice as the: step soared through the darkness. Once Rand said, “I cannot call you Asmodean.”
The man shivered. “My name was Joar Addam Nesossin,” he said at last. He sounded as if he had stripped himself bare, or lost something.
“I can’t use that either. Who knows what scrap holds that name somewhere? The idea is to keep someone from killing you for a Forsaken.” And to keep anyone from knowing he had a Forsaken for teacher. “You will have to go on being Jasin Natael, I think. Gleeman to the Dragon Reborn. Excuse enough for keeping you close.” Natael grimaced, but said nothing.
A little later, Rand said, “The first thing you’ll show me is how to guard my dreams.” The man only nodded, sullenly. He would cause problems, but they could not be as large as the problems of ignorance.
The step slowed, stopped, and Rand folded again. The doorway opened on the ledge in Alcair Dal.
The rain had stopped, though the eveningshadowed floor of the canyon was still sodden, churned to mud by Aiel feet. Fewer Aiel than before, perhaps as many as a fourth fewer. But not fighting. Staring at the ledge, where Moiraine and Egwene, Aviendha and the Wise Ones had joined the clan chiefs, who stood talking with Lan. Mat was squatting a little distance from them, hat brim pulled down and blackhafted spear propped on his shoulder, Adelin and her Maidens standing around him. They gaped as Rand stepped out of the doorway, stared more when Natael followed in his tattered shiny red coat and white lace. Mat jumped to his feet with a grin, and Aviendha halfraised a hand toward him. The Aiel in the canyon watched silently.
Before anyone could speak, Rand said, “Adelin, would you send someone out to the fair and tell them to stop beating Isendre? She is not as big a thief as they think.” The yellowhaired woman looked startled, but immediately spoke to one of the Maidens, who dashed off.
“How did you know about that?” Egwene exclaimed, at the same time Moiraine demanded, “Where have you been? How?” Her wide dark eyes darted from him to Natael, her Aes Sedai calm nowhere in evidence. And the Wise Ones…? Sunhaired Melaine looked ready to drag answers out of him with her bare hands. Bair scowled as though she meant to switch them out. Amys shifted her shawl and ran fingers
through her pale hair, unable to decide whether she was worried or relieved.
Adelin handed him his coat, still damp. He wrapped it around the two stone figures. Moiraine was considering those, too. He did not know if she even suspected what they were, but he intended to hide them as best he could from anyone. If he could not trust himself with Callandor’s power, how much less with the great sa’angreal? Not until he had learned more of how to control it, and himself.
“What happened here?” he asked, and the Aes Sedai’s mouth tightened at being ignored. Egwene did not look much more pleased.
“The Shaido have gone, behind Sevanna and Couladin,” Rhuarc said. “All who remain acknowledge you as Car’a’carn.”
“The Shaido were not the only ones who fled.” Han’s leathery face twisted sourly. “Some of my Tomanelle went as well. And Goshien, and Shaarad, and Chareen.” Jheran and Erim nodded almost as dourly as Han.
“Not with the Shaido,” tall Bael rumbled, “but they went. They will spread what happened here, what you revealed. That was ill done. I saw men throw away their spears and run!”
He will bind you together, and destroy you.
“No Taardad left,” Rhuarc put in, not pridefully but as a simple statement of fact. “We are ready to go where you lead.”
Where he led. He was not done with the Shaido, with Couladin, or Sevanna. Scanning the Aiel around the canyon he could see shaken faces, for all they had chosen to stay. What must those who had run be like? Yet the Aiel were only a means to an end. He had to remember that. I have to be even harder than they.
Jeade’en waited beside the ledge with Mat’s gelding. Motioning Natael to stay close, Rand climbed into the saddle, coatwrapped bundle secure under his arm. Mouth twisted, the once Foresaken came to stand by his left stirrup. Adelin and her remaining Maidens leaped down to form around them, and surprisingly, Aviendha climbed down to take her usual place on his right. Mat jumped to Pips’s saddle in one bound.
Rand looked back up at the people on the ledge, all of them watching, waiting. “It will be a long road back.” Bael turned his face away. “Long, and bloody.” The Aiel faces did not change. Egwene half stretched out a hand toward him, eyes pained, but he ignored her. “When the rest of the clan chiefs come, it begins.”
“It began long ago,” Rhuarc said quietly. “The question is where and how it ends.”
For that, Rand had no answer. Turning the dapple, he rode slowly across the canyon, surrounded by his peculiar retinue. Aiel parted in front of him, staring, waiting. The night’s cold was already coming on.
And when the blood was sprinkled on ground where nothing could grow, the Children of the Dragon did spring up, the People of the Dragon, armed to dance with death. And he did call them forth from the wasted lands, and they did shake the world with battle.
— from The Wheel of Time by Sulamein so Bhagad, Chief Historian at the Court of the Sun, the Fourth Age The End
of the Fourth Book of The Wheel of Time